PERFECT STEAKS

Here are tips for making the perfect steak. Following it is a recipe for a gorgonzola butter that is awesome when served on grilled steaks.

First, buy BLACK ANGUS steaks (I prefer Ribeye or NY Strip, my wife prefers Tenderloin) Black Angus is always $2 to $3 more per pound, but I just prefer it over CHOICE beef. PRIME BEEF would be even better (but not by much in my opinion), but the cost is prohibitive.

Second, and really the most important is the cooking process itself..... Most people aren't very patient when it comes to grilling. For the very best from your grill (other than Brats or dogs) you need to follow these steps.....

1) Let your grill get VERY hot (maximum settings if using a gas grill), then using an old rag or t-shirt wipe the grates with a heavy oil (I use olive oil) before starting the grilling itself.

2) Do NOT pre-salt any meat - this will pull all of the moisture to the surface and out of the steak, chop or whatever (unless you let it stand for over 60 minutes.) Wipe the surface of the steaks with olive oil and used some McCormick's Steak seasoning and some fresh ground black pepper.
You can get creative here and do almost anything - just NO salt.

3) Once you put the steak or chop on the grill, close the lid and forget about it. Most people ruin the steaks right here by trying to turn them too soon. All you do is "tear" the surface of the meat (leaving bits and pieces stuck to the grill) and boom.... there goes all the juice of the meat. You want to "SEAR" the surface of the meat by keeping it inside the meat. Depending on the thickness, and how hot your grill is, you should probably leave them on the first side from between 3 to upwards of 6 minutes. A great way to tell when they are ready to turn is they will start to "sweat" a bit on the surface. Now, I don't mean that all of the internal juice is coming to the surface... they just start to look a bit "glassy." Once you get used to it, you can also tell by temperature by just touching them.

4) Turn the steaks or chops and again FORGET about them. You are doing the same thing to this side.... searing the outside to hold in the natural juice and flavor. Once again, most "grillers" want to keep flipping or turning stuff when it's on the grill.... DON'T! You tear the surface and lose juice and flavor. Anyway, about the same amount of time on this side and you will be right at Medium Rare. (again, depending on thickness or grill temp) For Medium, turn them once again laying them perpendicular to how you had them before and go about another minute or two and so on all the way to well done, where you would turn them a fourth time for the last couple of minutes. Even well done (brown all the way through) steaks done carefully, will be juicy, tender and flavor full.

5) Be sure to let the steaks 'rest' after removing them from the grill - at least 10 minutes. This allows the juices to redistribute throughout the meat. You can place a dollop of the following recipe on the steaks while they 'rest' for AWESOME flavor!

Gorgonzola Butter (for steaks)

INGREDIENTS:

1 Stick REAL butter
1/4 lb. GORGONZOLA cheese
1 or 2 shallots
1 TBS. FRESH parsley

DIRECTIONS:

Shallots- I chop them and then tame them up a bit. I melt a little butter or use a little oil in a saute pan and let em "sweat" a little. Do not saute.

Throw all ingredients into the food processor and "whip" until well blended.

A little (or a LOT ) brushed on the steak right after placing on the serving plate is just unbelievable. We also like to substitute this for butter on our baked potatoes when having our steaks.

Yummy! You really should try it!

DEJA VU

Have you ever experienced Deja Vu? I do occasionally, but I have had a real interesting experience the past 24 hours. I think what may have initiated it was an old PC game that I downloaded and started to play yesterday morning (Saturday.)

The other day I was thinking about some cool old games I used to play on the PC and started looking for some online to download (abandonware, etc.) I saw the game Blade Runner and downloaded it the other day. I wasn't sure if it would even play on my Vista-based PC, but I tried it. It installed fine and I fired it up. Well, that started bringing back memories of playing this game. As I played it, I would here dialog from the game and it sounded very familiar. It got to a point that I felt like I was having Deja Vu.

Well, even after I stopped playing the game, I kept having Deja Vu-like feelings. All day long and even in the evening at work. Not constantly, but it would happen for extended periods (anywhere from 2 minutes at a time to 30 minutes at a time.) It was very weird, but really cool. It felt almost surreal. It was mainly based on things I heard or thoughts I had... not necessarily entire events or even being able to predict what would happen next. Almost every thought I had felt like a Deja Vu experience.

I decided to look up some information about Deja Vu online. It appears there is not a lot of research conducted on it, but may be related to certain brain activity. Some descriptions seem to point to déjà senti aswhat I experienced:

This phenomenon specifies something 'already felt.' Unlike the implied precognition of déjà vécu, déjà senti is primarily or even exclusively a mental happening, has no precognitive aspects, and rarely if ever remains in the afflicted person's memory afterwards.

Dr. John Hughlings Jackson recorded the words of one of his patients who suffered from temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsy in an 1889 paper:

“

What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. ... At the same time, or ... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person's voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as 'Oh yes – I see', 'Of course – I remember', but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions.

”

As with Dr. Jackson's patient, some temporal-lobe epileptics may experience this phenomenon.

Further research point to other things it could be (but I certainly hope not) including: simple partial seizures, meningitis, brain tumors, and other frightening things. I hope it's just a minor imbalance or old long-term memories mixing with short-term memories or something.

Have any of you ever had extended Deja Vu experiences in a 24 hour period?

WARM CHOCOLATE TART

I made this recipe for a get-together in my neighborhood. It is very good and very rich. Be sure to use high quality chocolate for the best results.

Warm Chocolate “Tarts”

4 oz. bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
1 1/2-oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
3 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 c + 2 t all purpose flour
1-1/2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
10 T (1 1/4 sticks) butter
3/4 t baking powder
1/2 c + 2 T sugar (use extra fine)
Vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream, optional

Lightly butter (or pam) six 1-cup soufflè dishes. Melt both chocolates in the top of a double boiler over barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Add butter and sugar and stir until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Transfer to a large bowl. Add eggs, then flour, cocoa and baking powder. Using an electric mixer, beat until mixture thickens to mousse consistency, about 8 minutes. Divide mixture among prepared dishes. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze at least 3 hours. (Can be prepared up to 3 days ahead.)

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Peel plastic wrap off dishes. Bake (do not thaw first) until edges are set and centers are still moist and shiny, about 11 minutes; do not overbake. Cool 10 minutes. Invert 1 dish onto each plate. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired.

**********

Pay attention to the cooking instructions - the insides come out like pudding and the edges like cake. And I make sure to run a knife around the edge of the souffle dishes before inverting, plus giving the plate and souffle dish a firm shake to release it on to the plate. And I've typically liked the whipped cream more than the ice cream with this particular recipe.

I used Scharffen Berger chocolate in my recipe. I actually used 3 oz of semisweet and 1 oz of bittersweet. It turned out great!

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CHICKEN SALAD

Last night I made a chicken salad for us to have for lunch today (it needs to rest several hours for the flavors to come through.) It was very good and I wanted to post the recipe here for any of you to try.

BigTex's Chicken Salad

INGREDIENTS:

1 whole rotisserie chicken
1 apple, chopped (Granny Smith or Golden Delicious)
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup Finely chopped sweet red peppers
1/2 cup Finely chopped green bell peppers
1/2 cup sliced almonds - salted and toasted
1/2 cup Diced celery
1/4 cup Finely chopped sweet yellow onion
1/4 cup Chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp dried dill (or 1/8 cup fresh chopped dill)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Lawry's seasoned salt
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Approx. 1 cup Helman's Real Mayonnaise (NO Miracle Whip!)


DIRECTIONS:

Toast the almonds (lightly salted) on a cookie sheet in a 250 degree oven.
Chop your veggies and apple and put them into a large mixing bowl.
Add the toasted almonds, pull meat from the chicken bones, discard skin and shred or break up the chicken by hand into the bowl.
Add mayonnaise, a little at a time until you get your desired consistency.
Next add the garlic powder, seasoned salt, dill, currants, and ground black pepper and mix well.
Cover bowl and refrigerate for several hours to allow salad to "rest" and the flavors blend.

I like to serve this on a croissant with tomato slices and leaf lettuce.

FOOD SAVED MY LIFE

You always read about stories of how food causes heart problems, cholesterol issues, high blood pressure, cancer, and other bad things. This is a true story that explains how food actually saved my life.

I spent six years in the United States Air Force. The first three years I was an Air-Launched Missile Systems technician. In civilians terms: I tested the electronics and mechanics of air-launched nuclear delivery vehicles. I was stationed at Griffiss AFB in upstate New York and never had any temporary duty assignments to other places (TDYs) - so it was pretty boring stuff.

Then I cross-trained to a new career field - Satellite and Wideband Communications technician. After graduating from my technical training school (Honor Graduate) , I was assigned to a Combat Communications unit based at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, OK. This meant I was TDY eligible and I received my share of world-wide travel. Half of the time I was at my base in Oklahoma and the other half I was out of the country. I traveled to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Columbia on various communications assignments.

While spending 3 months in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield in 1995, my life was spared thanks to my love for food. One day we had some trouble with a Troposphere-Scatter Support Radio (TSSR) communications link. The distant end of the link was the problem. The distant end of the radio link was at the Saudi National Guard building. It was nearing lunch time and our team leader wanted to pack up our tools and drive to the building to look at the radio transmitter/receiver. I and another fellow technician wanted to stay and eat our lunch first at the cafeteria at our base before we left. Our sergeant wanted to go fix the radio and grab lunch at the snack bar there at the Guard building - as it was right next to where we had to go to repair the radio. We pleaded to stay and eat at the cafeteria because they had a better variety of hot meals and the food was much better than what was available at the snack bar over there at the Guard building. Luckily, we won and we stayed to eat at the cafeteria on Riyadh Air Base.

After we finished our lunch and started packing up the vehicle to drive over to the Guard building we heard and felt something strange. It sounded very loud- like one of the KC-135 tanker aircraft engines in afterburner mode (those things are freaking loud.) But we also felt the earth rumbling beneath us. We looked at each other and tried to figure out what happened. Shortly thereafter, we received a call on the walkie-talkie radio asking our whereabouts and if we were all accounted for. We went through the procedure and we knew something bad had happened. We were then informed that a bomb had exploded at the National Guard building, just outside the snack bar area. You can read the actual story here. If we had driven to the Guard building to work on our radio (which was in the room next to the snack bar), I feel we would have been killed by the blast - as it exploded just outside the room where we were going.

Now I never pass up a meal (and you can tell by looking at me.) It is my way of giving praise to food - and my stomach - for saving my life.

iPhone

iWant an iPhone!


Of course, I would want to try it out first to see how I would like it. But I think Apple has really got something there with their new product. The thing I don't like about most SmartPhones is that they aren't great at everything they do. They are an OK phone, an OK (to horrible) web browser, an OK camera, etc. From what I have seen so far, it appears the iPhone has improved to good in all areas.

I won't pay retail price for the iPhone, so I will have to wait a year or two until the deals are pretty good. Maybe by then there will be so many great phones in the market that the iPhone will have dropped in price. Then I might be able to get one.

BTW: I am accepting donations for the BigTex iPhone Phund. :)