I ran the broiler for a little while in a small (mostly) family-run restaurant. One of the servers came in with an order for a steak “cooked very, very, VERY rare”. Since that happens to be how I like my steak, no problem, says I. I fire the steak and send it out. A little bit later, the server comes back with a worried look on her face. “You know that very very VERY rare steak? It was TOO RARE!” I tell her to bring it back and I’ll fire it some more. Less than a minute passed, and she comes back empty handed. The customer refused to send it back because it was cooked exactly as he ordered it. He habitually ordered steaks that way in the hope that it would be rare, but he’d never gotten one cooked per his request.
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I prefer Shirley O’Corriher’s Cookwise.
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I’ve always done this:
Want the onion slices to stay intact? Cut them pole to pole.
Want them to dissolve/disintegrate into the dish? Cut them across the equator so they look like rainbows.
Otherwise if I’m dicing or chopping, I just try to keep the pieces as even as possible.
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Yup
That’s usually because the establishment hates steaks that are sent back. They prefer to dumb it all down.
I’ve concluded it’s worth belaboring the point when ordering. “Rare. Not black-and-blue, and not just showing pink. Red inside. Can you do that?” If it’s not a strong yes, I don’t order steak. Then, if it comes overdone, everyone’s conscience is clear when it goes back.
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I once put on quite a show describing a pork chop once, ( in addition to the description there was imploring and beseeching), and when it still wasn’t right, they comped it, and IIRC, gave me desert too. I still won’t go back though.
