Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:37:24 -0600
Reply-To: mcneely4@COX.NET
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@COX.NET>
Subject: Re: Trip report -- Florida Keys, State Parks, and Repairs
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
I thought creamed corn and perhaps TRUE chicken fried steak. TRUE cfs as opposed to the battered and deep fat fried stuff that passes under the name nowadays. Since this is camp food prepared in or near a VW camper, I assume it is legit for commentary. Both my parents were cooks in Texas diners in the 1940s and 1950s. The original cfs was a piece of thin cut round steak, tenderized with a steak hammer, salted and generously peppered, dredged in flour (no eggs, or other contaminants, milk MIGHT be allowed), and quickly fried in a pan or on a grill in fat that did not cover the steak, one side, then flipped and finished. The battering and deep fat frying only appeared with the do everything quick mentality of modern restaurant cookery. Flour and eggs are cheaper than steak, so a larger serving could be offered for a given price if battered. And of course, if one orders cfs in a diner or other restaurant nowadays, unless it is a pretty decent place, it comes frozen in a box already battered, and is dropped frozen in the deep fat fryer. Yuch!!
This is written by the son of two old time Texan diner cooks.
BTW, where I come from, "minute steak" is meat composed of the scraps from trimming other cuts, mashed together in the mangler used for tenderizing round steak, and not an actual piece of meat. The frozen, packaged "minute steak" offered in supermarkets is this, as is that offered fresh in some markets. It is a way to get a higher price for what would otherwise be sold as hamburger. That doesn't mean I would never eat it, it just means it is what it is.
A good butcher (such as not found in modern markets for the most part, as almost all of them order in precut meats, which avoids labor, waste, and shipping of extra weight) told me the above about "minute steak," and examination of a couple of packages from a market confirmed that at least for those two packages, he was correct.
It is impossible to find a recipe for TRUE old time cfs on the internet, but some cafes in Texas still offer it. Some of them will call it "country fried steak," having lost track of the true cfs, and may also offer that abomination that is now called cfs.
mcneely
---- Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Looks like creamed corn and minute steak to me Al - nothing wrong with that.
>
> Nice report Harold - the beach side campsites look really nice! ;)
>
> Seeya, Jake
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> > Very nice trip Harold, I'm envious. But not envious of the slop you
> > have on the plates, what the heck is it?
> >
> > :)
> >
> > alistair
> >
> >
> >
> > On 25-Jan-11, at 12:54 PM, Harold Teer wrote:
> >
> > On the 19th of Dec, my wife and I left Harrisonburg, VA for a trip to
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> Jake
>
> 1984 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX - 'The Grey Van'
> 1986 Westy Weekender/2.5 SOHC Subie - 'Dixie'
>
> Crescent Beach, BC
>
> www.thebassspa.com
> www.crescentbeachguitar.com
> http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27
--
David McNeely
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