That's ok, I've been so caught up with work I haven't been active for quite some time. I was in a great flow, but I feel a bit bedraggled and turned upside down at the moment.
Ah yes, let me pause to reflect on the perfect steak.
Salt, pepper, and or mustard seeds and olive oil = perfection
However, Gosh that does sound amazing! I've never tried the balsamic vinegar but now I'm intrigued! I'll have to give it a go for sure!
For sure! The balsamic vinegar is a great addition. With some steak, it just does something beautiful. It feels so strange, I have been doing it like that my whole life, so whenever I eat steak without it, something always feels lost.
I love the addition of mustard though! When you cook any meat with mustard, the condiment or the powder, something beautiful happens. A roast in the oven coated with mustard and then the gravy made with ample of the meat-juice-mustard-sauce, is something heavenly!
Valentine's steaks ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ the one was lazy aged. What a difference hey. I'm not sure if I told you but I spent 5 years working in a grill and butchery (Theo's in Mouille Point). An upper class restaurant with its own blockman which meant we cleaned, treated and aged all our meat. Everything from venison to biltong. I started out as just a waitress but I loved getting my hands dirty and getting involved in all aspects, especially when it came to my passions for wine and food. I eventually ended up in management because I aur I breathed was the industry.
I loved standing with the block man and learning with my own hands how to remove sinue, cut the perfect steaks, whether they were sirloin, rump or fillet and being able to identify each them on the pass. It made service much easier especially on busy nights!
I also was fascinated by dry and wet aging and enthralled by the amazing difference that love and care for the meat makes. No need for BBQ marinate omg 🫣🫣🫣🫣
Sorry for only replying now! Life hey. As soon as I think I have a tight grasp around its neck, it eludes me.
That is an awesome experience! I always wanted that, having worked in bakeries and such. But from my experience, few people know how to work with sourdough really. The head chef who appointed me also said as much, that they always lose their head baker because of the low pay and other places reaping everyone who can work with sourdough. Strange that baking in our country is still seen as such a low-ranked job despite the skillset being so scarce.
Anyways, those steaks look awesome! I love the Italian cooking philosophy: use as few ingredients as possible; it will both test your skill as a cook and it will highlight how amazing food tastes as you will savour the individual ingredients for what they can provide.
AMEN! And there we circle right back to growing your own fresh herbs <3 with that and garlic, you don't need much else.
I worked in a production bakery as well. Totally. it's akin to slave labor - not on the owner's part, but they had a production manager there who was like the Gestapo. Terrible hours and backbreaking work. And it's not just being a cog in a production line. Baking is a real skill, especially when you start talking pastries and artisan breads.
Luckily, the family I worked for are phenomenal people and I've never seen a company that size value their staff the way they do. It was some of the hardest but the best working years of my life. I stuck with them for almost four years. Greek people make great bosses. It's a lot like working for Italians, so emotions are always high and you've got to roll with it, but hearts of gold man, hearts of gold. Today, they are still one of the most successful production and retail bakeries in Cape Town. Espresso Bakery in Paarden Eiland.
Theo's I mentioned above was also initially a completely Greek restaurant although it did specialize in seafood and grills later on. Theo was a full-on Greek man himself. If you could personify being Greek, he would have been it. He broke plates regularly, took daily siestas, drank just the right amount of wine, went swimming naked, his non-negotiable attire was a pair of shorts made out of Albany flour sacks and a t-shirt (even at weddings and funerals) drank olive oil straight out of the bottle, ate onions like apples and at the age of 80+ was having more sex than any of us in our 20s 😂😂 what a legend of a man.
One day I think I'll start a series about all the crazy and wonderful jobs I've had.
Sorry again for writing only now. What a crazy week. I think I managed to carve out a first draft of kind for my PhD. So my brain is just mush.
The Theo guy sounds like a fun guy to have been around with! Few such spirits in our midsts left in this world. Maybe that is the trick to live to 80+! I love olive oil, but it is so expensive. The rest I can still deal with.
You should totally write such a series! I would really like to read along haha.
For sure. It is such a sad system we find ourselves in. So many people are abused and mistreated in the food spaces. I have so many stories of bakeries in which I worked where people were paid far below minimum wage, and stories of that kind. Crazy.