T-bone steak, jacket potato


Maintaining paleo creds. Cow meat from an ordinary cow that was probably fattened up in a feed lot, which if anything should go to show you what a steady diet of grain does. This steak is delicious. I'm a little surprised right now to realize how quickly steaks cook. I used to cook steak all the time and for some reason I'm remembering it taking longer. I must be trapped in a time-warp where everything seems to go faster. I'm going to have to remember that when the weather cools and I start using the Big Green Egg, surreptitiously, it's illegal downtown on apartment balconies. Wouldn't do to get myself evicted. I intend to become the ninja griller. Schwing-schwing. "Hey, where's that alluring aroma coming from?"

I go straight for the tenderloin side of the bone first and save the New York side for last just like my daddy taught me. When picking them out, seek large tenderloin sides. When sorting through a stack of steaks, you'll notice the tenderloin side start to rival the size of the New York side, at the largest ratio of tenderloin to N.Y. the cuts magically become Porterhouse. Each side of beef goes from thin tenderloin to broad tenderloin and it's up to the butcher to determine where T-bone steaks leave off and Porterhouses begin. It's subjective.

One difference you'll notice right off between grass-fed beef and grain-fattened beef is that the fat on the grass-fed cuts is a tallow color and the fat on the grain-fed cuts is nearly pure white. Tallow good, pure white not so good. (to purists, it's actually bad, but I'm no purist) Then there's marbling, and finally taste. But at this moment I don't care about any of that.

The potato took one hour in a convection oven at 400℉. The skin is nice and crispy, just how I like it. I ate the top separately. Sour cream mixed with non-descript curry powder and cayenne. I left the butter and sour cream off because the potato was piled up so high.  Here's a hint about these jacket potatoes: when scooping, don't get so close to the skin because you need a potato wall to hold it up. That is, do not scoop the inside thoroughly up tight against the skin. Once scooped, anything can be mixed in. You can turn it into proper mashed potatoes if you like. Bacon. Scallions. Cheese. Whatever. It's all good. I left this one chunky because today I'm pretending to be a cowboy and we cowboys are rough and unrefined.

Oregano this time because the other day on impulse I bought a bag of Mexican oregano.

Mexican oregano is stronger than regular oregano. So called because it's from Oregon. A guy goes, "where's this from?" and another guy goes, "Oregon," and the first guy goes, "Oh." Thus Oregano. Okay, not really. It's a Greek thing. In Greek, ore = mountain, gano = joy. Which translates into either sexy teim on the mountain or mountain joy, take your pick.

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