Tonight it’s surf & turf at the house of Punches. I’m on day 2 of my 2-day staycation.
The beer: Köstritzer Schwarzbier. And it is not bad at all.
The beef: Wagyu skirt steak.
The lobster: Just your run of the mill, average lobster.
Beer varies greatly depending on the brand and the style. Even the batch sometimes, but quality brands usually get a consistent taste that is unique to the product between batches. This one was brewed in Bavaria in compliance with the Reinheitsgebot, both of which makes for excellent results. Their hops are better than what is used in beers produced elsewhere, and so is their barley and their water — and that’s all that’s allowed in it. Still, even small variances in the fermentation or brewing process, or even the ratio of ingredients creates a seemingly infinite range of tastes. Most of them are delicious.
Like beer, every steak is unique. Even down to the cow. The taste depends alot on where the cow was raised, what it was fed, what the water mineral content was in the water in that area, how it was raised, how it was butchered, and what part of the cow you’re eating. Yep, different cuts of meat on the same cow can taste differently and are cooked differently. Tonight I went with a well marbled Wagyu skirt steak. These are cows that have been bred extensively to be tasty to eat, and fed careful diets to ensure that. Even still, there are variances even between the animal. Most of them are delicious.
Then there’s lobster. Lobster is never unique. Boil it. Butter it. Eat it. If you cook a hundred lobsters, from wildly different sources, the same way every time, and take a bite out of each one, your first bite will taste the same as your last and every bite in between. There’s no part of the lobster that doesn’t taste like another. I don’t dislike lobster, but, it is not a diverse animal. I’m sure the lobster doesn’t feel that way, but, who cares what the lobster you’re eating thinks? I sure don’t. Still, a tasty side dish. They’re easy and formulaic to cook and they produce a consistent, predictable result.
One thing that Beef and Lobster have in common though is that they are prey animals. You should never be concerned with what your prey thinks.
The cow knows it’s going to be eaten. I’ve seen it in the slaughterhouse. They know. They are social enough creatures that they know when their other pen mates go and never come back. They know where that place is. When they’re rounded in, they see what’s happening to the cow in front of them. This is what they were bred for, but, that doesn’t mean they don’t experience some degree of existential horror when they put it together.
The lobster on the other hand, never knows, because it’s never been cooked before and doesn’t have enough consciousness to observe either its lack of uniqueness or the others that have been cooked and eaten because they’re harvested differently than cows are. All they see is a trap, and then they’re somewhere else, and being cooked and eaten. They have a much lower degree of consciousness than the usual cow, is what I’m saying.