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Wednesday 22 June 2011

Another Seasonal Reminder of the Importance of Reading and Remembering

. The  Casual Dining Season - in the Just Outside
   I'd heard about them before and even seen them a few times. The
basic idea is this. For a somewhat modest chunk of money you can get
your hands on a honkin big monster of a full grown tenderloin of beef
and cut the thing up yourself for a considerable savings. Well from my
experience it isn't quite as smooth as you may hope. First of all any
piece of meat that either requires you to keep your spine straight
while bending at the knees and or get a friend to help lift it into
the shopping cart is going to be a bit of a challenge. To deal with
it, all you need is a sharp knife, most of a full day, and a skill set
and knowledge that I didn't possess. I thought that all you had to do
was take the thing out of the package, slice it into steaks and then
spark up the grill. Not so. Apparently this thing has parts that you
can name like head, tail, butt, centre cut and even something called a
chain. I was just looking for twenty pounds of fillet mignon thanks.
The Internet is a wonderful learning tool and after only watching
about twenty Youtube videos on how to handle this thing I was ready to
begin carving. By the way, be careful when googling about a what you
can do with a tender loin. Try to make sure that your search has the
word beef in it.
 A not so quick six hours later I not only had my steaks but a
profound knowledge of why they cost so much at the meat counter. I was
also left with what to do with the less than exciting bits that I had
paid for. Since beef tenderloin is a fairly dry meat I elected to mix
it with some organic pork. Usually you don't find the words organic
and pig in the same sentence but around here if you have the wallet
they can find you the organic oinker.  So the ruminants of the two
beasts were put through the grinder, spiced, mixed, and formed into
patties, then tossed in the freezer.(That last sentence sounds like
something out of a crime novel doesn't it?)
 According to my friend who owns a golf course this has been the
wettest March in 70 years and the wettest April since they have been
keeping records. Yesterday the sun came out and the lid on the barbie
flew open.
  You've got to cook  beef tenderloin just right or it goes from
being mouth watering succulent to a study in subtly spiced shoe
leather. Hence I ripped open my new digital meat thermometer that had
been put in my Christmas stocking and began to speed read the
instructions. Apparently it can give you the time in either 12 or 24
clocks as well as count down and up,and give you the current
temperature of the meat or start beeping when the meat hits a certain
temperature.  Very nice but I  didn't have time for all of this.  I
just wanted to stick the probe in the meat and have done with it.
Scan, scan, put the battery in, scan, scan, okay I got it.
 I slid that metal probe into a selected patty with the skill and
grace of the deftest of colonoscopy practitioners. The little
electronic beauty began to read out the climbing Fahrenheit degrees in
easy to read black block digits. The thermometer hit the magic number
and in only a few milliseconds after my bare hand wrapped around the
metal probe I remembered reading, "Always wear heat resistant gloves
to touch the stainless steep probe sensor." The burgers were done to a
perfect medium while I would have to say my hand ended up more medium
rare.
 So you see it's not just the reading that's important but the
remembering too. Something to ponder in this newly minted grilling
season.

                                     

1 comment:

  1. Hi Ken,
    I think you need to purchase fire resistant gloves before you do any further barbequing!

    ReplyDelete