Damian Grammaticus was in Georgia last night, chilling with a mob that was
trying to overthow the government.
Not the state, the country.
Spent all day doing work. No think funny occurred. No substantial writing done. But, feel I ought to post. If I cannot be inane, why not be useful?
And so, a recipe for Beef Gorgonzola.
Beef Gorgonzola
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4 to 6 small tenderloin steaks. (The round kind, about the size of your palm. 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick)
1/2 lb. gorgonzola
About 1/3 to a 1/2 cup red wine (depending on how many steaks). The wine should be good enough that you'll want to drink the rest with dinner.
Stick of butter (8 tbsp., or 1/4 lb. Screw the metric folk!)
1/3 c or so chopped fresh parsley.
1/3 c to 1/2 c beef stock
A little olive oil for greasin' (you can use canola or sunflower or whatnot. Whatever you have on hand, so long as its flavor isn't overpowring---seaseme oil would be bad).
Salt, pepper. Spinderalla optional.
Take a heavy-duty pan --- the one that comes to mind when you think about what would be useful if you had to fight off a burglar with kitchen implements --- well-seasoned cast iron is best. Get that mother scorching hot. In the mean time, rub the steaks with the oil and sprinkle on a little salt and pepper. When the pan's heated, lay in the steaks. (The pan should be ample enogh to accomodate them without them rubbing up against each other, or god forbid, laying on top of one another. Where do you think the expression "All up in my grill" comes from, anyway? That's right. It's steak slang.)
Leave 'em on there for about 30 seconds to a minute --- if they're real thick, an inch or more, then go for a minute. If they're more like a half an inch, go for 30. Flip 'em, and give them another 30 seconds on the other side. Poke at 'em. If your fingertip squishes in a bit and it feels soft, then it's nice and rare. If it's got a little give, but sort of springs back, then it's medium -- still a little pink in the middle. Rubbery and no give? Congradulations, you've made leather. When the steaks are done to where you like 'em, put 'em on a warm plate and cover them with tinfoil, so that they may brood in darkenss. This makes them juicy.
Turn back to your pan, wooden spoon or spatula in hand. Add the red wine, duck back from the stove for a momet --- a red wine steam facial is for winos, you fucking drunk. That's naaasty. Next toss in the beef stock, and turn the pan down to medium. Now use your spoon or spatuala to scrape the bottom of the pan, loosening and releasing all that seared-on beefy goodness. Toss in about 2-4 tablespoons of butter, and your cumbled up gorgonzola. Swirl everything gently until the gorgonzola's melted. You can also add any steak juice if there's any on the plate. Add salt and pepper to taste, and let everything bubble along until it thickens slightly --- you can test this by dipping your spoon in the sauce and running a finger along the back. If you can make a stripe that isn't immeditely filled in, then you're about where you want to be. Turn off the heat and mix in the parsely. Ladle the sauce over the steaks, put a pat of butter on each, garnish with a spig of parsley, and attack.
Mmmm. Steaky cheezy goodness.
Rogan Josh and I were discussing the other day how much Damian Grammaticus rocks.
First of all, he's named Damian Grammaticus.
That's the kind of name you expect to find in a sentence like, "Damian Grammaticus, Commander of the Bronze Squadron, Hyperellian Quadrant, Gannymede Sector, in the year 3029, frowned, cruelly."
Damian Grammaticus Conquers the Space Pirates. Awww yeah.
The real Damian Grammaticus is a BBC correspondent. He is still kind of bad ass, though. He's always creeping in and out of Stans, eluding packs of minders, getting 86'd by whole countries. Damian Grammaticus is all up in your shizzle, if you're a dictator.
The last report he did was in Tajikistan, where the President has renamed the months after himself. M. Grammaticus snuck out of his hotel to snag some unsupervised man-on-the-street sound bites. As far as I could tell from his report, Dushanbe is not an all-night-party kind of town, but he managed to find a subject hanging out by a public park at 3:00 in the morning. This leads me to wonder if he wasn't maybe intruding on her corner, but nonetheless he got her to take time out for a chat.
Because he was being super-sneaky, the camera was hidden in a bag at his feet. Mostly all you could see was ankles. Because he was being super suave and spylike, the whole thing was filmed with the green-night-goggle-vision filter.
Damian Grammaticus, just sittin' on a park bench in chinos, talking to some Tajik hooker about political oppression.
'Cause Damian Grammaticus is chill like that.
So I got this website in order make myself write everyday, supposedly in order to please an audience of anonymous internet readers. To bask in the imaginary applause, to let imaginary chuckles warm the cockles of my four-chambered heart, to buoy my ego on a warm salt wave of theoretical admiration.
It occurred to me that if I wanted to attract such an audience --- or even to plausibly imagine that I was able to attract such an audience --- what I wrote would have to be entertaining. Funny. Witty. Of Pith and Moment.
God, you're demanding. And you don't even exist.
So though I got this website a week ago this is the first time I've written.
I'm experiencing a bit of anxiety, you see, about the expectations of the multifarious figments which are perusing these words.
Which is really silly.
But po-mo.
(Which makes it automatically obnoxious, one tends to feel.)
Hmmm.
More later....perhaps.