And since I only discovered this irritating little issue after emails went out to folks, I don’t even have time to put together something reasonable, unless chanting “burgers” works for you, and I’m assuming it does not.

So I’ve found this fine picture of a cow, which I hope you to enjoy.

Look at these babies go. Meat moments away...

So if you’ve been with me thus far, you know I hit a local Spanish market, Las Brisas, to pick up some fresh-cut skirt steak from the butcher, and immediately began marinating it  in preparation for grilling its ass on my Fyrkat. How’d it all come out?

Well, I left the steaks in the ziplock bag with the salsa fresca, (I’ve posted the recipe for that salsa fresca here – even if it’s more of a guide than a recipe) for 24 hours (it only seemed like a week), stopping by the fridge every couple of hours to massage and smish the beef around in the juice and veggies.

After torching a pile of Kingsford charcoal (which is the only stuff I’ll use now, as those of you that read my charcoal shootout already know) and letting it ash up properly, on went the skirts, each with a little added salt for seasoning.

I chose to cook with the top off this time; due to the thinness of the steaks I wanted as much sear as possible without drying them out, so I thought concentrating all the heat on the cooked surfaces and avoiding the additional  heat caused by keeping the top on was the way to go.

And as far as I could tell, I was right. I think I’d have liked the coal to generate even more heat than I was getting, but it worked out really nicely all the same.

One thing I may not have mentioned in my Frykat review, but something hibachi owners are probably already aware of, is that the proximity to the coals on a small grill gives the meats even more smokey taste  than in a larger kettle, and that’s what went down with these skirts. The marinade came through beautifully, but so did a full, rich smoke flavor.

Trappeys. Yum. That and Crystal are the elixers of life.

We opted to chop these fellows up and mix them with jasmine rice and fresh chopped cilantro. Yes, we did: we injected a little Thai flavor profile into what had thus far been a very Latin-style dish.

It turned out great. The jasmine flavor complimented the smoke and marinade flavors perfectly and, combined with the cilantro,  made a fantastic combination. My daughter’s comment said it all: after one bite she turned to me and said “I love you – will you make this more often?”

I don’t think I could have hoped for a better response, and the fact that the entire delicious meat-based dinner for four came in at somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 bucks made it that much better.

Plus, next time I hit Las Brisas (and I will, believe me) I’ll be the Foursquare mayor. So I’ve got that going for me.

Ingredients:

4 – 6 fresh, ripe tomatoes
1 -2 sweet yellow onions
2-5 fresh jalapeños(s)
1-2 bunch(es) of fresh cilantro
Fresh lime juice
Salt

(I told you I didn’t have a recipe – it’s all about ratios, baby – so be prepared with enough of each thing)

Wash your cilantro, shake it out, and set it aside to dry a bit.

Fine-dice a bunch of your tomatoes (you want them ripe enough to be juicy, not so ripe that they completely fall apart). I start with four or five to see what I get out of them. Scoop them and their juice into a bowl.

Fine-dice a sweet onion. Add it to the tomatoes a bit at a time to achieve the ratio you think will make you extremely happy and not piss your wife off.

For the jalapeños, I have a trick: split ‘em lengthwise and then taste the seeds. Jalapeños vary in heat from pepper to pepper, so this way I know whether I need two or nine (though if it was up to me and my daughter, I’d always use nine). I dice ‘em and always use the seeds.

Chop a boat-load of cilantro, trying to keep stems to a minimum: you want the leaves. Shovel some in until it looks right.

Squeeze a fresh lime over the top. I use half a lime for a small batch, and a full lime for a larger one, but it varies based on juiciness.

Grind some fresh sea salt over the whole thing.

Now mix it up and refrigerate it, covered with plastic wrap, for an hour or so if you can possibly stand waiting that long (I rarely can).  That helps the flavors mingle and takes it from great to all-conquering.

Eat it on everything.

Fresh sliced skirt steak: it can never be too rich or too thin. You need to click to enlarge this. Really, you do.

A few weeks ago, Amiel Nuchovich, occasional Meatist contributor and my token Uruguayan friend, wrote a great piece about the values that can be found at a Spanish market as opposed to your local chain supermarket.

Today, I decided to follow the advice in the pages of my own site and stop in at Las Brisas market in Jupiter.

Just as Amiel wrote, the meat case at Las Brisas was beautiful, packed with meats and meaty parts just waiting to be brought back to my house and ingested. I was dizzy with desire, drooling with anticipation, overwhelmed with options.

When the butcher at last looked my way, I pulled the trigger on some skirt steak, which looked fantastic and was reasonably priced at only $4.59. That’s right, if you’ve been dropping close to 10 bucks for this stuff at Whole Foods, you’re getting reamed, friend.

The next big bonus of buying here after the price: rather than an overly thick slab of  plastic-wrapped skirt steak, the kind I’ve gotten at, say, Publix, the Las Brisas butcher took a couple of slabs from the case, smoothed them down on a cutting board, and then hand sliced very thin pieces for me. It was old-school Sam the butcher time. Fantastic.

Into butcher paper went the beef (so much nicer than cellophane) and off went I, a mere $5.92 poorer, but richer a fist-full of beautifully sliced carne.

Never were vegetables so damn sexy. Dig copious amount of jalapeños. Yup, you can enlarge it.

Now, last night I happened to make an enormous batch of salsa fresca (which rocked, by the way), so I slid the beautiful, freshly sliced steaks into a large ziplock bag, added a heaping scoop of salsa, squeezed in a bit more fresh lime juice for good measure, and zipped that bad boy up.

The whole bag sits in my fridge as I type this, meats waiting to get suitably delicious (as if they weren’t already) before being grilled on my Fyrkat tomorrow night, at which point I’ll shoot new photos and follow this up with Part II.

Honestly, I can’t believe it took me so long to hit Las Brisas (I’m not the only one: I had to add it as a Foursquare venue, which means next time I go, I’ll be the mayor), and the only downside of the entire experience was the fact that I don’t speak much Spanish beyond “please,” “thank you,” “yes,” “how much,” and “excuse me,” so I just feel like a putz (gee, that’s a switch) showing off my lack of language skills.

But I’ve got a plan for that: today, I received the latest version of Rosetta Stone for Spanish (Latin American version, levels 1-3 with the online component) from the Amazon Vine program (which means I got it free, suckers, in exchange for a review).

Perfect timing, now that I have yet another good reason to stop wallowing in my mono-linguistic lameness.

Yours truly, smished between Kaspar and Henrik, and looking like a goof. I had that rad jacket Henrik's sporting though. Wore it to Studio 54 when I was a kid.

If you go backstage at Antone’s, the legendary music venue in Austin, head upstairs past whatever band is lingering on the first floor, and look closely at the back wall of the small balcony, you’ll see a small door, plenty wide but only about three feet high, marked “Lilliputians only.”

This past spring during Austin’s amazing South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, though not close to Lilliputian size myself, I was invited through the door and into the back room to sit with the incredible Danish band Kashmir and talk meat.

Kashmir aren’t ‘putian-sized either. And if you’ve listened to No Balance Palace, or are lucky enough to have a copy of the not-released-in-the-U.S.-yet (but available as an import from Amazon.com) Trespassers, which is completely worth doing whatever you have to do to acquire, then you know that there’s no way they’re vegetarians, either. Albums that good need to be fueled by meat, and Kashmir are all avid carnivores. But in what form do they enjoy meats?

“Bloody red meat,” said Asger Techau, Kashmir’s drummer.

“That’s it?”

Asger Techau likes bloody red meat

“That’s it. Good meat, well cooked, bloody.”

Well that was easy. And simple to write down, just the way my lousy-note-taking ass likes it. I watched them play a couple of sets later, and it fits: Asger is a monster on drums, and clearly needs steak for fuel. I turned to singer Kasper Eistrup.

“Et vous, coco?” I asked.

“I’m sort of ambivalent about which meat to eat. I like it all, really. But I did have some incredible Kobe beef sliders at Stanton Social in New York, which I loved,” he said. “And I need to mention a great place in Copenhagen called Shawarma Grill House. They’ve been there since 1980 and it’s the best shawarma in Denmark. You have to eat there if you come to visit Copenhagen.”

No sweat there, as nothing quite beats giant hunks of spinning lamb in my book. Things got a little more complex when I turned to Henrik Lindstrand, who plays keyboards and guitar. Disclaimer: as I said, I’m not the best note-taker in the world, so Henrik and Mads, if I screw these up, please forgive me.

“O.K.,” he said. “This is a recipe a friend, a doctor actually, gave me for something…”

“Wait, we’re doing recipes now?” Kasper asked.

Kasper (singing) likes Kobe sliders, Henrik makes love meatballs.

“I’m doing one,” said Henrik, then turned back to me. “So the recipe is for something he calls Love Meatballs – and he claims that you can get any woman into bed serving her these.”

“Meatballs that help you score, nice,” I told him. “Are there roofies in them?”

“No, no – no roofies at all,” he said. “Start out with a nice meat blend, say 50/50 pork and veal. Cook some aubergine” (that’s eggplant, folks) “and make a mash, then add it to the meat with some breadcrumbs, egg, and… how do you say it?”

He turned to his band mates and spoke for a bit in Danish, then after much shrugging looked back at me and said “it’s a nut, you shave it…..”

“Nice straight line, Henrick – are you thinking of, nutmeg?”

“Yes. Nutmeg, that’s it,” he said. Nice – he uses fresh shaved nutmeg. So now, to keep from feeling like a chump, I have to go find some fresh nutmeg to shave.

“So you make the meatballs, and you make them large, not tiny little things. And you cook them with tomato very slowly. Take your time, and they’re amazing.”

“And they get you laid.”

“So my friend says, yes,” he answered with a smile.

Last up was bassist Mads Tunebjerg.

Mads is serious about bass, keyboards, and goulash

“For me, I like a nice pot of something cooking on the stove all day, so it’s Hungarian goulash,” he said. At this point, the other three band members leaned forward to hear better turning this experience  into an episode of Julia Child gone Danish. And I hear that once you go Dane, you never go back (I never claimed I could rhyme).

“Roast some paprika in a pan…” this had gone too far. First Henrik actually uses fresh nutmeg, now Mads is telling me to roast the spices, which demonstrates real cooking skills, people. I’ve got to get my shit together. “…then add some tomato and make a paste. Use a tough cut, like neck meat and throw it in with some red bell peppers. Simmer it all day with beef or vegetable stock…”

“What about wine?” interrupted Kasper.

“No wine; it changes the flavor too much,” replied Mads.

“Well I was talking to a Hungarian guy about goulash, and he said to use white wine.”

“Well, my Hungarian guy says no wine. So that’s the way I make it.

“Well, I’ll use wine, and if we’re doing recipes, I have one for osso bucco,” said Kasper. “You cook the veal shank the regular way, but serve it with a mash that you make with celery root, potato, real feta cheese made from goat’s milk, a ground peppercorn.”

“One peppercorn?” I asked

“Yes. One ground peppercorn.”

At that point more discussion broke out about veal, goulash, and a whole lot of stuff I couldn’t follow because it was in Danish. It was time to head out to my next interview anyway, but not before promising to send Kasper a copy of the osso bucco recipe I got from Wild Olives. But right now I’ve gotta go put on some Kashmir, make some love meatballs, and coax my wife to the table.

Rest assured I’ll be eating plenty of meat, so I’ll have plenty to write about upon my return. In the meantime, go grill some burgers and make some steaks, then tell me all about it.  Or enjoy this entertaining video about how bacon is made (it’s the liquid smoke kind, as opposed to truly smoked, but it’s still fun to watch).

Have a good and meaty weekend.

The King

First of all, you should know I’m not a “Match Light” guy. I like to use charcoal lit via lighter fluid like my dad, and probably his dad before him, did because it’s all part of the process that I grew up with.

The smell of the fluid burning off puts me right back on a remote beach in the Hamptons at sundown, waiting for the grill to be ready for ribs, my dad chatting with Mr. Smith, our two family’s late 60s Jeep Wagoneers (one pea green, one brown) parked in the sand nearby, waiting to take us back to the real world, barbecue-stuffed kids lying on the roof or dangling our legs off of the tailgate during the whole miles-long ride back down the beach to one of the access two-track sand trails through the dunes.

So for those olfactory-triggered memories alone, there’s no Match Light for me; I need real charcoal.

But what kind? See, I’m also one of those guys that buys generic aspirin. Actually, generic ibuprofen, and I buy 500 at a time for like 6 bucks at Walmart, because there is simply no difference, no matter what the commercials try to tell you. Not in effectiveness, anyway, which is all I care about.

And charcoal, I thought, is probably much the same. So when I did my review of the Bodum Fyrkat last week, the first time I set it up I cheaped out and fed it Sam’s Choice, the generic Walmart brand of charcoal briquets. It said “professional quality” on the bag, which I knew was dopey and should have hipped me, but charcoal is charcoal, so I went with the cheap stuff.

On left, Kingsford. On right, representative Sam's Choice. In back, Franziskaner, which goes great with everything, even when empty. (click to enlarge)

Well, as it turns out, I’m not as slick as I thought I was. That Walmart crap took forever to ash, and once it got going it burned really inconsistently. While I was able to pull off the grilling session, it wasn’t what I’d call an impressive showing. So despite the fact that I had plenty left, I went back to the store and sprang for a bag of the briquets I grew up with: Kingsford.

I bought the regular stuff, the stuff that appears to be in the same bag it was in 40 years ago (I may have to do a shootout of some of the other variants at some point in the future), and it was hugely better than the generic.

It ashed up quickly and burned perfectly, making it easy to get a consistent heat pattern on my grill. Once I was done cooking, I extinguished the coals by closing the cover and vents, then removed samples of each brand to examine.

Almost every Kingsford briquet had burned consistently, while there wasn’t a single Sam’s Choice that looked like it had burned remotely cleanly. The Sam’s Choice may be bigger, so theoretically it will burn longer, but based on how poorly it worked I’ll take on the labor of adding more coals more frequently, thank you.

And I’ll pass on the Sam’s Choice for another reason, too. I really wanted to use Kingsford because there’s something nice about tradition when you’re doing something like grilling, and now I have a legit excuse to spend the little bit extra dosh necessary to buy it the stuff. Bonus: the Kingsford bag has a history of charcoal on it. Did you know that they made the original charcoal (or so this story goes) back in 1920 from wood cast off during the manufacture of Ford Model Ts? I did not know that either, but it turns out that Kingsford started their charcoal empire right there with those chunks of car.

So, as it turns out, sometimes the generics suck. Maybe not when you’re buying a pain killer, but probably if you’re buying cereal, and definitely if you’re going for charcoal. Don’t cheap out: just buy the damn Kingsford.

Mmmmm. Cloney.

The BBC is reporting that for the second time (gasp) the meat from a bull that’s the offspring of a cloned cow has entered the food chain (ohmigodohmigodohmigod).

They’ve even reported the bull’s name: Parable. Here’s his story.

Once upon a time, way back in May of 2007, a bull was born and named Parable. Parable was a hearty bull, so hearty in fact that in May of 2010 he was slaughtered and eaten by people in Britian.

But soon, some Brits were complaining about Parable. They thought that the meat from a bull born of a cloned cow shouldn’t be eaten, not matter how delicious and tender it was. So the authorities went and questioned the farmer Steven Innes, from whose farm Parable had come, but Mr. Innes said he’d done nothing wrong, and his brothers agreed. In unison.

None of the Steven Inneses contacted had a comment beyond saying they'd done nothing wrong, and Parable tasted great.

The End.

My friend Andy is an avid meat eater, but he wasn’t exactly raising an issue that I hadn’t heard before.

Actual free-raised veal. And I thought I was lying.

“Look dude,” I told him, “a lot of the anti-veal stuff you’ve heard isn’t true.  The industry has changed in the last few decades.” This coming from someone who knew exactly nothing about the veal industry. But I like to argue, and missing facts never kept me from plowing ahead.

“You know, they even have free-range veal now,” I told him, randomly generating facts to support my argument.

“Bull. How the hell could free-range veal work?”

“I, um, think that they might tow the pens around the pasture behind a golf cart.”

It was at that point that the conversation ended. Well, it ended after Andy called me an idiot. But, as it turns out, my fiction had some truth to it: the veal industry has changed (I think it pretty much had to), and there actually is such a thing as free-raised veal.  Calves roam freely in pastures and are given no hormones or antibiotics.  And this is a good thing, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment.

Taken in Yorkville in 1939. Harsh Nazi assholes. Thankfully, there aren't any more of these parades in the neighborhood, but Papaya King and Heidelberg Restaurant still survive. (click to enlarge)

For a large chunk of my young-manhood, I lived near Yorkville, a heavily German neighborhood in Manhattan. Despite being a German/Irish mutt myself, I wasn’t actually aware that the area was German; my family paid little attention to lineage, I never heard the language spoken, and they’d thankfully stopped having German American Bund parades back in the late 30s.

Still though, there was some German influence in the neighborhood, particularly in the area of food.  My first life-changing German-influenced food experience was delivered courtesy of Papaya King, a small hot dog joint on the corner of 86^th Street and 3^rd Avenue.  Originally opened in 1932, Papaya King was a simple tropical juice stand until owner Gus Poulos married Birdie, a young German-American.  In love with not only the woman but also her meats, Poulos started serving hot dogs at Papaya King in 1939.

But not just any hot dogs.  Poulos told customers that “Papaya King frankfurters are tastier than filet mignon,” and to a young man hopping off the subway after an evening spent celebrating the Irish part of his heritage, they certainly were.  Two dogs perfectly grilled, served on toasted buns and striped with mustard, when paired with a 16 ounce Coconut Champagne, made a far better nightcap than a Rusty Nail ever could (well, maybe not far better).

Papaya King, with the sun-loving, boring, daytime customers.

So my first lesson in great food pairings came to me at a hot dog stand in the middle of the night, a little island of light and bright colors and late night city dwellers, while I stood at a counter weaving slightly and hoovering hot dogs and tropical drinks. And it’s still one of my favorites.  The crunch of the toasted bun, the snap of the casing, the bite of the mustard; nothing on the planet sets up the sweetness and texture of a fresh papaya or coconut drink better.

And there’s no place better to enjoy it than a noisy, crowded street corner in Manhattan at 3 AM, with your ears still ringing from a live show at CBGB (now sadly no longer) or one of the other clubs I frequented back then.

There’s one other major culinary event for which I have the German neighborhood to thank: it’s where I discovered Wiener Schnitzel.  Of course, Wiener Schnitzel isn’t actually a German dish: it originated in Austria (the Germans annexed the recipe sometime prior to 1945 – perhaps that’s why then name is protected by law in Austria now).  But Heidelberg Restaurant, a local Bavarian joint, served a wicked version, and from the moment I bit into my first lightly-breaded veal cutlet, I was hooked. I don’t care who you are, or how much you struggle with ethical issues around eating veal: you’re just going to have to admit that there’s pretty much nothing as delicious as a properly cooked veal cutlet.

What's better than this? Almost nothing.

So since so few say it, allow me: it’s time to come home to veal. If the goateed roller-blading and recumbent bike-riding set can make their peace with sausage, the rest of us can certainly enjoy veal again.  It tastes great, it’s lower in fat than many meats, and it’s pretty easy to whip up a delicious platter-full.

Just pound some cutlets to about ¼-inch thick, flour, egg, and bread them, then fry in hot lard for tradition’s sake, or oil if that bums you out. Squeeze some lemon over the golden brown beauties and your ethical dilemma will be a thing of the past.  At least until the beers wear off.

And gas grills do rule for that. I can grill up a hot dog or burger quickly and easily, and my Weber gas grill is still going strong after more than a decade of abuse with only the occasional replacement part (grates once, “flavor bars” once, an updated propane attachment) needed.

But my kids are older now and don’t need to be monitored constantly and, more important, my son is now old enough to begin to learn the tradition of grilling that every man wants to pass on to his boy. And I’m talking grilling old school: with charcoal.

Although I don’t currently have a Weber charcoal grill (drag) I did recently receive a Bodum Fyrkat (yes, it’s spelled like an 80’s hair band) for review recently, and it provided a great opportunity to come home to charcoal.

Five fat burgers on my Fyrkat. (click to enlarge)

The Fyrkat, is a small, portable grill that can be carried with you to a picnic or set up easily on a deck, so in that sense it’s like a hibachi. But, as you can see from the photos, it’s a kettle grill design, much like a Weber.

To further set the thing apart and make it attractive to fans of family cookouts, Bodum added three little clips that are set around the perimeter of the grill that hold the top in place and allow you to tote the whole thing around by the top handle.  Load the grill with charcoal at home, clip the top on, and carry the whole thing to your car, or the beach, or the Teletubbies set (c’mon, look at the thing).

But looks don’t matter much once you fire it up, because the Fyrkat is great. One of the big downsides of a Weber is that if you aren’t cooking a large quantity of meats, it seems like a waste of charcoal to fire the thing up. Not that I’m complaining, because Webers kick ass, but sometimes you want something a little less humongous.

Which, of course, used to mean a hibachi. The problems with those, though, is that you have to pass up the benefits of a kettle grill, they can be a pretty messy in transit, and carrying them by the two handles somehow always reminded me of Caine getting his forearms burned in the opening credits of the old TV series Kung Fu (something about holding your arms out and hot coals I guess).

But this thing solves all of those problems. It’s small enough that you don’t need to use a tremendous amount of charcoal, but big enough to cook food for my whole family. And, of course, it makes it dead simple to head out and have a cookout in the Everglades while we tease ‘gators with sticks.

Look at the bugger go. And dig the piddly table it's on. Love it. (click to enlarge)

And it works just dandy. There’s plenty of airflow from the bottom, and a simple twist of the handle up top opens and closes the top vent. Plus, the small enclosed space makes for a great infusion of smoke, so if you like a charcoal-smokey burger, you’ll love this little guy.

I grilled up five gigantic burgers yesterday with no problems at all, and now I’m jonesing for another weber kettle; apparently I missed charcoal more than I thought.

The only downside I can think of is that with a hibachi you can get cast iron grates, while this fellow comes with a traditional wire one. But that’s no big deal, and overall it’s a great little grill. It’s small enough to justify using it for only a couple of people, but big enough for four or five. Burgers, steaks, dogs of the hot persuasion, and chicken should be no problem.

In the portability department, it’s the best I’ve seen, and it comes in orange, which is my favorite color (it also comes in green, blue, yellow, black, and white for those of you with less taste than me). Of course, if transport is not an issue for you, you might want to save a few bucks and snap up a Weber Smokey Joe Silver, which  is a pretty sweet mini kettle itself.

If you’re the kind of person who lugs a hibachi around, or just want to get your mitts on a grill that doesn’t take up much space, you might want to take a look at this bad boy. I recommend it highly.

As for my son, he loved the entire process, from using the lighter fluid to monitoring the coals until they were ready to for grilling. So he recommends it as well, for those of you that are almost 10.

I’ll even do a reverse countdown, Casey Kasem style, too.

Number 5: “Hot Dog” (song) – Led Zeppelin

Yes, I’m aware that In Through The Out Door isn’t exactly the best of the bunch that Zep released, in fact it’s not even great stoner rock anymore, but with a song like Hot Dog, what am I supposed to do? Remember your physics class and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: Awesome = a Led Zeppelin song to the power of a meat-related name.

Number 4: “War Pigs” (song) – Black Sabbath

It’s Sabbath, man. You might make the argument a war pig isn’t the same as a regular pig, but I’m betting if you best one in battle it’ll still give up a tasty slab of bacon and some ribs to share with your army. Plus, the massive stoner appeal makes up for what’s missing from “Hot Dog.”

Number 3: Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy (album) -  The Who

Normally I’d never list a “best of” album anywhere (except in a “lamest way to buy music” list), but even if the name weren’t one of the greatest album names ever, I’d still be happy to have this on my list just for “Pictures of Lily” (not a meat) and “Boris the Spider” (which could be considered a meat). If you have no Who, you need to purchase this: every song is excellent. But you really ought to consider buying the individual albums, because they’re all great.

Number 2: Pet Sounds (album) – The Beach Boys

Let the whining begin that we shouldn’t eat our pets. But meat is meat, people, and anyway the album cover has a photo of the boys feeding (or fattening up) a bunch of farm animals. Plus, it’s one of the greatest albums ever recorded (that’s right – with none of that “Aruba, Jamaica ooo I wanna take you” crap), so there you go.

I prefer the original mono mixes, but you young kids might prefer the stereo remixes, which were done by Mark Linnet and overseen by Brian Wilson. They are the only acceptable stereo-ize-ations of original mono music I’ve yet found (actually, they’re fantastic), and you can effectively steal the MP3 album of the stereo versions (minus “Hang On To Your Ego,” which is a drag because that song is great) for only $5.99 at amazon.com

Well the price went up since I wrote this, but you can do better anyway: the entire MP3 version of Pet Sounds is available for download for only $9.50, which includes the mono and stereo remixes (as well as “Hang On To Your Ego”). Get it. You need it.

And coming in at number 1: “You’re My Meat” (song)

This was written by Louis Jourdan and covered by many, though the best cover of all was by Joe Jackson on his 1982 Jumpin’ Jive album. This one is so sweet, it deserves all the lyrics printed here and now:

The great Louis Jordan

Outside in and inside out you’re my meat
Fat and forty but lordy you’re my meat
From your feet to your head you knock me dead, you’re my meat
I got you covered but baby, you’re my meat

In the days of old when knights were bold
They were pious and modest I’m told
Can’t you see that couldn’t be me
I’d have to talk about your yams and your big fat hams

It excites me so because I know you’re my meat
Fat and forty but lordy you’re my meat

In the days of old when knights were bold
They were pious and modest I’m told
Can’t you see that couldn’t be me
I’d have to talk about your yams and your big fat hams
It excites me so because I know you’re my meat
Fat and forty but lordy you’re my meat

Fat and forty but lordy lordy . . . you’re my meat

Yes, I may have missed some (these were actually off the top of my head), but everything on my list is killer. So unless you’ve got something better, grab ‘em, play ‘em and chow some steaks.

This is cool, too: now Amazon lets you build a widget with songs it it, so you can just up and listen to samples.

My 13-year-old daughter’s friend was asking about the tuna dish I’d just tried at Yard House, and that the waiter had just confirmed was, in fact, made with frozen tuna.

“Because I’m a badass,” I told her.

Did someone tell them that they should make it look like the Hawaiian Punch mascot, or is it just a happy coincidence? Presentation is a bit absurd.

O.K., maybe I’m not that much of a badass, but my kids and wife were totally impressed, even if they insisted they weren’t and acted completely indifferent to the entire thing. I knew they were thinking I was cool though.

Anyway, the specific dish I’d tried was my daughter’s spicy tuna roll. Which, at Yard House, is a cake, not a roll, and it’s a hearty sized cake at that. Seared rare spicy ahi tuna, avocado, cucumber, edamame (which I could have done without, even if I enjoy it in other contexts) and a wasabi-soy sauce ’round the plate.

Now, I’m not the guy that orders sushi at a what amounts to a gigantic chain bar/pickup joint, but I was perfectly happy to try Nina’s crazy-ass choice. And you know what? It was pretty good. The flavor was just dandy, and the portion was quite large.

Texturally though, I just wasn’t digging it. The tuna was completely flaccid and, combined with the spicy mayo, or whatever sauce was mixed with the chopped tuna, it just turned into a kind of mush. Like sushi baby food. And that, regardless of how big a badass I may or may not be, was how I knew it was frozen ahi.

But to be completely honest, for the 12 bucks it cost, it was a pretty solid bargain, and my daughter loved it, so I really don’t have too much bad to say about the thing. Unlike the Cuban roast pork dip that I ordered.

I saw this thing in a written up in a cheesy article from what I suspect was a pay-to-play rag (I should have written down the name to check) when I was on my way to the can. It was framed and hanging on the wall (the article, not the can), and I stopped to give it a read. Whomever the executive chef is explained how they came up with the idea, and that they thought it was unique and had the makings of a signature dish.

At least the spicy tuna made an attempt at presentation, no matter how absurd.

And look: when you use the words Cuban and pork and dip all in the same food description, I’d tend to believe that’s possible. Unfortunately, this particular dish isn’t one I’d want known as a signature anything at a place I ran.

The garlic aioli, roasted tomatoes, and pickle slices ganged up to completely overwhelm the flavor of the pork, which was under-seasoned anyway. Things got worse when I dipped it in the “bbq au jus,” which was so salty that the Dead Sea would have hung its head in shame after tasting it.  Bottom line: they killed what should have been the star of the thing: the pork.

On the upside, the draft Franziskaner I ordered, both the Hefe-Dunkel and the Hefe-Weisse (I had one pint of each), were spectacular. I was hipped to Franziskaner by Gene from the mighty Lake Worth band Kill Now?! a few weeks ago, and I am forever in his debt: I’d shamefully never tried this tremendous brew.

But in the end, that’s really what people should go to Yard House for: a great selection of draft beers. The fact that the burgers are passable and the spicy tuna is pretty good (even if it is frozen) is just icing on the cake.

Just stay away from that pork thing, because it sucks.

After a visit to the den to confirm my lack of interest in talking about the Skippy’s new BMW or the best place to ski that year, I headed to the dining room in the hope of at least strapping on a hearty feedbag. I found the traditional holiday choices: cookies, bad eggnog, even a fruitcake that looked like Mrs. Cleaver had baked it in ’56. Then, at the end of the table I saw a pie.

“What kind?” I asked. “Mincemeat,” I was told as the server offered me a piece. But I’m no fool: I know that there’s no meat in a mincemeat pie at all (fell for that one in my teen years), so I declined. I don’t know what kind of sadist would call a non-meat filled pie “mincemeat,” and I don’t care, but it’s flat wrong.

Thankfully, I was able to kill the meat pie jones that kicked in by leaving the dopey party and heading Dub Pies in Brooklyn. Dub (Down Under Bakery) serves Australian meat pies; meat pies that actually have meat in them, thank you, you Aussie gods.

Now that I don’t live in NY I have to make my own damn meat pies, but it’s a process that’s thankfully not desperately hard. And they’re good. Really good. So good, in fact, that my daughter almost broke out in tears of joy when she ate one recently.

And until I open up my own meat pie shop and start keeping secrets like some of the more annoying chefs in the area, I’m happy to share my Australian meat pie recipe with you. Make some, enjoy them, and find out what a mincemeat pie should taste like.

FILLING

Step one:

1 lb ground beef
1 yellow onion, finely minced
3/4 C water
2 t Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 beef bouillon cubes
1/4 cup ketchup
Oregano, black pepper, nutmeg to taste.

Step two:

3 T flour
1/4 C water

Soften the onion in a pan with melted butter, add meat and brown. Remove excess fat, add the rest of the step one ingredients. Cover and boil for 15 minutes.

Mix the flour and water from step two to make a paste, and add it to the meat. Stir and allow to cool.

THE PIE:

You can do this two ways: a big round triumphant one that looks great but needs to be cut into slices, or small little power-beasts that are self contained. I like the latter, particularly in light of the ration of pastry to meat.

For the big guy, grease a pie plate and line with puff pastry. Pour the cooled filling into the pie, brush the exposed pie edge with an egg wash, then top it with another puff pastry and seal top and bottom with a fork. Trim the excess and bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then drop the heat to just 350 to cook for an additional 20 minutes or so (pull it when it’s golden brown).

For mini powerhouses, use small pans or a cupcake mold and follow the same instructions as for a big one. Make sure your seal is good between top and bottom crusts, then back at 425 for 10 minutes before dropping your heat, then go at 350 for 15 to 20 more. This is the version I make at home the most, and this is the version that my daughter bit into, looked at me and said “you are a god.” I knew that though.

A third way, turnover style, is possible as well but dropping sections of puff bastry onto a cookie sheet, filling them, pinching them shut, and sealing them with an egg wash. Follow heat instructions for the small pies. The nice thing here is they often open on the pan to expose the meat filling, which makes them look like meaty, sexy flowers. Yum.

Bossy's got it right: these are two great tastes that taste great together.

I wrote about my impressions of the Palm Beach Gardens Five Guys location just under a week ago, but since I thought the cheese was disgusting and neglected to try the Cajun fries, I knew I needed to make a follow up visit.

First, a correction: bacon is not free, as I said in my original piece. It’s 50 cents, as is cheese, which is a good news/bad news thing: a plain burger, sans cheese and bacon, is $4.59 which, while still spendy in the fast food world, is at least a bit more reasonable, particularly considering the fresh jalapeños. What is free is water. And the peanuts, of course. (I ordered a cupa the former, and skipped the latter).

Todays order was a “little” cheeseburger to take home for my son, a small order of Cajun-seasoned fries (and I still got an extra scoop dumped into the bag – sweet), and a regular burger (the difference between little and standard burgers: single vs. double patty – get the latter) with raw onions, grilled onions, and jalapeños. Taking the suggestion of my friend (and guest Meatist) Amiel, I ordered this fellow with A-1 sauce, though I got it on the side so I could monitor its application.

One of the nice things about South Florida summers combined with aluminum wrapping is that burgers are still plenty warm after sitting in the car for about an hour, which mine did. Really. An hour.

I munched the fries throughout that hour though, and at first they were tremendous; I highly recommend the Cajun variation. After 30 minutes though, the grease was winning the flavor battle, so eat them at the restaurant, down them quickly in a to-go setting, or take a pass.

As for the burger, I suspected that despite the delay in eating it I’d be in good shape because of, in Amiel’s words, “the way they ghetto-wrap the burgers that leaves the buns soaked in grease.” I was not wrong.

Even an hour after purchase, this burger was way above average, and had I gone with this set up originally, I think Five Guys may have copped a four star rating. I still have the same issues (cooked well done, smished meat), but without that hated cheese, the delicious onions-two-ways, fresh jalapeños, and greasy sesame seed bun were able to really shine. And Amiel was right: A-1 is a great sauce on this thing, at least in the format I ordered mine, and I say get it (even if it’s on the side).

Would I feel the same without the fresh jalapeños? Perhaps not – fresh jalapenos can make a sneaker palatable. But it’s a moot point, they’ve got ‘em, I love ‘em, and Five Guys delivers a very solid burger that I’d select over any other to-go burger in the area.