RBR Tailgating: Delightful Things and Steak

First, a little breakfast:

I’m old enough to be amazed that even an athlete who burns more calories in a day than I likely do in a week could eat that much in a sitting, but then again, I have a twelve year old food absorption machine masquerading as a child and a newer six year old model doing his very best to outpace his brother. You would not believe how many apples we go through in my house. But the TuaMan Delight is pretty impressive.

So moving on and speaking of delight…

In a second I’ll get to today’s tailgating recipes. I’ve commented multiple times that any recipe for steak that isn’t “Generously salt, cook to medium rare.” is unnecessarily complex, but then this is my fourth or fifth post about what other things can be done with steak, so my convictions are legitimately suspect. This time I made some compound butter, played around with duxelle, and accepted a loose definition of the word “marmalade.”

But first, come, let us curmudgeon together.

I’ll not make many converts here, but I really hate the Rammer Jammer cheer. It’s anathema to the spirit of sportsmanship and gets deployed far too often (not this year I suppose) when we did not just “beat the hell out of,” anybody but merely pulled off a win. There are two acceptable ways to acknowledge an opponent after a game. The first is a handshake and a nod with “Good game.” or “Well played.” said quietly and in a rehearsed manner so they don’t know if you meant it or not and the second is to blow cigar smoke in their stupid Knoxville loving face and send them on their way.

Yelling what is obvious on the scoreboard does nothing but make you look needy. Act like you been there before, and before, and before. But if somebody told me I couldn’t chant the Rammer Jammer cheer, I’d scream it from a mountaintop (also known as section U4-GG.) Bad cheers should die from disinterest rather than top down directive.

We’ve been told that Dixieland Delight is coming back, but there are conditions. For clarity, understand that I’m not talking about the song, but the cheer in this context. The song is wonderful and at best likely to strike the moral outrage of anyone who didn’t previously realize that when Julie Andrews sang “We Could Have Danced All Night” she wasn’t singing about dancing. The cheer used the “eff” word and so broke the hearts of someone.

The song is coming back. The cheer is not. At least not in any sanctioned way.

We have a convention that I assume is weird to Western civilization. We use a modern equivalent of hieroglyphs to convey meaning. If I use the letters “s,” “h,” “I,” and “t” in a certain order I’ve commited a sin against modern mores. It’s not a real sin. As I explained to the aforementioned twelve year old food absorption machine, some words are impolite because Godwinson couldn’t hold Hastings. We make noises to mean things and we have so many different reasons to do so, the most is that we might be uderstood. So by virtue of beating people with heavy stuff and not getting beaten with same the Normans got to dictate what was formal or courtly language and went all Latinate. “Excrement” is fine, but “sh*t” needs an asterisk. 952 years later we still defer to coitus but blush at f*ck. Our runes keep up the charade because we are polite.

I said I assume that this is weird to Western society because I’m ruthlessly ignorant of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, …keep going…., characters. I don’t believe you can toss an ampersand in the midst of an Asian written character and pretend you changed the meaning of a word without making sure you absolutely assured that you conveyed the meaning of a word. I can pretend that mother*&cker means nothing. The gymnastics we go through.

I think the make believe that we are not saying what we are saying is effing bul%&it.

When the song comes on, the students should sing as they like. It’s not “Beat Auburn” no matter who pretends it is. But say what you like no matter whether you like the cheer, which I don’t.

A few things that go with steak:

Compound Butter

- unsalted butter

- herbs, minced

- garlic, minced

- salt

Whip this stuff together with a fork, roll up in a bit of parchment paper, refigerate and slice as needed.

I’ve not specified anything frankly, because the possibilities are seemingly endless, but only after you spend a hell of a lot of time trying to end them. My parsley plant practically is Platonic, so I opted for flat leaf over basil or thyme, but both would be great.

In a large bowl, combine all the stuff and then form them into a tube. Wrap in parchment paper and chill. When cold, slice and top meats.

Proportions are not listed because this is so subjective. It’s your party. If it were mine there’d be way too much garlic.

Not Quite Duxelle

- 8 oz. mushrooms

- 3 tbsp butter

- 1 ½ onion

- 1 tspn thyme

- red wine as needed

- salt

Traditional duxelle it minced, done with parsley and white wine. I pureed this with red wine and thyme. OMG. You have to salt to taste, but this is the best steak sauce I’ve ever played with.

Parsley and Shallot Marmalade

- 6 shallots, sliced

- handful of Italian parsely

- dry white wine

- pepper

- salt

My father went to Scotland and came back with an improbably named cookbook called Tom’s Kitchen from an improbably name chef called Tom Kitchen. The guy’s got a blurb from Alain Ducasse so I’m not going to quibble.

His version of this recipe calls for a bit of Dijon, but I liked boiling everything down to dry, adding more wine, boiling everything to dry, and doing it all over again.

How can that be marmalade? It’s like confit. The definition keeps expanding, but you can clearly tell that it’s not jelly and that were it jam it would be jiggling differently.

All three of these can be made ahead of time, stored in a cooler, and brought to a tailgate. I think they’d be effing great. I’m serious as sh%t about that.

There’s a specter of repeal about Dixieland Delight. It’s not quite explicit, but if we get a F(**(&(ck Aub((^*%(n heard loudly and especially over the air waves, the song may once more get pulled.

If the fans do as they are told, they can keep on doing as they are told. If they say “eff AU” they may lose the song.

The people that run the PA system have said they’ll meet the people that like to curse at the PA system halfway by pretending their words mean different things. We all know what “Beat Auburn” means.

But it’s not the song, it’s the cheer. I hate being told what to do and we know the meaning isn’t the same as the words. If this is the last time make it the best time.

Fuck A%br$en. Fuck T3nn$$se&.

Once more, with feeling.