So, with the semester winding down and exams being over on Thursday, I should have more time to post. And this one, well, it has been a long time coming. I have some lovely Activa from Ajinomoto, just looking for trouble and I am going to reshape some flatiron steaks.
Flatiron steaks, if you are not familiar, come from an interesting piece of meat, the first-cut of the blade-cut chuck roast. Sure, it's technically from the chuck, but it is also very much adjacent to the rib and more specifically, the rib-eye, my favorite steak from the venerable steer. There are three cuts available from this piece, and the top one, when boned out from the blade bone, is known as the flatiron. It is not what you'd expect from the chuck. In fact, some say that this is the second most flavorful cut of beef.
So, what's the hitch? Why might not the name of this cut be on your lips, in your bas-cart every time you buy groceries?
Despite its distinctive beef flavor, the cut has a NASTY piece of gristle that passes through it. If you don't know that, you might buy and cook one, only to determine that it's not worth the trouble. If you know the piece is there, you trim it out and you are left with two smaller pieces of meat. But what about fabricating them into something bigger, like a good, solid steak for a meat lover? Maybe, I could augment the steak with a nice injection of bacon (which I think I remember from an Art Culinaire...not sure, I'll check tomorrow. Always acknowledge your resources and influences).
Thus, comes the Activa. I'll write this up when I'm done, and if I am not too preoccupied, I'll have detailed pictures from the process.
And then, what to make with them?
UPDATE: I looked through my back issues of Art Culinaire and I found Wylie Dufresne's "Flat Iron Steak with Celery Noodles and Celery Root Ricotta" in the Spring '06 issue, but in that preparation he forms the steaks into a roll and poaches them.
There are two reasons that I am glad I went back to look this up:
1) Even if cooking techniques don't (and thank goodness, shouldn't) represent the kind of intellectual property protected by copyrights and the like, isn't it sporting and proper to cite where you get ideas from?
2) Call it serendipity, but since we are on the subject of acknowledging influences, on the facing page in that issue of Art Culinaire is Dufresne's "Green Eggs and Ham", a post-modern play on a fried egg, with celery "yolks", coconut "whites", and actual bacon. This is the style of dish that Top Chef runner-up Marcel Vigneron was accused of ripping off from Dufresne for a recent Wired Magazine piece. Vigneron's piece is certainly derivative (and not as appetizing in appearance as the WD-50 concoction); however, I think Marcel more frequently apes Ferran Adrià, especially from El Bulli 1998-2002
. The calcium chloride/sodium alginate "caviar" and the ubiquitous "espuma" (at least for Vigneron, who doesn't seem to be able to make a dish without foam) are flat-out Adrià.
This all makes me think of The Smiths song "Cemetery Gates":
"If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loans"
There's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall"
Is Marcel a plagiarist? I don't know. But if he had only acknowledged his influences...