Could I be any more random?

[oceloty]

1. So pretty much everyone who walked out of today's standardized testing room thought they failed, including me. Statistically, 30% of us will be right, but 100% of us won't know until January. I'm going to view this as three months in which I don't have to study [this stuff], no matter how it turns out. But, man. $1500 for a standardized test, and we had to bring out own pencils.

2. This also means I have no excuse to find a more permanent place to live, that isn't my cousin's spare bedroom.

3. I discovered that if you broil meat on a broiling pan with broiling rack, it gets a nice seared crispy, er, crispiness. What can I say; in my world, meat is for stirfrying and baking is for brownies. Unless, as recently happened, the handle shears off the frying pan. (Alas, my friend. You were pretty good for a $10 frying pan from Target. You were a paragon of frying pans. You were ... nonstick.)

4. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I cooked my cousin pork chops without using a rack. Shucks.

5. I don't think I'm supposed to use the rack for brownies, though. Those were coming out pretty well without one. But then, why do baking racks exists?

6. Also in my defense, I did actually cook in grad school (baked chickens and everything), but still I was unaware of this whole rack concept. Actually, it explains a lot.

7. In the roughly 5,000,000 minutes I have spent staring into space whilst (haha, I've never used "whilst" before. It's kind of fun to say. Whilst whilst whilst.) theoretically studying, I have reached absolutely zero opinions about:

- Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize.
- What to do with this theoretical free time which have been spending studying (well, until I find out if I have to spend it studying again, and isn't that exactly the kind of confusing parenthetical one would expect of someone who spent eight solid hours huffing a standardized test booklet and scantron form).
- health care reform.

On the other hand, I have decided:
- I miss Chicago. Not all the time, but I'll be thinking, e.g., what to eat and it will hit me that I can't go to the dirt-cheap but awesome sushi place anymore. It is not two blocks away, it is two days' drive. The Shedd Aquarium? Two days drive. The squinty CPL librarians who patiently checked out my holds when I was comatose post call? Two days ... oh, you get the picture.
- Pride and Prejudice with zombies? Must read (as soon as comes in at the library).
- I still think this broiling rack thing is pretty neat.

8. Is there a fannish thing I should check out, if there's time?

9. The Amazing Race! Yeah, baby. It's back.

10. Whoops. Apparently, my free time ... not quite so free. Off to read NEJM article for tomorrow morning.

11. Incidentally, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) usually has a least one poem per issue. Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read past the first 150 words but if you find something really good, I can hook you up.

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I believe you are not among the 30. And also, pocketbook ouch.

One of our favorite things to cook is a London broil. You broil it on both sides right up under the broiler and then make a sauce out of more parsely, lemon and butter than you think is possible. It is foolproof and so fricking yummy.

[oceloty.livejournal.com]

Hope you are well! How are things going?

Thanks! The London Broil sounds awesome. Particularly if you're making it.

Do you make the sauce out of the stuff juice that drips down the rack? And does this require another pan? (though this could turn into motivation to acquire new one)

[anneth.livejournal.com]

Oo, broiling is my favorite way to prepare meat! I usually just slop Worstershire sauce, pepper, and garlic salt on top and broil my steak that way. Broiling, however, is only just catching on in England. You can't buy broiling plate/rack combos in homeware stores, and many ovens don't have the heating element up top.

I know, it's weird, what with the whole "London broil" thing. I can't explain it! But I do love a good broiled steak.

I also can't explain why baking racks exist. I've only ever used them to cool things off.

[oceloty.livejournal.com]

That sounds yummy.

Does this mean "London broil" is like "English muffins" -- impossible to find in England?

I now have this image of English people turning their ovens upside down to broil stuff. Unless baking racks are involved somehow.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Actually, what I do is just put the London broil (which is actually called that in the store and is usually an inexpensive cut of meat) on a cookie sheet, salt and pepper the meat, broil it and then let it rest. Resting is important.

The sauce is actually a mixture of tons of fresh parsley, lemon juice and butter, which sounds weird with beef but is actually AWESOME!

[oceloty.livejournal.com]

You mean ... no broiling rack? Gasp.

It still sounds good.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

But then, why do baking racks exist?
Nobody expects the Pannish Inquisition!

I have to confess that I have *never* figured out how to broil things in the broiler, I just sear them on the stovetop.

Theoretically, I should be opposed to non-reusable-forever things, but at the supermarket and even the 99 cent store you can buy aluminum foil pans that fit the broiler so you can easily retrieve the juices and make sauce out of them (...and the juices do not get stuck onto the broiler...)

[oceloty.livejournal.com]

Baking racks: it's a mystery, innit?

I'm pretty sure I could find something to be a broiling pan, and something to be a broiling rack. But by the time I did that, I'd have to rest a while before the intense work of finding something to broil.

Also, I have this hunch that the leaner cuts of meat used for stir fry might be too dry to broil?

Clearly these kinds of dilemmas are why canned tuna was invented.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

That, or crock pots.

I don't actually know, but I think that the difference between broiling and stir frying is not so much tenderness as how the meat is sliced--I know that people certainly broil steaks but (if they can afford it) also thin-slice the same cuts for stir-fries.

As long as you do not have an excessively sensitive smoke alarm, you can put a little butter or olive oil (or a mixture) in a really hot frying pan and pan-broil the steak or fish or (as long as it's flat) chicken, and then make the sauce in the pan. As for the train wreck that the pan looks like afterwards, there's always OxyClean...