hangar steak a-grilling
Sometimes I need a little steak. I like the classic sides with it, too. But when it’s seventy degrees and sticky on a school night, I don’t think baked potatoes and broccoli, or anything else that involves turning on the oven. Instead, I think steak salad.
I’ve been making steak salads since I was seventeen, when I discovered that by bringing the yin of the meat line and the yang of the salad bar together, I could produce a plate wholly more appetizing than anything else to be found in the college dining hall (this, if my GPA is to be trusted, was my greatest academic achievement). Nowadays, steak salads are familiar fare at NYC’s Vietnamese, Thai, and pan-Asian eateries (pan-Asian means that the food is cooked in an Asian pan, or wok; the cook, like as not, is a Mexican dude). But I do not reject the steak salad, as I do this year’s celebutante sandwich, the Banh Mi. For where the Banh Mi’s joys have been sung, tarted up, botoxed with truffle oil, bejeweled with foie gras drippings, and sung again, the steak salad is long past celebrity status, if it ever had any.* No one sings it, no one sends it flowers, not even a lousy nasturtium. That makes it safe to eat.
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