Jeremey's Weblog

Best Beef Ever

OH MY GOSH... I just ate the best beef I've ever eaten. Last week when I went shopping at Central Market, I picked up a 2 pound cut of aged choice filet. It aged a bit more in the back of my fridge and I fixed it tonight... it was really good. REALLY good. I've eaten at Ruth's Chris, Taste of Texas, Saltgrass, etc., and I'd put this up against anything I've eaten at any of those places. No contest. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 1 2lb aged choice filet
• a tiny bit (maybe 1 Tbsp) safflower (preferred) or canola oil
• kosher salt
• fresh ground black pepper
• dried herbs, such as herbs de provence

Procedure (for medium-rare beef... tweak as desired):

1. take the beef out an hour before you plan to roast it and let it sit
2. 15 minutes before roasting, lightly rub the beef with a little oil... just enough to glisten
3. right after rubbing with oil, coat the beef in a mixture of kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, and herbs (optional). Herbs de provence worked well for me. Use lots, especially salt and pepper. Don't skimp.
4. place the roast on a rack in a roasting pan, preferably a good, large pan that will radiate well. I have a Mauviel (sp?) large pan which pretty much fills my oven (in terms of length and width).
5. roast at 300 degrees until a meat thermometer (that you trust!) reads 120 degrees in the coolest part of the meat (I won't say the thickest because the thickest part might be on one end, and that generally won't be the coolest part). In any case, use your meat thermometer correctly!
6. take the roast out, cover with foil
7. crank the oven as high as it will go. Mine goes to 550 degrees. When the oven reaches said temperature, give it 5 minutes or so, and then put the roast back in.
8. cook for 10 or more minutes until the crust is how you want it. Mine lasted about 13 minutes before I could stand it no longer.
9. take the roast out and set it on whatever you'll carve it on, let it sit.
10. do whatever else you were planning to do, letting the roast sit at least 10 minutes.
11. cut into 1/2"-ish slices.
12. EAT!

There may be several key steps here, but the quality of the meat is definitely one of them. Of course, there's nothing new under the sun... this procedure is an amalgum of ideas from Alton Brown (Food Network, I highly recommend his books) and others, and a couple twists of my own.

I thought I'd make a little sauce to go with it, but you just don't need it... it would be anticlimactic for sure.

Goose

So for fun I roasted a goose for Christmas dinner. The goose came out well, but wasn't quite what I'd expected. For one, I think our goose had spent his life running around and not sitting around getting fat. Bad goose! Second, I think that as long as I have one oven and it's going to be occupied by some kind of fowl on holidays, it's going to be a turkey. I'm pretty close to "perfecting" my turkey recipe, and a turkey yields a lot more good meat for the effort.

And then there's the issue of freezing... I really dislike buying frozen birds. I can always get very good fresh turkeys from Central Market, but it's next to impossible to find a fresh goose (I failed this time around, and opted for frozen). The largest problem with frozen birds is not the freshness vs. frozenness foodie debate (though that's worth considering); no, the largest problem by far is the fact that the bloody thing has to thaw. I bought my goose on Wednesday, and come Saturday, it still was not completely thawed. So the grand "game plan" for dinner is on hold while this dumb bird de-ices.

And then there's the carving. Admittedly, I only loosely read the basic carving directions, but I definitely had them in mind. You'll want a good carving set! Mine was less than up to the task, so I broke out my real knives to finish the job. This is where I get the idea that our goose was more into athletics than a career as a dinner menu item. The carving directions suggest carving the entire breast out as one piece and then slicing it into medallions. Great, that'll be easier than cutting off slices. But... my goose's "medallions" were shaped more like fajita meat than anything resembling round. So that makes me think maybe this goose didn't fatten up like he was supposed to. Bad goose!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! It really snowed!

Let It Snow!

Yes, folks, it's snowing in Houston, and on Christmas eve, no less. Woohoo!

Modeled Tone vs. Vintage Gear

The debate rages on. I regularly have this discussion/debate with people (many of whom agree with me, but often violently). The Great Amp Tone Debate (tm).

Some people say that great amp tone can only come from a pure (and often vintage) amp. They say that the best JCM-800 ever made (for example) is a JCM-800. A model isn't perfect, it's close, but not perfect (and some say it sounds nothing like the original, but they're usually misinformed, have never actually spent time with a modeling amp, or are just being bigoted for fun).

Other people suggest that the above is true, but the modeled sounds are "good enough" and provide you with tremendous versatility, which outweighs the need for the absolute best tone.

However, I have a third view, which is this: the goal of any amplifier is to produce tone. The goal of a JCM-800 (for example) is not to sound like a JCM-800, but to produce good tone. So whether or not a modeling amp can produce precisely the same tone as a JCM-800 or not is totally irrelevant. The question is, can it produce good tone?

And the answer is 100% absolutely "yes". No-one who doesn't already have a bigoted opinion will disagree. So the final question isn't "can modeling amps produce the SAME tone as vintage amps?", the question is "can modeling amps produce BETTER tone than vintage amps?"

I would argue they can. You can think of this as two bar graphs, with two bars each. The first graph is "how much does amp X sound like amp Y". On the X axis are amps A and B, and on the Y axis the degree of likeness is measured, from 0 to 100 percent. So amp A in this case is the same exact amp as amp Y. Thus it has a value of 100, because it's identical. Amp B is a modeling amp, and let's say it makes it to 95%.

The second graph is "how good is the tone from amp X". On the X axis again are amps A and B, but this time the Y axis is a measure of tone quality. Note that the "likeness" of amps A and B is not a factor at all. On this graph, the Y values are dependent on the interpretation of the listener. My point to vintage purists is that there is no reason at all to suggest that amp B cannot have better tone than amp A. There is no logic in that argument. Clearly they are independent sources of sound and their tonal properties are entirely independent. The fact that amp B modeled amp A may help it generate good tone, but it could just as easily be amp C, which is neither amp A nor a modeling amp. A and C are compared based on their tonal properties. Not based on whether or not C is attempting to "sound like" A.

So I own a Line6 Flextone III, and I will put it up against any amp out there in a "good tone" contest. But it has to be a controlled test, because everyone's biases will get in the way otherwise.

Christmas Photo

First Post!

My first post on my Typepad blog... trying this out instead of hosting my own. I know MT from my own blog so Typepad is both familiar and capable.