Er, I mean “The Patio Fireplace/Grill/Smoker. at Hammacher Schlemmer” …

I first saw this thing posted on Food-Gadgets last week sometime, but I didn’t get to check it out fully.

You can make six feet high of steaks all at once on it, or you could get a whole loin and “hang large primal cuts vertically from the meat hook on the grill smoker’s ceiling”. I don’t know if that sounds delicious or horrifying. I can just picture some creepy old Adderall junkie in a half bathrobe and bermuda shorts, holding a gigantic FORK standing next to this thing with a crazed grin on his face. That’s what I can picture.

Did you know it’s our birthday?? Isn’t that cool?? We’ve been Typing About Steak for a whole year now!!!

Happy birthday to us.

So? What the heck did you get us for our birthday? Uh… Excuse us? You want us to pick it out ourselves, and you’ll pay for it? You’re going to reimburse us for our birthday present? That’s so cheap. We can’t believe it! How could you think that would be a good gift? Do you not know the meaning of the word “gift“?

Here’s an idea, how about, along with remuneration for the gift we select for ourselves, you just go ahead and pay us a decent wage for the time we have to spend choosing and purchasing our OWN DAMN BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!??!?!?

You totally forgot didn’t you? I knew it. I knew you’d never remember our first birthday, don’t even try to cover for your sorry self by trying to make us think you’re generous when you’re really just brandishing cash and making us do all the shopping and thinking. I bet you don’t even have dinner plans for us, do you?

Gadgets We’re Buying Ourselves For Our Lonely 1st Birthday

• Personalized Branding Iron, or Monogrammed Steak Brand, Triple Initials [because, sorry, we’re neglected and lonely … we get crazy fantasies sometimes … you know, lone ranger, … vast prairies … red-hot iron searing flesh]
• Disposable BBQ Grill [because we all have to face the temporary nature of everything, and how ultimately alone we are, without solidity or permanence]
• Rocket Pepper Grinder [because it’s time to fly]

Bonjour Laser Probe Combo:
Laser probe combo measures the temperature of cooking surfaces
- Bonjour - Brands - Sur La Table

It looks like how G.I.Joe might check his steak’s temperature in the field.

vs.

Reusable Steak Button Thermometers:
Use these button thermometers to gauge your steak
- Grilling & Barbecue - Features - Sur La Table

These lil guys are really cute, but how accurate can they be, right?

Armida Cooks!: Dry-Rubbed Skirt Steak

This looks terrific! She’s done a nice photograph of the steak, and I think this might induce me to try a Batali recipe too. The dry rub (that always sounds a tad suggestive to me!) is made with ground porcini mushrooms! Yowza!

Now to find a skirt steak for sale in this dumb burgh.

Yay!!

The Boring Old Broiler Turns Out to Be a Superstar - New York Times

You can’t beat oldschool, in my book. And here we have a superstar New York Times food guy named MARK BITTMAN to tell us all about the least appreciated standard amurrikun kitchen device, the broiler, and why we should be using it all the time.

I remember very clearly my parents always always always making stuff under the broiler. And then me having to clean out the damn gross broiler pan by scraping heaping slabs of stinky grease out with a spatula. Eeesh.

The best thing about MARK BITTMAN’s article, in my view, is the revelation that the broiler pan of yore is officially an off-limits nuisance nowadays. And that officially, since we are talking Newspaper of Record here, it’s way cooler to use a skillet or grill pan under the broiler.

HA! I already knew that. :-P

I’m totally gonna try more broiling of steak now. And some scallops too! Because my Lodge grill pan is officially starting to give us emphysema in our apartment.

My friend Jeff makes the most amazing tenderloin. I’ll ask him for his recipe so I can post it here. I’d probably never make it though. I don’t have enough money to feed my friends that sort of food and I’ve got Jeff to make it for me.

What I do know so far is that he buys a whole tenderloin from a proper butcher, who preps it for him–removing the silverskin and the like. He lets it come to room temperature before grilling and while it’s hanging out, he slathers it in garlic. It takes forever to make but the wait is worth it.

Last time we had it, we did twice baked potatoes, creamed spinach and I made a chocolate with orange chocolate icing layer cake for dessert.

If I can get him to share the recipe, I’ll put it here.

My mom has spent quite a few years in South America, doing administrative work for a group of bible translation experts. So, lately she’s just back from Peru, and I wished she would have been able to send me some Peruvian recipes, or cookbooks, or secret ingredients. Maybe she forgot.

SueZ, who is actually my sister, went to visit Mom in Lima, but I don’t think she ate steak in Peru. It didn’t sound like it. It sounded like she and her travelling friend were more concerned with getting a beer. I’ll give her the chance to explain, and maybe she did eat steak. Who knows?

So anyway, with Mom away in Peru, my tastes started to wonder what does steak taste like in Peru? I watched Bourdain eat guinea pigs, tried searching Amazon for cookbooks, and just sort of wandered around the internet trying to put together something.

There’s tons of Argentina info. But Peru is kind of the undiscovered country of cuisine. I’m betting it won’t be for long.

I predict: Peruvian is the new Spanish.

Anyway, this is supposed to have a recipe…
(more…)

Dirty steaks on a plate

Doesn’t this look and sound delicious?

NPR : Dinner in the Fireplace

I’d try making it, but my tiny apartment-sized Char-Broil Patio Caddie is all seven ways wrong for it. Especially: “burning down the cord wood (maple, oak and ash) to large embers.”

The recipe, as it is, that rounds out the NPR story gives some really funtamental pointers as well, like using a cooling rack instead of putting your finished steak directly on the plate.

I really need to figure out how to get some, because, I’m not sure I want to go through the rest of life never having tasted steak “like a lustful, illicit encounter in a hotel room.”

Maybe in Vegas?