John Dvorak’s Perfect Flank Steak Recipe

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Apparently there is only one way to cook flank steak properly and John knows how to do it. This was a topic of conversation on TWIT a couple weeks ago and I forgot to post it. I make this post mainly for my own archival purposes but here it is if anyone else cares as well.

This is a simple recipe I’ve been bragging about on the Twit podcast. I’ll reprise all my old Boardwatch and other recipes over the next month. Perfect Flank steak (London Broil) Ingredients: 1 1/2- 2 pound flank steak soya sauce (Japanese style) sumac (powdered) Mesquite fire Directions: Put whole flank steak into a shallow pan the bottom of which has 1/8-inch of Japanese style light soya sauce (Kikkoman is perfect for this). Cover the top of the meat with more soya sauce. Let stand (turning several times) in the marinade for 15-20 minutes but no longer as it begins to cook the meat. Have ready a mesquite charcoal fire going in a barbecue grill. Make sure there are enough embers to produce flames from the charcoal. Toss the flank steak on the grill and cook for 4 minutes on each side (this has to be adjusted with meat thickness). The meat should be cooked rare but should be nice and seared on the outside. Slice the meat across the grain at a sharp angle and in thin slices. Layer the pieces on the plate so the red center of each piece shows. Sprinkle a tablespoon of sumac over the slices. Sumac is a lemon-flavored Middle Eastern spice found at International grocers. It’s not critical to the success of this dish, but it’s a great flourish. This dish can also be accomplished under a good broiler but never picks up the wood flavors and it is more difficult to sear. You need a hot temperature to make the recipe work. When you start to nail this recipe, it’s exceptionally spectacular. It takes a couple of shots to get it down. I’ve seen variations on the presentation where the meat is topped with chimichurra or placed on top of a mixture of crushed tomatoes, garlic and basil. Whatever is done, the marinade/cooking process is the most critical aspect of this dish. This goes well with a salad and a good rice dish.

OK, some points. For some reason if you let this meat sit in the marinade too long it changes its texture completely and doesn’t “cook” but actually cures like a ham. I would advise anyone who starts to get this recipe down to try marinading the meat for two hours in the soya sauce. You’ll see what I mean. It’s gets weird. Anyway, that’s what I meant. I suspect that more traditional marinades which include oil whould lessent this problem, but I have experimented with a lot of alternatives and this simple approach is still the best. I’ve manged to make this acceptable with broiling although it’s not as good. So a gas grill should work, but make sure it is as hot as it can be. Smokers do not work unless you first grill the meat at high temps. You can grill it for a shorter period then slow cook it for a half hour and if you nail it the result is spectacular, but it’s even more risky. And, yes, it should be rare or the meat gets too chewy. Let me put up a sub blog or another forum with all this stuff so the readers can contribute recipes and they won’t get lost here. I think the next recipe will be instructions on how to cook Iranian-style rice, whcih I consider the best in the world. It’s also brain-dead easy although it violates everything you’re told in this country about cooking rice.

Link to the original post by Dvorak.

Tuscan Whole Milk - Amazon Reviews

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This delightful piece comes to us courtesy of BoingBoing:

It seems the mischievious crowd of folkd over at ytmnd.com have gotten a hold of a gallon of milk being sold on Amazon and decided to write some reviews for it, 344 of them...

"One of the insurmountable obstacles in my life has been how to get a gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk from Gristedes back to my apartment without finishing it first. Up until now it was necessary to buy a second gallon. Amazon has changed all that. Now I can get my Tuscan Whole Milk at my apartment in a sealed cardboard box that will protect it at least as far as the elevator. From that point the "No Milk Guzzling" sign in the elevator holds me back. In the short walk to my apartment door I may down a pint or two but for the most part the gallon stays intact. This has changed my life immeasurably for the better."

"I had a problem where my roof was leaking. I poured some Tuscan Whole Milk over it to seal it up and it just flowed right into the hole and didn't do anything. I now have milk constantly dripping down from the ceiling and it has stained the drywall as well. The milk trapped in the ceiling is now rancid and smells horrible. It has also induced a pest infestation problem. The pest control company won't deal with it because of the odor is unbearable in the house. My wife and children are now leaving me as well. This product has ruined my life. Do not buy this product, I suggest some roof caulking or tar instead."

"At first I was struck with despair when my cat got into my gallon of Tuscan whole milk, but what was once consternation quickly turned to joy as seconds later my cat became Halle Berry dressed in a black leather cat outfit. I cannot thank the creators of Tuscan whole milk and Gristedes Supermarkets of New York for the limitless pleasure which ensued."

Tropical Storm Chris Update: Strengthening

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Tropical Storm Chris continues to strengthen this morning, with maximum sustained winds now at 65 mph, just 9 mph short of hurricane strength. It is expected to become a hurricane later today or early tomorrow.Chris is churning west-northwest just north of the Leeward Islands. It is a very compact storm with tropical storm force winds extending 75 miles mainly northeast from the center. Even though it is close to the northern Lesser Antilles, the effects are minimal because of its compact size; weather observations from Anguilla and St. Kitts and Nevis indicate winds are generally blowing at just 10 to 20 mph.

On its current projected path, Chris will pass a short distance north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands during the day and into the evening hours. Radar out of San Juan, Puerto Rico is already showing the outer bands of Chris sweeping through the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico itself. These squalls will be accompanied with short-lived bouts of heavy rain and gusty winds.

Tropical storm warnings remain posted for Anguilla as well as for Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. A hurricane watch has now been posted for the Turks and Caicos along with the southeastern Bahamas. A hurricane watch means that hurricane conditions are possible during the next 36 hours.

Residents of the Bahamas and south Florida should monitor the progress of Chris closely. Air Force Hurricane Hunters will investigate Chris again this afternoon.

The Politics of Piracy Emerge in Sweden

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John C. Dvorak wrote an article this week in PC Magazine about the new Piracy Party that has formed in Sweden:

Overlooked by the major media is the weird situation in Sweden, where a political party and lobbying organization has cropped up with the sole purpose of overturning the current crop of copyright and patent laws and creating something more modern and realistic: the Pirate Party and the Pro Piracy Lobby. This movement, while unlikely to have any effect in the U.S., could change things so dramatically in parliamentary democracies that we'd feel the aftershock anyway.

...
The U.S. government, after getting a bunch of complaints from Hollywood and the record industry, allegedly threatened Sweden (though some diplomatic channel), telling the country that it would be blacklisted in the World Trade Organization if it didn't shut down the Pirate Bay once and for all. Of course, there would have been a huge fuss in Europe if Sweden was indeed blacklisted, and a trade war would have ensued, so I doubt the threat was serious. After all, the WTO's main purpose is preventing trade wars. And we must have our Volvos. Nonetheless, that's the way the story has been played in the news, and the idle youth of Sweden—and now, perhaps, all of Europe—are politicizing around the issue. Let me tell you something. You do not want youth politicizing. Not that the kids shouldn't take part in politics. You just don't want to get them all jacked up over an issue like this. There are lots of them. They often have a lot of spare time. En masse they can ruin things for the "establishment." Luckily, they tend to be lazy and cynical and seldom take to the streets or the ballot.

...
Well, it looks like the boneheads in Hollywood and the RIAA, along with onerous new copyright laws such as the DMCA and other restrictions, are triggering change. I'd be cautious. Today's youth internationally are not like anything we've seen before. Their view of the world is skewed by the media and new realities. When they see all these restrictions, they see them done on behalf of fat guys who are flying around in private jets with a cabin full of high-class hookers while lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills. They see rappers in limos wearing diamonds and having their teeth removed and replaced with gold for no apparent reason other than to spend the suckers' money. They see mega-yachts and homes that are the size of a small college all bought and sold on the backs of the kids buying music. Indeed, they are seeing a different world than most of us did when we were growing up. It's nuts. It looks unfair or, worse, exploitative. Then they see old ladies arrested for copyright violations because a grandkid downloaded a song. Dead people are indicted in hysterical sweeps. Kids are threatened with ruination for song-swapping. They're not going to put up with it for long, I can assure you. While I think any outrage will fall short of storming the compounds of the rich and burning their homes, once the next-generation youth finally figure out that they can take over at the ballot box, all hell will break loose.

The Swedish Pirate Party homepage.

Dvorak's blog entry on this news item.

Stephen Colbert Causes Chaos on Wikipedia, Gets Blocked from Site

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On Monday night's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert addressed the online resource Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can read or edit. Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality," the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you - it becomes reality. Colbert's subsequent examples to prove "wikiality" would cause chaos on the site, and lead an administrator to subsequently block his account.


In the segment, Colbert logs on to the Wikipedia article about his show to find out whether he usually refers to Oregon as "California's Canada or Washington's Mexico." Upon learning that he has referred to Oregon as both, he demonstrates how easy it is to disregard both references and put in a completely new one (Oregon is Idaho's Portugal), declaring it "the opinion I've always held, you can look it up."

Colbert goes on to declare that he doesn't believe George Washington had slaves.

If I want to say he didn't that's my right, and now, thanks to Wikipedia *taps keyboard* it's also a fact.

Here's the fun part - Colbert actually did this. The Wikipedia articles on his show and George Washington were both edited by the user Stephencolbert to reflect the changes he declared on air as he tapped at his computer around 23:35 UTC - which is 6:35pm on the East Coast, during the taping of his show, hours before it aired.

It gets better.

Colbert then urged his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants and create an entry that stated their population had tripled in the last six months, a fact he freely stated to not know if it was "actually true," with his sidebar stating "it isn't." Guess what happened next?

Scores of internet users took Colbert's bait, repeatedly vandalizing approximately 20 articles on elephants before all being placed under a lock. The move also subsequently caused Wikipedia administrator Tawker to block Stephen Colbert from the website, reportedly to verify his identity. Either Tawker is incapable of checking the above log times that corroborate Colbert, or, more likely, he just wants to be mentioned on Stephen's show (as evidenced by his notes on the block and blog entry).

All this trouble over a man who, as his user page noted, is a 'defender of truth.'

Click here to watch the segment courtesy of youtube.