Why do we have beef steaks and pork chops?

[bicentennial_baby]

Why not pork steaks and beef chops?

I'm reading food blogs and thinking about dinner, and this thought just occurred to me. :D

:hi:

[supernova]

1. Not only that, we call it a chop house

where you go out to eat a steak.

:crazy:

[bicentennial_baby]

2. Ahhh! Too true!

This is going to bother me all day. :crazy:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. Years ago, at the London Chop House

in Detroit - Jimmy Hoffa's favorite place - the prime dish on the menu was a veal chop.

And, they were heavenly.

[Tesha]

3. But the real question is...

Where are the beefcakes?

[eleny]

4. There is a cut of pork that's called "steak"

But I always figured a bar or restaurant could have a "steaks and chops" sign in the window as a way of advertising that they have both pork and beef.

[troubleinwinter]

5. Why is Head Cheese called 'cheese'?

[Tesha]

13. euuuu

a dictionary defines cheese as...

A molded mass of substance

so head cheese is....

still nasty!

[troubleinwinter]

17. It sounds nasty, to today's cultural 'ear'

Made well, it is really spectacular, even elegant.

I won't be making any. My mother did, but not because it was cheap or easy (it wasn't), but because it was amazing.

[Retrograde]

18. fromage de tete

everything's better in French! There's actually a lot of decent muscle meat on a pig's head, and in the right hands it's quite good.

BTW, pigs' ears make a very good broth. I can get them cheap at a local Chinese grocery: the house smells wonderful (for a carnivore at least) when they're simmering.

[troubleinwinter]

19. I wondered where you are located.

I see the Bay Area. I have not used pigs' ears, but have seen them in Chinese markets and downtown Oakland at the farmers' type big market, evidently used in Asian, Mexican and Southern cooking. Makes sense that they would be good, like chicken feet. Most of us today in this country just are not familiar with these things.

Some of these things were not passed down by our grandparnts, because they were glad to get away from the farm and the days of poverty. Many delicious parts are now lost to catfood, like the oxtails.

I read a lot of pioneer American history. Settlers on the plains had it rough. A usual day's meals were likely coarse flour biscuits, onion, maybe a small bit of milk and butter. A CELEBRATION with guests would be "Chicken n' Fixins'"! This meant the slaughter of a chicken and absolutely everything one could do with flour and a chicken. Five courses made of flour and one scrawny hen to feed twenty. To do up a chicken was a special big deal. Imagine what riches a hog's head would have been. Most of our favored recipes were developed by peasants anyway. I'd rather have well made head cheese than an Oscar Meyer hot dog, any day.

French names. Way back in the olden days (the 70s), my husband had a family friend who was a chef/owner of a renowned French restaurant in Berkely, only serving prix fixe dinners. He invited us to come and bring two guests. OMG! FREE! Ya couldn't hardly even get a reservation at this place! We were young and broke. We took a couple that were our very best friends, but the guy had never eaten anything but hamburgers, and never intended to. We prayed that no snails would be brought out. We told him nothing. Everything was in French. He had NO idea what he was eating, it was all in French. He was just over the moon for the liver pate. He loved everything. If it'd been in English, he probably would have rejected everything but the frites!

[Retrograde]

20. Part squeamishness, part unfamiliarity, part loss of local butchers

Up until about 1990 I could find organ meats regularly at Safeway - I miss lamb kidneys and tripe. Nowadays, I think most butchers get their meats pre-packaged at the slaughterhouses, and either the odd bits don't ship well, or animal food factories pay more for them, or the stores know they won't sell.

I'm in Palo Alto: there's a new 99 Ranch (a West Coast chain catering to the Chinese population) in Mountain View, which is where I got the pigs' ears, and there are markets in Redwood City that cater the the Mexican/Central American residents that also have unusual cuts. I got the pigs' ears because I had them in Paris about 25 years ago and remembered them as being very good - but they could make sauteed cardboard edible.

Of course, you need this book. Now if I could just find a source for duck blood so I can make my grandmother's czarnina...

[troubleinwinter]

23. I see tripe just now and then.

I think it is a certain time of year, around Christmas?, for Mexican Menudo. OH.... how I love Menudo.

I was a WONDERFUL employee, because boss's mother-in-law was Mexican and he'd bring me a KETTLE of her Menudo at Xmas. OMG. The real deal. A lot of pig foot bones.

I'd send his dog a Christmas-wrapped smoked pig's ear, which he'd place in the bed of his truck, as he refused to ride in the cab with it!

[Tab]

6. Yeah, and why do we drive on the parkway, but park in the driveway?

Pork steaks with gin & coriander...






100% natural beef chops

[Inchworm]

7. Umm, speaking of.. what cut is "cubed steak" ?

I bought some and froze in partials for quick fixes, but I'm clueless as to wth they are :P

re-formed hamburger?

:silly:

[bicentennial_baby]

8. Here you go:

Cube steak is a cut of beef, usually top round or top sirloin, tenderized by fierce pounding with a meat mallet, or use of an electric tenderizer. Many professional cooks insist that regular tenderizing mallets cause too much mashing to produce a proper cube steak, and insist on either using specialized cube steak machines, or manually applying a set of sharp pointed rods to pierce the meat in every direction. This is the most common cut of meat used for chicken fried steak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_steak

[Inchworm]

9. o.m.g.

Chicken fried steak?!?!?!

I can do that :D

Thanks.

:hi:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. You're so cutting edge,

and you probably don't even realize it.

Look at this, from the NY Times just a few days ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/dining/04steak.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print



And, just googling "cube steak recipes," I found this, which looks like fun:

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf452328.tip.html

[Inchworm]

12. Awesome!

But.. I still have a watery mouth for "chicken fried steak."

:rofl:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

14. I love it...........

I found it in Oklahoma back in the late sixties, and I was an instant fan. People who've never had a good chicken fried steak with white gravy, oh, man, they don't know what they're missing.

I've never tried fixing it at home. I know it wouldn't be nearly as good. Fortunately, here on the northernmost edges of the South, there are places. Oh, there are places.........................

[hippywife]

15. I'd never even seen or heard of it

until I moved down here to OK. I've had it a couple of times. I don't really care for it.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. It's quite the local specialty,

yes, that's for sure. Although I'm sure now there are places in midtown Manhattan that serve chicken fried steak.

Either you love it or you don't. Me, I love it.

I once had a hamburger in Ponca City that was the biggest, juiciest thing I'd seen. It was wonderful, but, hey, it was Ponca City!

[NMDemDist2]

21. I worked for a while at the local Elks Lodge so could occasionally visit their

restaurant on special occasions and hubby LOVED the CFS

so (being pals with the cook) I asked for the recipe.

the dear darkly hispanic man noticeably blushed!

He confided he bought them by the boxfull from the local supplier

:rofl:

so, once a year, I buy a box and I'm a culinary hero at home


:hide:

[pengillian101]

22. Chicken Fried Steak

I'd love to have a good recipe. My almost-daughter-in-law from South Carolina made it once and we loved it.

But now, all I can come up with is something like hamburger gravy which is very bland. Northern Minnesota cooking is bland. I like spicy in my old age! Also cubed steak, etc. Thanks.

:hi: