A Hot Piece of Meat

or…

Further excursions on steaks.

With the 4th approaching, I decided to continue my quest for the perfect steak marinade and spend a little more money than we should on beef for the grill. I entered an overcrowded Whole Paycheck and headed for the meat counter. As is usually the case, I had a migraine and was in no mood to wait a long time or be irritated by lame people. I looked over the case, and saw something that looked like what I wanted. It had no item tag, so I couldn’t tell what it was or how much it cost. I hate that. It was in the section labeled ‘organic’ and ‘local,’ so I expected to find out what it was and maybe buy something else. Furthermore, some hamburgers had fallen down next to it, and you never want ground beef touching other products. It’s icky and probably against health code.

I waited while the overwhelmed staff served other customers (including the excessively talkative one right before me, who was buying several things).  Then it was my turn.  I asked how much is that steak in the window.  There follows some confusion as I try to get the guy behind the counter to see what I was pointing at, which was way to the front of the case and invisible (to him) behind a pile of ground beef patties.  I suggested he sell the steak to me at hamburger prices, since that was the closest sign.  He flags down a second employee, who confidently identifies the steak as a rib-eye.  It didn’t look like one, but I had little bits of pain dripping down my nose and was in no mood to argue what it was if I could just find out how much.  I pointed to the steak I wanted and asked how much it weighed.  “Oh, that one isn’t a rib-eye.”  Figures.  The two men huddle over a clipboard of stock numbers and finally settle on one.  It was sirloin at $14.99 a pound, they said.  Not great, but not as high as I expected.  I was tired.  I bought the steak.  Before I actually hit the checkout, I did look at the label.  I blinked.  I’d been charged at the rate of $1.99 a pound.  Perhaps the first employee was so totally fed up with the whole business that when the number he was given didn’t work, he’d just rung it up as $1.99/pound.  He should have charged me the hamburger price.

Then it was over to the liquor store.  I’d been using American corn whiskey to marinate steaks, but the spouse thought the whiskey was a bit harsh.  I had a lengthy discussion with the nice people in the liquor store about a better choice of booze.  They had some trouble coming up with a good answer.  The obvious step to them was a nicer whiskey, but those don’t come in small bottles and tend to be a bit expensive, especially if you aren’t going to drink the rest.  Eventually a thought penetrated the migraine haze.  We don’t drink whiskey, but my spouse will drink port.  I asked about port.  We took a walk into the dessert booze aisle where we found my spouse and an inexpensive bottle of tawny.

So.  The marinade consisted of about a cup of port, a tablespoon of freshly grated ginger root, a half teaspoon of chipotle pepper, two tablespoons of honey, salt, pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.  It tasted fantastic.