Blog the Thirtieth: Fish Steaks, Plus

Marinades for Swordfish and Tuna,
plus a bonus recipe for Filet Mignon

In the eyes of the foolish, fish steaks are good food.  Well, they’re not.  Sure, they cost a lot.  Sure, they’re fancy.  Sure, they make a good impression.  But so what?  That’s food for the vain, not the hungry soul.  When you cook fish steaks, what you mostly need to worry about is their drying out. They want to be tough, and you have to stop them. Now, tell me, does that sound like good food?

I live in an old colonial town on a great Bay, once the livelihood of watermen, but now the playtown of perpetual recreants.  Would you believe the place has more good sushi bars than Italian restaurants?  Talk about a transvaluation of values (transpacific, to be precise).  Anyways, the price of good tuna has been driven up beyond the tolerable by this Asian invasion [are only Asians allowed to say that, or do those crazy-high SATS preempt protected class status?].  No way I'm paying twice as much for tuna as for a rib-eye—vanity of vanities!  It’s cheaper in the end just to get the sashimi lunch special at Joss, with a miso soup and salad thrown in for good measure.  Anyway,  even though my parents never bought but fresh fish steaks back in Brooklyn, I make do with frozen tuna, wild from Vietnam, when it goes on sale for $10 a pound, but averring the palpable difference in taste and texture.  (I bet you can still get it fresh for under $15 a pound in Bensonhurst.)

Now, there are two ways to deal with fish steak’s determination to dry out, the Way of the East or the Way of the West.  The Eastern Way is to get the very best and very freshest fish steak and not cook it at all, making quite a fuss about how you slice it up and lay it out.  That’s the Way of the East at its extreme, namely Japan.  I advise you not to try this at home; go out instead for sashimi.  You might think it uncharacteristically ecumenical of me to recommend Asian food to you, but allow me to explain to you how my culinary respect for the East only corroborates my Western chauvinism.

Blog the Fifteenth: On Saving the Irish

… with Pasta Asparagus and Wine-dyed London Broil.

Let me begin this blog with the disclaimer that by marriage I have a right to make fun of the Irish.   I have on my sister’s side an Irish brother-in-law, whence a half-Irish niece and nephew (both with red hair, thanks no doubt to genes deposited by the Normans during their sojourn in Sicily); and on my brother’s side, a half-Irish sister-in-law, whence two quarter-Irish nephews (the remaining quarter being Puerto Rican, with that delicious pulled-pork my sister‑in‑law cooks making that miscegenation well worth it).   So I claim a familial right of mocking my own, but I am ready to take up arms shoulder‑to‑shoulder with my clan, if you should mock mine as I’m about to.

The Irish don’t merely make bad food; they have a bad relation to food.  My sister’s cooking has been, if not corrupted, at the very least compromised by her Irish husband’s palate.  To give evidence that my judgment constitutes not a ­prejudice, but a bias based on judgment consequent and considered, I will tell you how my sister ruins my pasta asparagus recipe to accommodate the aversions of her husband’s Irish[‑American] palate.  To give evidence, on the other hand, of my equity and flexibility, I will also tell you about a delicious, crowd‑pleasing, kid-friendly recipe for London Broil that I came up by Italianizing the recipe of an Irish friend’s brother-in-law.   

My point: the Irish can be saved, if only they will eat Italian.

Blog the Thirteenth: Kid-Friendly Cutlets

Beef cutlets breaded & fried, with Broccoli lemony and Cabbage barbary

I like to say that I hate kids, dogs, and vegetarians, and all for the same reason, because they ruin dinner.  If only the vegetarians would baby-sit the kids and dogs, the rest of us could eat in civilized fashion.  One of the reasons this is fun to say is that it’s socially acceptable.  On one hand, everyone knows its true;  on the other hand, people nevertheless think you can’t be serious.  In a way, they’re right that I’m not serious.  I actually like most kids, and most rather like me (so much so, that if one doesn’t, there’s likely something wrong with them, I always figure).  It’s the helicopter parents of our day that I don’t like, but that’s too credible to say in a socially acceptable way, so I blame the kids and dog instead, and the parents are fine with that.

As for the vegetarians, last time I said this in class, the President and Vice President of the school’s vegetarian club happen to be in attendance, and the next day the V.P. brought me a D.V.D. about the merciless treatment of animals by the meat industry.  I told him, “You see, this is just what I mean—you’re trying to ruin my dinner, aren’t you?  This D.V.D. is just performative confirmation of my complaint.”  He looked at me with such Ghandian forbearance, I had to promise to watch the video anyway, which ruined my joke as well as my dinner.

Blog the Tenth: Sunday Gravy

Tomato Sauce Gravied by A Medley of Meats

A Sunday morning in Brooklyn had a smell all its own.  The hefty aroma of fatty meats sizzling in oil hung sweet in the air, and floating above it, the yet raw vapors of simmering tomato puree.  Your mother had to get it started early, maybe even before you made it out of bed, in order to have dinner more or less cooked before going off to Mass, so that we could sit down to eat soon after coming back, in the early afternoon.  A Sunday afternoon was blessedly long, lazy, and boring, and Sunday dinner lingered on leisurely into late afternoon, when your aunt and cousins might show up with pastries, or maybe just an Entenmanns coffee cake, and the evening would fill with chatter and laughter, perhaps a squabble among the kids, no doubt avuncular disputes, and then, when you least expected it, a private joy would come to light, or a suppressed sorrow unchoked, because there was time and room and hearts for it to do so.

Blog the First: Steak Grilled Stove Top

A Rib-eye crosshatched
(with Potatoes Garlicky and Zucchini Herby)

So, what did I cook for myself today, this dark and cold Thursday of the long stretch of winter after the holidays?  Well, at the Graul’s they had nice steaks on sale, as they often do. They had filet mignon, but I hate filet mignon, first, because it has so little flavor that it requires the sophistical artifices of French sauces to give it any character—but my people don’t like such sauces for meat, most of our cooking being more or less elaborate forms of au jus cooking—and second, because it has an effete texture more suitable to gumming than chewing, but I still have teeth.  So I went without hesitation for the boneless rib-eye.  I always want fatty steak, and so do you.  (If you like lean meat, this is not the blog for you; go look for another blog with a name like the Skinny Glutton or something.)  Of course, I want delicate striations of fat evenly marbling my flesh, not globs or belts or knots of it.  It should also look bright and moist and appetizing.  Do I need to tell you, Gentle Reader, to eat with your eyes?