“He that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.” Hebrew proverb
October 5, 2004
ONE OF THE FEELINGS THAT COLUMNISTS sometimes get is a sense of being full of themselves. Right now I have that feeling. I think that by now I know just about everything about everything. Which is good for my ego. But it distinguishes me from my current trophy wife G, who knows everything about nothing. That should be taken in a complementary way, cuz that’s what she is really good at. Never get into a trivia issue with her; you’ll lose. She is The Best. Knows it all. Even makes up answers that she doesn’t really have a clue about and it turns out she’s correct. Ticks me off. See, her mind cumulates zigabytes of trivia. She reads it all. People Magazine. Both local dailies. Watches Oprah. We’ve got TiVo® so she records it and watches it at nite. The lady can read an entire John Grisham novel in two hours and can recall every word! But it’s the trivia she really remembers. Man, if you want to know how many linen and shirt collars were manufactured in Troy, New York, in 1886, G knows. You betcha. And that’s great. But as a columnist, I want to know everything I can about my chosen vocation, or avocation, whichever. So yesterday I decided I finally knew all there was to know about dining and I was going to share some of it with you. To share all of it would require at least two columns. I know stuff that you need to know and I’m gonna tellya.
ON EATING MEAT. We were dining at Luke’s - A Steak Place (4990 Kipling St, 303/422-3300) and son-in-law Ted and I both opted for the superb large porterhouse. G and Lil Emma share an appetizer of mussels and an entrée of grilled salmon. Camille had salmon and Harper porked out on spaghetti. By the by, kids get free spaghetti dinners at Luke’s depending on the rules of the house, so if you ain’t been, go. Also, there’s no one that cooks salmon better than Bicrural Brad the Blinkard and his staff of hash slingers. Or steaks for that matter.
Anywho, we were halfway thru dinner and I noted that Ted was working his way around the steak, whereas I have a different method. I cut the meat off the bone and then eat (or gnaw) the bone. Cuz us true steak lovers know that the bone is where the most flavorful part of the meat is. Then you save the rest of the meat for last, and if you have something left over, you can take that meat home and make a nice sangie, which you can’t do with a bone. And you’ve devoured all the meat on the bone and not wasted anything good. Kapisch?
Y’all know the difference between a porterhouse and a T-bone, or a New York strip and a Kansas City strip? K, I’ll tellya. A Porterhouse steak has a filet on one side and a New York strip on the other, with the bone in between. A T-bone is the same steak with a tiny filet, or actually only a part of a filet. The New York strip is boneless, while the Kansas City strip has a bone. Personally, I’m a rib-eye guy, but Luke’s doesn’t serve it, so I get either the large filet or the porterhouse, charred rare. Commonly called black and blue. Not Philly style cuz that’s sliced and usually accompanied by grilled onions. Or some other stuff on top. Now you got something.
Then there’s pork (affectionately called “poak”). It should also be served medium rare. No, you can’t get trichinosis from pork unless it’s non-commercial pork cuz that bad disease was done away with about sixty years ago. And I don’t give a darn what the Pork Council folks tell you, pork is the other RED meat. Cook some pork tenderloins medium rare either on the grill for a few minutes on each side, or in a moderately hot oven for about 25 minutes or until the internal temperature is 130 degrees. Sear it first and then wrap it in foil, leaving the center open. G makes a maavelous marinade of garlic, white wine, mushrooms and mustard. Set it for about two hours before cooking. Yo!
Buggers. Y’all know that no adult has ever died from eating rare buggers. E Coli has killed off lotsa folks. Adults have died from eating bean sprouts, spud salad, raw eggs, raw fish and other stuff. But you’ve got a greater chance of dying in Denver by being run over by a light rail train than by eating a rare bugger. Enuf sed.
FAMILY STYLE DINING. There are a large and growing number of eateries that think you’re stupid. They want you to come in and order more food than an army can eat and then take home the dregs. I’m talking about places like Carmine’s on Penn, Buca di Beppo, and assorted other houses that serve enormous portions of pasta, usually with modest portions of meat, and you get to take lotsa pasta home. Cuz they know that you ain’t about to waste all that food. And of course you’ve paid big bucks for all this pasta that you can cook just as well at home for about 1/10th the cost.
The alternative is go to with another couple and order two dishes for the four of you to share. Then you only take home a small portion of guk. But of course now two of you get to eat something your partner wants but you don’t. Now how’s that for an evening of fun?
SPEAKING OF LEFTOVERS. At our house our leftovers have been left over so long we forget what they’re left over from. Our kids never ate leftovers. G rarely eats leftovers. That’s cuz they’re packaged in a Styrofoam container without labeling, and no one dares open the box for fear of what may come out. Sometimes we have dishes with green things growing on them and I’m never sure if the green belongs there or not.
I like leftovers. Always was a gambler at heart. But I take the time to determine what should be left over. The things I’m going to eat I wrap properly and label. For example, I like to freeze bread. I think it keeps well and defrosts well. Unless it’s been in your freezer for two years. No one in my family believes me, so I eat all the leftover bread. We now have three refrigerators and three freezers filled with, among other things, bread. And ice cream. So if I come home late, like tonite after writing this column, I want a sangie. G has saved all kinds of food, and I have saved all kinds of bread. The trick is finding some kind of bread that goes with the food that I can identify. Like what kind of bread goes with chicken potpie? My best guess: a firm Kaiser roll. What would you use to make a sangie out of leftover pasta primavera? Probably not rye bread. We have about 14 varieties of bread in the freezers, five varieties of ice cream and a bushel of roasted chile peppers from 1997. Yeah, there’s lotsa other stuff: salmon, pork tenderloins, sausage from Sara’s in Palmer Lake, and three packages of things that I’m afraid to open cuz I have to defrost them to figure out what they are. So I leave them alone. I move them from the back of the freezer to the front, and then to the back again. But I had remembered to label them…
Well, it’s been nice sharing my knowledge with you today. If you need to know anything at all about anything important, call me. Or visit me at my website, www.jayfoxcpa.com. You can send me an email on the website or even read all my dining columns for the last two years. Or give me a call on the tele. I’m in the book. Now that’s only for the important stuff. For the not quite so important, ask G.
Cya.