[Sca-cooks] Beef Bafflement article

[marilyn traber 011221]

> > I remember years ago, I had some friends who had been pretty broke  
> > most of
> > their lives, and I thought, as a special treat, I'd buy us all a  
> > full sized,
> > prime sirloin steak (my favorite cut) for dinner.
> 
> Now, just out of curiosity, when you say sirloin, do you mean the  
> actual sirloin/hip structure (not my fave), or do you mean the strip 
>  loin (the part on the other side of the bone from the tenderloin on 
> a  porterhouse or T-bone steak), which is often known as a NY Strip, 
> NY  Sirloin, or a just plain sirloin steak, even though it ain't 
> sirloin  
> (but still the food of the gods)?
> 
> I'm still looking for the definitive answer on the whole "NY Cut"  
> thing, and the closest I can come is to note that a short-loin T-
> bone  or porterhouse steak, laid flat with the tenderloin on the 
> bottom and  the cut chine bone on the right side, looks pretty much 
> like a map of  NY State...

Not sure. This was a thick cut that would lap over all sides of a big serving 
platter, all boneless, well-marbled, and tender. Haven't seen cuts like it 
recently, but it was boneless, and huge, well marbled, and absolutely 
delectible. Was, however, somewhat divided into sections, going from one 
muscle group to another. At the time, I knew very little about meat cutting, 
so all I knew was that if I ordered that from the butcher, I got what I 
wanted, and I could divide it myself into single meal sized servings.

The strip steak thing seems to me to be a relatively recent cut, along with 
the sirloin tips- never saw them when I was first out on my own buying 
groceries in the early 70s.

> > Ran an errand, and when I got back, discovered that she'd (shudder)  
> > put it in
> > the pressure cooker "to tenderize it".
> 
> My hostess for the Seder the other night had hired a couple of inner-
>  city college kids to help serve and wash dishes, usually the same 
>  ones a few times a year for various functions, and as it usually  
> falls to me to go in and slice salmon and lamb and such, I often 
> find  myself chatting pleasantly with them of this and that. Among 
> other  things, this time we got onto the subject of suitable 
> penalties for  exactly the type of behavior you describe (I forget 
> the actual  offense, but it must have been something pretty terrible)
> . I was  thinking in terms of doing something with a lead pipe, and 
> they were  favoring the baseball-bat-with barbed wire approach. I 
> think we  settled on a wooden baseball bat wrapped in black cloth 
> friction  tape, _then_ wrapped in barbed wire (the tape will help 
> keep the wire  from slipping). They also liked the old standby of 
> the baseball bat  driven full of nails, but I felt that it might get 
> stuck in bone, so  we settled on the barbed wire thing.

Said they were nice people. I'd be more inclined to put pureed yellow 
habeneros in their lemon merangue pie ;-)

Phlip