As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

[Radio Free Narnia]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

No Apocalypse set is complete without A Canticle For Liebowitz by Walter Miller, but I'm not sure if it's still in print.

[N1095A]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Gotta be a movie! hehe

I've heard that "On the Beach" is something else. I haven't seen either version.

[Radio Free Narnia]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

The original movie of "On The Beach" is up there with "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane." I still prefer the book.


Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is one Apocalypse tale that should have been a movie but was never picked up, mainly because the fx available at the time it was published couldn't have done it justice, or possibly because of the cannabalism scenes. At least Hollywood didn't get to butcher it the way they did The Postman.

[N1095A]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Yes, but they showed an old Saturday Night Live and Citizen Kane didn't say "Rosebud", he said "Roast Beef". Apparently he was trying to order out one more time.

He should have had daughters and named them Sugar, Candy and Walking!

They did a pretty good job on "Thirteen Days" though Costner's accent slips a bit. Good "Missiles of October" story.

[Jay]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Soylent Green - Just don't eat the Green soylent, it taste like chicken

What a memory...I still remember Edward G. Robinson as the old man who was being "processed" (eliminated), they gave him his last wish, and a dinner with a tomato (he hadn't seen a tomato since he had been a child). He said with a tear, "a love apple!". I still remember that scene often when partaking of a fresh tomato (my favorite fruit).

I saw Soylent Green as a teenager. Because fresh fruit and vegetables were a forgotten thing of the past, nobody under 30 ever tasted them or knew what they were.

[Guest]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Because fresh fruit and vegetables were a forgotten thing of the past, nobody under 30 ever tasted them or knew what they were.

That sounds like the kids in the UK on Jamie's School Dinners. Change of subject, I know, but did anyone see that program? It was an eye-opener.

[N1095A]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Remember that steak Leigh Taylor-Young bought in "Soylent Green"? It looked like it had been laying around for several weeks and it was like $80 or something. I just looked up the movie and it was set in the year 2022.

[Guest]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Maybe it was Japanese Kobe beef - half a million per cow!

[N1095A]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

What? You must be talking Yen! LOL

[Guest]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

What? You must be talking Yen! LOL

Unfortunately not. These are really expensive cows. My husband and son just came back from Japan where they were treated like royalty and fed Kobe beef in tiny little 3in steaks. Some can be as much as $300 a piece. Most of their individual meals were well over the $200 mark. And he wonders why I hate to cook for him anymore!

[Guest]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

http://members.tripod.com/~BayGourmet/wagyu.html

Kobe Beef is a legendary delicacy of Japan, a type of beef that is so well marbled that it goes right off the charts for Prime grading in any other country. The meat ends up looking like it has been left out in the snow because of the intensiveness of the white fat marbling, rivals foie gras for richness and caloric content, and costs an obscene amount, often $300 a pound or more for the real thing from Japan.

I have been exhaustively researching the topic of Kobe Beef in the hopes of purchasing one of those legendary cattle for about a year, since I had heard that they were ranched successfully in the United States for sale to a hungry Japanese market. I finally succeeded, but it wasn't an easy task. Here's why.

Let's start with the basics—Kobe beef comes from a breed of cattle called Wagyu. In order to earn the designation/appellation of "Kobe Beef", the Wagyu beef must come from Kobe, Japan, and meet rigid production standards imposed in that prefecture.

However, land and grain are expensive in Japan. So what is happening is that the beef production houses in Kobe have been contracting out to other producers to custom raise their cattle for them. Most specifically, Harris Ranch in California, among other producers in America and Australia—land and grain is cheap over there, and it's worth the shipping costs to have the cattle raised overseas. So they have the cattle raised to their exactingly specified Kobe standards, and they actually fabricate the carcasses in Kobe, making them legally "Kobe Beef" even though the cattle were actually born, bred and fed somewhere else.

The "Wagyu beef" designation can legally be applied to the meat from any cattle of the Wagyu breed; it's a genetic thing, not a place appellation or a reference to how the cattle were raised and fed. This breed is genetically predisposed to intense marbling, and produces a higher percentage of oleaginous, unsaturated fat than any other breed of cattle known in the world.

The reason for this is that Japan has been selectively breeding for marbling grade for centuries, while cattle ranchers in America relied on external conformation until just a few decades ago. Even today, carcass evaluation is a relatively new step in show judging, and only beginning to be a factor in the professional stud books of other countries.

Okay, why is it so bloody expensive and hard to find?

In summary, Wagyu cattle are astounding in yield grade and marbling, significantly superior in this respect to any other known breed. So why aren't more farmers ranching them in America?

Simple. Not enough of a market. The massive supermarket chains (Safeway, Lucky, FoodsCo, etc) carry Select grade beef which has minimal marbling. They restructured and lowered the grading of beef itself at one point (I think in the 1940's, but I could be mistaken on this) to reflect a more conservation conscious economy, because cattle fed out to a lower ratio of marbling were a more efficient return on resources. So today's Select grade beef (which is below Prime and below Choice) is lean indeed, the equivalent of pre-war Good grade.

While Wagyu beef has healthier fat (if there is such a thing!) and less waste backfat that American breeds, lean and skinny it is not, and the market for high prime beef is very limited in America. It's fit to mass market only in Japan, so there it all goes, even if it's largely ranched elsewhere these days.

Annoyingly, when we in America want to purchase Wagyu, we have one of two options: we can buy it shipped back over from Japan at some insane cost per pound that includes two transoceanic fares, or we can try to track down an independent Wagyu rancher who will sell one carcass. This is harder than you think.

Evil Japanese Wagyu Conspiracy?

Typical dialogue between desperate Wagyu seeker and known Wagyu rancher:
Me: "I understand you ranch Wagyu cattle. I'd like to buy some."
Rancher: "Ahh, well, yes we do. But who told you that?"
Me: "I did some research. Will you sell me some?"
Rancher: "Minimum order is 500 head. We do custom feeding programs only for major customers. I can't help you."
Me: "Oh, so you're selling to Japan, then."
Rancher: "Well, yes."
Me: "Sigh. That's all I needed to know."
Scenario repeated several times in several places with minimal variation. Try it yourself and see, and email me if you find anyone who will actually talk to you. Japan has a very tight monopoly on Wagyu beef, whether on purpose or simply because most large custom ranching operations do not want to sell one cow to the home consumer.

I am still not quite sure what was going on behind the scenes here, but I did get a distinctly chilly reception from basically every major Wagyu contractor I tracked down as being a large scale shipper of cattle to Japan. Interesting, no? Could be just a coincidence and I managed to catch a lot of ranchers having a bad hair day, but who knows.

Anyhow, I finally succeeded in finding a small, independent producer who was sincerely interested in marketing Wagyu beef in America, and I am purchasing one carcass (and a heck of a deep freezer). I plan to give out samples to many, many chef friends of mine, and encourage them to buy carcasses, and encourage local gourmet stores to begin carrying the stuff—at a reasonable price, which we can get if I start putting together a good large order. If this works out well, you may start to see Wagyu in stores at least in the San Francisco Bay area, because I'm going to do my darndest to put it there. If only so I don't have to buy the whole whomping cow when I want a reasonably priced Wagyu steak. :/

So, what's the big deal about this beef anyways? What does it taste like?

How does Wagyu beef taste? If it's cooked wrong, lousy. Bland. Not too flavorful. Kind of boring. If you cook it right? Awesome. Beef foie gras. Smooth, velvety, incomparably sweet with a subtle tang of savor that lingers on the palate like a rare perfume. It's a Japanese thang, I guess, and a Westerner used to eating a huge plate of aged beef (which is also something I adore) might not be able to fully appreciate the subtlety of Wagyu.

And true Kobe beef? Overrated. At ten times the price because the cow was raised on expensive land eating expensive Japanese grain and beer, the quality is not noticeably better than ordinary Wagyu beef that grades out to super-prime. About those legendary cow massages? It's in part because they don't have enough room to exercise in a normal paddock. American and Australian raised Wagyu cattle that get the oleaginous feed and a well designed exercise program grade out just fine, and I doubt even the most discerning palate could tell the difference if the grade was the same.

Anyhow, I hate to say this, but it's a waste for the average consumer to buy Wagyu beef and try to cook it at home without special instructions. If you care enough to buy the stuff in the first place, research how to cook it before you lay out the dough—it is markedly different from anything you will have handled before, and I mean markedly. Its physical structure, texture and cooking times do not resemble beef so much as foie gras, except that it doesn't poach nearly as well and responds better to searing.

How do I cook Wagyu if I actually buy some?

If you try to treat a Wagyu steak as if you were cooking beef, you will be sorry you did, and you will look down at your plate and say, "Damn, I spent that much money on this?" Don't do that. Think about quick-sear cooking techniques for things like rare tuna and foie gras, not about steak. If you do it right, you may just acquire an addiction for life.

Open flames, preheated cast iron and Wagyu beef are friends. Good friends. A quick sear of thin pieces in a very hot flame works wonders, and if you are lucky enough to have a thick steak, you want it absolutely seared and crispy on the outside and raw and quivering on the inside, even if you do not normally eat your steak this way.

You can use an intensely preheated cast iron pan or grill to achieve this effect, but you cannot allow the steak to remain in contact with heat for long enough to melt all the fat and cause it to drip out of the internal structures of the meat, or you will end up with boringly tough, dry, expensive meat.

Wagyu is a fragile creature under heat. Treat it delicately and with the utmost care, and it will reward you with velvety perfection. Another good analogy to cooking Wagyu is that of a baked Alaska—you need to sear the outside, but if you let it sit under the heat too long, it will melt the ice cream inside, and you will have an unappetizing mess. The physical structure of Wagyu beef is not unlike ice cream in that it can literally melt and change into something very different from its ideal form.

Wagyu sashimi, or thin raw strips of beef marinated in a bit of soy sauce, dashi broth and green onion, is very popular in Japan. If tartare is not to your taste, place the thin strips on top of a very hot bowl of rice briefly, and the heat will cook it perfectly. Which is to say, very slightly. "Well done" and "Wagyu" are not words that go well together.

[N1095A]

Re: As if things weren't bad enough for New Orleans!!

Guess I'll have to go to Hardee's for an Angus beef burger instead!