You’ll need a baking-size potato, a piece of butter the size of a small egg, three or four cloves of garlic, an onion half again the size of your butter, about half a cup of flour, about half a cup of milk, a little top round steak, some salt, fresh-ground pepper, a cast iron skillet, and a beverage of your choice.

Melt half the butter. Slice in the onion and half the garlic and cook gently until it goes clear. While it’s cooking scrub your potato and slice it very thin. Now add it to the onion and cook until the potato is brown and a little crispy on the edges.
Lift out onions and potato and set aside to keep warm — salt and pepper to taste.
Dust the steak in flour then brown on all sides in the pan drippings. Once it’s done lay it out on top of the potatoes and make the gravy: shake the flour into the pan with a little extra pepper and a pinch of salt, plus the minced remaining garlic. Keep stirring until it starts to brown a bit — no darker than a dry-roasted peanut. At that point stir in the milk, and keep stirring while you bring the gravy to a boil.

It goes thick all at once like some kind of magic, and if you wait too long it goes evil like papier-mache paste. Pour it over the steak. Serve.
No, it ain’t chicken-fried. But it’s decent eats.