Oklahoma City: Cattlemen's Steakhouse

My first stop after landing at OKC was Cattlemen's. Despite my many visits to Oklahoma, I had never been there. It is located in Stockyard City, one of the older parts of town. The interior is 50's style old fashioned and very well maintained, giving an air of comforting hominess. The white linen napkins are another sign of old style service.

I started with a salad. I usually don't get creamy sauces, but I really enjoyed this garlic sauce. The garlic was noticeable but well balanced by the mayonnaise base.

For my main course, I ordered the blue ribbon steak. It's a nightly special of USDA prime meat. Tonight, it was a ribeye, my favorite cut. The steak was simply wonderful: tender, rich, juicy, perfectly cooked. The first thing I noticed about it was that it had been carefully trimmed of fat. The fat you care about, of course, is the marbling. The fat around the edges just gets in the way. I always like mushrooms with my steaks, but these were perhaps the best mushrooms paired with steak I've ever had. Their own meatiness was combined with the meatiness of the steak; to top things off, they were buttery soft. The mixed vegetables were great, with just enough butter. I used the bread to soak up the juices of both the mushrooms and the steak.

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Asheville NC: Luella's BBQ

Luella's is a nouvelle BBQ outfit on the north side of Asheville. It is nestled among the trees in a lovely neighborhood. The restaurant has lots of windows for inside seating and plenty of outside seating. Service was courteous and amazingly fast. This is a combination plate with pork and brisket. Both were very moist and tender. For the pork, I tried both the mild and hot vinegar sauces. To my surprise, I preferred the milder one because it didn't assert itself too much. I enjoyed the spicy tomato sauce for my brisket. The hushpuppies were very good. The fried okra was fresh out of the fryer and excellent. The slaw was of the vinegary variety, which I usually enjoy, but this version is heavy on the white stuff and didn't have quite enough variety in tastes for me.

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...

Everybody's Pizza

Everybody's Pizza is across the street from Emory University. It was founded in 1971 and has a seventies college feel. But it isn't musty or dated---you don't feel like you are eating in a museum. It's just pleasantly funky. They played a Big Bird song while I was there. What's no to like? The pizza is college-style as well, as contrasted to the Italian neighborhood style that is (or should be) the goal of a New York style pizzeria. I think that the cheese is the ingredient that most leads me to this feeling. In a New York pizza, the cheese would be central (even if it came from a low-grade Mob supplier), while in more suburban pizzas, the cheese is seen as one in a medley of ingredients that form the topping. (I think that cheese-centrism should be the essence of pizza. Remember that the modern pizza was created by adding cheese to traditional tomato sauce-covered bread.) I think the biggest fault of this pizza is the crust, which I found to be just a lit...

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

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