(no subject)

[msmidge]

Because Atlanta has relocated to whatever the hottest circle of hell is, we went out to eat last night rather than cooking at home. We went to the "nice" kosher restaurant, which is expensive but they ran a bunch of buy-one-get-one-free coupons in the Jewish newspaper so it was only about 100% more than we usually would spend rather than 200%. As for its "niceness"--the food is pretty good, but it is severely lacking in ambience. It's not that much nicer in atmosphere than a Picadilly cafeteria. The "nice" kosher restaurant tries to serve some Southern foods, and their fried chicken is actually good. So last night I tried the "country-fried steak."

What a bizarre dish. I'm sure I've had the TV dinner version of it before, but this was something else. It was whatever kind of beef they use in Chinese dishes like beef & broccoli; whenever I got a taste of it with the peppers on my plate it confused me because it tasted like Chinese food. And the slab of beef was encrusted with fried-chicken coating. And then there was about a gallon of white gravy on top. If I had been working out on the farm all day, it probably would have been a fine meal, but since I had been cowering from the heat behind heavy curtains all day, it just made me feel like an obese American who shops at Wal-Mart.

In conclusion, I will probably not order country-fried steak again, even though it tasted fine. It's just too weird.

Comments

[the-ocean.livejournal.com]

i've always thought chicken fried steak was to weird for me to even try. i've never had it.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

I've just finished reading Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood, in which they rhapsodize about chicken-fried steak so often that it almost makes sense. But here's the thing...J&M claim that the wonder of chicken-fried steak is due not to the steak itself, but to its alchemy with the cream gravy that inevitably accompanies it. Except that in a kosher restaurant, obviously it doesn't. Apparently fake cream gravy doesn't have the same effect.

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

They're wrong about the gravy. My grandmother would sooner have died than serve cream gravy. It was the mushroom gravy all the way with her.

The alchemy of chicken-fried steak, in my humble but correct opinion, is that you can disguise an absolutely terrible cut of meat that way. You take a hunk of cow that's gristly and tough, pound the stuffing out of it with a meat mallet until it's about half the original thickness, bread it to disguise the trauma, fry it up and serve. Trust me on this, we ate a lot of it when I was a kid because teachers' salaries were piss poor in those days (even by today's piss poor standards)

[laurens10.livejournal.com]

Yikes, Picadilly-esque atmosphere? Run and hide!

I thought it was the strangest thing when I moved to Texas and they all were calling "country fried steak" "chicken fried steak"! Oh, the culture shock! ;)

My mother used to make it all the time. I liked it then, but gah, even if I ate beef, I'm sure it would just make me sick now!

[elizabethxiii.livejournal.com]

can i friend you? i think i want to see if your plan to take over the world is anything similar to mine...

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

Sounds great! I will return the favor. :)