In an era when cured pig back is more chic than caviar and the once prized but hopelessly lean fillet (filet mignon) cut may soon be sold off for scrap it’s hard to remember back to a time when fat was a four-letter word. Seek out any good Old English dictionary and you’ll find fat listed as fæt – f-a-e-t, I kid you not.
Sure there were peasants who by circumstance or choice sought out the fattier bits of fatty meats. They regarded the streaks of marbling running through beef as thoroughfares of flavour and happiness. But it’s unlikely many striving for acceptance in genteel London managed to be as unabashed about their preference for the bad white stuff as Walter Matthau, who, as Oscar Madison in Neil Simon‘s The Odd Couple, tells the New York waitress: ”Give me a corned beef on rye, all fat.” [Read more...]
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Because steaks firm up as they cook, one way to test them for doneness is the poke test. By lightly pressing the meat with your forefinger you can get a feel for how done it is and how much longer it needs to cook. A rare steak will be soft; a medium-rare steak, gently yielding; a medium steak, firm; a well-done steak, very firm. 
