Yikes!

Just Say No to Airplane Beef: The Full Steak Report (with pics!)

[cross-posted to UPGRD.com]

In the comments to a recent post about food (in which I wax philosophical about chili coconut shrimp), Mike and kd5mdk engaged me in a lively (7 comments long!) discussion about steak on domestic airplanes.

My position is that steak on domestic planes is disgusting. It's overcooked, difficult to eat with the not-sharp-enough knife they give you, and is never a decent cut of meat. For all those reasons, the meat tastes crappy and results in an unpleasant eating experience.

Mike and kd5mdk argued that the steak is actually pretty decent given the context ("a 1980s era MD80"). They also claim that steak — because it is inherently delicious — pretty much always tastes better than the alternative.

On a recent flight from YYZ to LAX, a golden opportunity presented itself. When the flight attendant presented me with a menu, I found the following main course choices:

1. Beef Fillet with Gorgonzola Mushroom Sauce: Grilled fillet of beef offered with a porcini mushroom and Gorgonzola cheese sauce, accompanied by wax beans and whipped potatoes and turnips.
2. Stuffed Shells Pomodoro: Pasta shells filled with a four cheese blend, accompanied by a red roasted tomato sauce.

Of course I had to have the beef, if for no other reason then I wanted the opportunity to talk about it here on upgrd.com.

After greens topped with an "artichoke, wild mushroom and pea salad" and a chicken appetizer ("cajun-style roasted chicken breast offered on a fresh corn salad") this main course was served to me:

Before I get to steak itself, I should address the accouterments. The wax beans were green and crisp and appeared fresh. And the potatoes were plentiful. That's about all I have to say nice.

The wax beans were steamed (presumably to keep them looking green and fresh-looking) so that the flavor was sucked out of them. They tasted like nothing. The potatoes were over-whipped. When you over-whip potatoes, the starches congeal and you're left with a pile of potatoes the consistency and flavor of paste. The menu listed turnips, and there may have been one or two little chunks, but I sure didn't notice them. Furthermore, the sauce — which was supposed to have porcini mushrooms and Gorgonzola cheese — was a sticky goo made from over-salted reduction of beef jus and a healthy dash of a thickening agent like arrowroot or corn starch. To top it off, the menu-recommended ONEHOPE Zinfandel didn't stand a chance. It tasted flat and boring.

As for the steak... A properly cooked piece of fillet should be seasoned, then cooked over high heat. This sort of treatment (on the grill or in a ripping-hot pan) allows the outside of the meat to sear, leaving a brown color that equals flavor. (Foodies call this the the "Maillard reaction.") This also allows the inside to cook slowly, but not too much. A well-made steak is brown (even a little black), almost crispy on the outside, and soft and tender (and pink, if not red!) on the inside. The steak I got was well-seared, but that's the only nice thing I can say about it.

The plate was served piping hot right out of the oven/warmer, which was disastrous for the steak. First, steak (fillet no less!) should never be served well-done. Doing so results in a piece of meat that's gray and flavorless. It also leaves you with meat the texture of shoe leather. Second, steak needs to rest after it cooks and before it's served. This allows the juices to "chill out" so that they don't come gushing out as soon as you cut into the meat. It also allows all the flavors in the meat to sort of "come together."

This particular steak was pre-cooked at the catering facility. Then it was loaded onto the plane and reheated and immediately served to me. So I had a steak that was cooked twice and not allowed to rest. As a result, here's what I got (photographed after I cut off a chunk):

As you can see, the meat is gray in the middle. The picture doesn't do the texture justice, but trust me... it had the mouthfeel of a pair of Doc Martens. And see that watery puddle sitting on the plate? That used to be inside a juicy piece of meat.

I had to hack at the meat with the stupid knife they gave me. The resulting hunks of meat were misshapen and extremely chewy. One "bite" of steak took two or three minutes to chew.

I ate about three bites of this abomination and then signaled to the flight attendant that I was done. She asked if I'd like the pasta instead, but by then I'd lost my appetite.

Steak on a domestic airplane = fail.

Adventures in Television

I watch a lot of TV, but nowadays the DVR allows me to watch only those shows that I really like. In the summertime, that's limited to only three or four shows. I rarely deviate from this pattern. Learning to like a new show takes far too much energy.

But recently, my TV reality received a dose of fresh air... if only for one night.

First of all, I DVRd an episode of this new Celebrity Family Feud show. It's basically the same old family feud, except for the set is a little more electronic, Al Roker is the host, and they have celebrities on the show instead of Sadie. On each episode, they have two initial matches, then the winners of those matches face each other, and then the winner of that match gets to play the bonus round. All the prizes go to charity.

Round one was the cast of the Office against a bunch of people from American Gladiators. It was relatively uneventful, and not as funny as I'd hoped (though it turns out that Meredith is actually kinda hot in real life, where she's an actress named Kate Flannery).

Round two was where it got strange. It was the Hickey family versus some random people from Camden County. Let me clarify. This was not half the cast of My Name is Earl against the other half of the cast of My Name is Earl. This was half the cast of My Name is Earl in character as Earl, Randy, Joy, Crabman (his nametag actually said "Crabman") and Catalina against some random recurring guest stars, including the dude from Son of the Beach (who was the team captain), the daytime hooker, the gay guy, and the foreign guy with the accent. They were all in full costume and none of them broke character.

Now, the Office characters weren't in character. Sure... Creed, Phyllis, and Oscar went by the names Creed, Phyllis, and Oscar. But that's because those are their real names. They still acted considerably more normal than their Dunder-Mifflin personalities (well, maybe not Creed). And Kate Flannery was on the show as Kate (not Meredith) and Brian Baumgartner was himself (not Kevin). And Al Roker was always Al Roker (or, as Randy called him, "Mr. Roper. No deal!").

So the whole thing was totally ridiculous. In character, none of the Earl folks did very well. Some examples:

Category: We asked a hundred people to name a famous Jessica...
Tim Stack: Jessica Tandy
Roker: I woulda gone with Jessica Rabbit.
Stack: No... Jessica Tandy. She was hot in 1929.
Roker: You sure?
Stack: If you'd seen Tandy in '29...

Category: Something women wear that's uncomfortable...
Joy: (while wearing giant lucite heels) Nipple... (BUZZZZZZZ)
Roker: I don't even want to know...

Category: Something that gets louder as it gets older...
Earl: My mustache.
Roker: Your mustache?
Earl: We talk to each other.

The crazy thing is that the Camdenites -- the random character actors who appear once in a while on the show -- actually beat the Hickeys (the actual stars who NBC probably wanted to see playing in the next round), so they went to the finals against the actors from the Office. It was surreal. A bunch of random bit role playing actors competing on a television game show in character against the cast of a television show (that blurs the lines of reality enough that some the actors use their real names for their characters, and the charity they played for was located in Scranton) who were surprisingly not in character, with Al Roker trying to make sense of the whole thing.

Of course, the cast of the Office won out on Oscar's sudden-death victory, and then Oscar and Brian won 50 grand for some dinky charity in Scranton, PA that will probably now have to hang their names of the wall for being their biggest donors of all time.

(I'd like to briefly interrupt this blog post to point out the following: If you go to IMDB.com, and you click to view a trailer for an upcoming movie, they make you watch an ad before they'll show you the trailer. Isn't a trailer already an ad? Did I just watch an ad so that I could watch another ad?)

After Family Feud, I watched a new episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats. Frequent readers of this space probably know that, culinarily speaking, I pretty much worship the ground he walks on. I've watched many Good Eats episodes (the ones on leeks, beets, and onion soup, to name a few) about a hundred times. When Sara and I were registering for kitchen-related wedding gifts, I had to consult AB's book every time Sara suggested registering for some gadget or other.

So this new episode of Good Eats was about canned tuna. And I hated it. AB didn't make a single thing that I would want to eat. And he poo-pooed plain-old canned tuna (which I happen to love) in favor of the pouched stuff or this fancy canned tuna crap from Spain. Blekh. This, of course, was a first. I don't think I've ever seen the guy cook something in which I was totally uninterested, and in this one episode he did it several times.

When I was done suffering through Alton Brown talking to a guy in a tuna costume, I headed over to live TV to catch a few minutes of Conan.

I don't watch so much late-nite TV these days, mostly because the little TV watching time I have is usually right around when Leno/Letterman and Conan are on, and I almost always dedicate that time to whatever's on the DVR. So it's been awhile since I've been exposed to Conan's unique brand of absurdist humor. And I was pleasantly surprised by how good he was.

First of all, there was a bit where he talked about Kirstie Alley wishing she had Twix bars for fingers... so she could eat them. Then he had Selma Blair, on. He kind of had to hold her hand through the whole interview, because she's dreadfully not funny. She tried really hard to get a laugh from the audience, even going so far as to talk about the color of her nipples, and then the color of Conan's nipples. The audience took it as the cheap attempt that it was. But Conan was brilliant, and he had me laughing out loud several times in 20 minutes or so.

So maybe I should be watching more TV.

Meal of the Day: Willi Knows Seafood

Small plates at Willi's Seafood in Healdsburg, CA. Sara and I had lots to eat, including the above:

• Blue Points, which were so good they didn't need the horseradishy cocktail sauce
• BBQd bacon-wrapped scallops with cabbage and spinach slaw
• roasted artichoke with two sauces (lemon butter and a spicy aioli)

Throw in a spinach salad, an amazing crab cake, and (don't tell Sara, because she's a little bit embarrassed) cheese for dessert... all-in-all an excellent meal.

Meal of the Day: "I shall call this place Calistoga of Sarifornia."

The Sarifornia Café in Calistoga, CA is one of my favorite breakfast spots... ever.

The biscuits — served to me with poached eggs, hash browns, and gravy — are flaky on the outside and chewy on the inside. Very delicious.

(The town got its name, the story goes, when California pioneer and entrepreneur Sam Brannan claimed he would make the town the Saratoga of California. But he was drunk or stoned or confused, and it came out "the Calistoga of Sarifornia." Brannan's quote is prominently painted above the kitchen at the Sarifornia.)

Meal of the Day: Southern Wings

My brothers-in-law have taught me that chicken wings have rules, and that only a certain kind of wings deserve the descriptor "Buffalo." So the offerings of the bar at the Hilton hotel in Jackson, Miss. were met with a certain degree of skepticism.

These were properly fried (no breading!) and perfectly sauced (enough for lots of flavor, not so much that it makes the wing soggy or overwhelms the experience), and they were served with blue cheese dressing (even though the waiter offered me ranch).

Excellent.

Meal of the Day: Mediocrity in a Bun

Someone told me that Whataburger was the South's answer to In-N-Out. They were wrong.

I was staying at a hotel directly across from a Whataburger in Jackson, Miss. The burger was very slightly better than Mickey D's, and several miles below a Double-Double, Animal Style.

Random Acts of Wine

Last week I was up at Newman, visiting Sara and serving as a faculty member. On Saturday, Sara had the day off (and Rachel was also up at camp), so the three of us went wine tasting in the Napa Valley.

We had an amazing time at all the wineries we visited, but we had the best time at a winery called Merryvale, which we stumbled into basically by accident. It happened to be across the street from Taylor's Refresher (see below), and it was easier to make a right turn out of the Taylor's parking lot then a left. So we turned right, then pulled a quick left into the Merryvale parking lot.

We tasted a flight of white wines which culminated in a pretty good late-harvest riesling (the pourer taught us wine ignoramuses about "noble rot"). We were a bit tipsy, and we were making conversation with a couple (about our parents' age) standing next to us. They were regulars at the winery, members of the wine club who come in frequently for complimentary wine tastings. The gentleman told Rachel about how they own a number of homes in California, and whenever they're at their home in wine country, they come to taste what's new at Merryvalle. They both told us about their favorite wine, a unique dessert Muscat called "Antigua."

Apparently, the pourers at the winery have developed a sort of cocktail made out of the wine (which is fortified, so it's kind of a cocktail already) where they pour it over ice with some lemon juice. They ordered some for themselves, and then shared a sip with each of us. When Rachel announced to the pourer and to our new friends that Sara and I were newlyweds, the pourer immediately poured us glasses of the Antigua and then also made us a couple of the ice-lemon cocktails.

After receiving all this free wine, I felt obliged to buy a bottle (also, it was very very delicious, so I figured it would make a nice souvenir of the day). The next thing I know, the woman who'd been chatting with us nodded to the pourer, who explained that our new friend was buying our bottle for us.

A total stranger just bought us a bottle of wine. They accepted our sincere thank yous and left.

Sara and I were so touched by the gesture and we couldn't stop saying so. (We were a little drunk... but still. When was the last time a complete stranger bought you a gift, let alone a nice bottle of wine?)

We wrote the anonymous couple a thank-you note, and the pourer, who had the couple's address in the winery's database, agreed to mail it for us. In our note, we promised to one day do the same thing for another newly married couple.

And we can't wait to enjoy the wine!

Meal of the Day: An Incredible Burger

Medium-rare beef patty, blue cheese crumbles, barbeque sauce, thick-sliced bacon, mayo, and an onion ring on a toasted egg roll. Sweet potato fries on the side.

Burgers of this caliber are available daily at Taylor's Refresher in St. Helena, California.

Not-So-Top Chef

[If you haven't watched last night's Top Chef, don't read the following. Blah Blah Blah. Spoiler Alert. Blah Blah Blah. I hate Lisa. Blah Blah Blah. Don't read on if you don't want to read about what happened. And I hate Lisa. Blah Blah Blah. Ok. You've been warned.]

A couple of weeks ago, Ben wrote this:

We can't catch a break here! Dale gets sent packing, and Lisa is still on this show?!?!?!?! I don't get it. She SUCKS! Dale was kind of a dick, but I liked him pretty much all season. Probably because he didn't like Lisa.

So my favorite chef on the show gets sent home.. basically because he took the fall for his team being crappy. And crappy Lisa lives to see another day.

Then, last week Lisa got saved because Spike was apparently tricked into using crappy scallops. So crappy Lisa lives to see another day.

Then, this week, Lisa gets saved because...

Who the hell knows? She should have gone home weeks ago. She sucks. She's a crappy cook. She doesn't deserve to hold Stephanie's or Richard's oven mitts (or Antonia's or Dale's or Spike's or Andrew's, for that matter). Week after week she annoys everyone, criticizes people who are smarter and better than her, and makes crappy food. But again, crappy Lisa lives to see another day.

Why is she still on this goddamn show?

Basically, there are three chefs who would have made far better finalists, but somehow Lisa tripped her way in. She's up for elimination three weeks in a row, and three weeks in a row the better chef gets sent home. For managing a crappy team. For cooking scallops. And for undercooking beans. Lisa is the freakin' luckiest Top Chef contestant ever. Collichio and Padma and Gayle should be ashamed. They should be very ashamed. If Antonia really was that bad, they shoulda just sent both of them home and let it be a one-on-one finale, like it was in the first two seasons. Stephanie versus Richard straight up would be plenty interesting. Who the heck needs Lisa mucking this up and taking up precious screen time? Who wants to see her crappy, ugly food anyway?

Lisa blows. Send her home.

By the way... my predictions: My heart wants Stephanie to win, but if I were putting money down, I'm afraid to say that my money's on Richard.

Of course, both of them are better than Lisa. Both of them could cook boogers and it would be better than anything Lisa makes.

Meal of the Day: Eggplant Soup

Eggplant soup (!) with zaatar yogurt, part of one of the best meals of my life. A creation of Chef Erez Pinhas at Abba in Orleans, Mass.

Other parts of dinner: fresh mussels (harvested earlier in the day) steamed with coconut milk, pineapple, and Thai spices; grilled foie gras with a red wine gastrique; lobster pad thai; reisling from the Golan Heights winery.