Gross Football Lunch – 2023-24 Conference Championship

Recipe of the Week: Steak Salad

Ingredients:

• Flank or skirt steak
  • Marinade:
    • Salt
    • Pepper
    • Red Wine Vinegar
    • Olive oil
    • Garlic powder (optional)
    • Onion powder (optional)
• Pine nuts
• Red bell peppers
• Radicchio
• Spring mix or arugula
• Parmesan cheese
• Dressing:
  • Red wine vinegar
  • Dijon mustard
  • Olive oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Capers
  • Scallions

Method & Analysis:

I know what you’re thinking: I promised you, one of my five loyal readers, that I would bring you gross lunches to enhance your football viewing experience, and yet, for the fourth time in this column’s inaugural season, my recipe is a fucking salad. In what possible universe does a salad of any description constitute a sufficiently gross football lunch? I understand your frustration. Decades upon decades of hack sitcoms and actively putrefying iceberg lettuce have combined forces to convince you – being the low-value maximalist that American capitalism wants you to be – that salads are the single most boring side dish in existence, and to consider them meals all their own is unthinkable.

My response is three-fold. First, if you are somehow under the impression that either the Cobb salad or the Caesar salad are not gross as all hell, you are simply beyond the pale. Go heat up your tendies in the microwave, we both know that’s what you were gonna do anyway. Second, this is my column and unless you’re ready to park the Brinks truck outside for the privilege of telling me otherwise, I’m gonna do what I want. Third, and most importantly, I submit to you a new vision for what a salad is. Salads are simply another type of pile. This steak salad is a pile’s pile; it is little more than a massive bowl of fat with leaves in it for color and pretense of health, and enough acidity to cut the fat, stand up to it, and bring everything into harmonious synthesis. It’s delicious, it’s disgusting, it’s a meal all it’s own. Let’s get to it!

For this salad, I am specifically calling on you to use either a flank or skirt steak. These cuts are a bit cheaper and respond better to slicing up and sharing among friends and family than your steak-ass-steaks (ribeyes, filets, strips, and such), and are just as delicious with just a little bit of extra care. Both cuts are best when marinated for a few hours before cooking; you can get away with not marinating a skirt steak, but for flank steaks, it’s all but necessary. To that end, the first step here is preparing the marinade. Grab a resealable container that can hold your steak; my personal container of choice for this is a casserole dish with a lid, but a gallon freezer bag will do just fine.

In order to prevent any cross-contamination, I’m instructing you to mix your marinade up in your container before you handle the steak, just as I did with last week’s chicken. Fill your container with generous portions of salt and pepper. If you have garlic powder and/or onion powder, feel free to add a polite amount of those as well; however, be advised that in my experience, old and caked garlic and onion powder tend to screw up the searing process something fierce. If you have these but they’re old and caked up, I advise you not to bother. Once your dry seasonings are in the container, add a good amount of red wine vinegar and some olive oil. Use enough to get all of the dry seasoning wet, but not immersed, and make sure you use more vinegar than oil. Seal up your container and place it in the fridge to marinate for no fewer than three hours but no more than six.

And now, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is there’s more to cook in this salad than steak. The good news is it’s easy and can – nay, should – be done in advance. The first thing to cook ahead is the fussiest, and that is the pine nuts. Raw pine nuts cook quickly, but they also burn quickly. You will need to keep them moving and keep a close eye on them. Grab a non-stick pan, put it on medium-low to medium heat, and dump your raw pine nuts in, along with some olive oil and salt. Toss them together and stir frequently (if not constantly), making sure to keep them in a single layer. Once you start to see some (but not all) of your pine nuts start to turn an attractive golden brown, remove them all from the heat into a bowl or dish. If you wait until they all turn this color, some of them will burn. It’s better to have some nuts cooked sub-optimally than to have any burned ones, and the less cooked nuts will cook a little bit more once they’re off the heat. Be very careful, and keep an eye on your pine nuts every second they’re in the pan!

Next, saute the peppers. Cut two red bell peppers into long, thin strips, then dump some more oil in your pan and bump the heat up to medium-high. Once your oil is hot and shimmering, add the peppers in, along with a non-excessive smattering of salt. Stir your peppers fairly often, but not constantly. They will soon start to soften somewhat, and after a few minutes, they’ll soften a lot. They will also gain some very pretty, roasty-looking color on their skins (this process will go faster the less frequently you stir). Once the peppers have some of this color and are mostly softened, they are done.

Finally, it’s time to deal with the radicchio. Grab your head of radicchio, cut off the root end and peel off the top layer of leaves. Then, slice the rest of the head into strips. It’s time to saute the strips, and you’ll notice this is more or less the same process as sauteing the peppers. Put your pan on medium-high heat and add oil. Once the oil is hot, add the radicchio and some salt, stirring relatively frequently, until radicchio strips shrink visibly and brown along the edges. They are now done; get them off of the heat. If it’s going to be more than an hour or so before you assemble and serve your salad, put the pine nuts, peppers, and radicchio in the fridge.

Now it’s time to return to the steak. Take your marinating steak out of the fridge about an hour and a half before serving time so that it can come to room temperature; leave it in the marinade for another hour. After this hour is up, take the steak out and pat it completely dry on all sides with paper or cloth towels, then discard the remaining marinade. Next, heat up some vegetable oil (or any other neutral oil with a high smoke point; do not use olive oil unless you’re scheming to burn your home down for insurance money) in a pan or cast-iron skillet, and wait until the pan gets hot. Once the pan is searing, screaming hot, you’ll notice some wisps of smoke come off of it; that means it’s ready. Place your steak in the pan and let it sear undisturbed for 4-6 minutes, until a nice brown crust has formed on the underside, then flip and sear for another 3-5 minutes, or until another nice brown crust forms on the other side.

Your steak is done; haul it out and let it rest undisturbed for 15 minutes. Use this time to make your dressing. First, finely chop a bunch of scallions and a mince a handful of capers (it does not matter if these are the big kind of capers or the little kind), then set them aside. Grab red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, olive oil, and a large salad bowl. Do not use a bowl with a large, flat bottom; a small flat portion is acceptable, but too much flat surface area will greatly complicate the dressing making process.

Now I’m going to talk you through how to make a basic vinaigrette by hand. Do not be afraid, it’s quick and easy, but you must follow the directions in this order. Pour a few generous glugs of vinegar in the bottom, then add a small dollop of Dijon mustard. Next, grab a fork or small whisk and gently tip the salad bowl towards your person, then start vigorously beating the vinegar and mustard together. While beating this mixture, add olive oil to the mixture as slowly as possible. Do not stop beating at any point. If you need to set your bowl down flat while you add oil, do so.

As you add oil and continue to beat, you’ll notice the mixture going from looking like a mixture to looking like a unified substance; congratulations, you’ve made a vinaigrette! Immediately stop adding oil and stop beating the dressing together, then set the bowl down. Add a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper and mix them in, then add your chopped scallions and minced capers, and stir those in as well. DO NOT add any of the seasonings or garnishes to the dressing until your vinaigrette is mixed together! It will screw the whole thing up.

Now, add your lettuce. Really, any kind of lettuce will do, but I recommend spring mix or arugula; these lettuces have actual flavor that can withstand the bazooka blast of fatty acid to come. Next, add your pine nuts, peppers, and radicchio, then stop to grate some Parmesan cheese. Grab your Parm and a cheese grater, and grate the cheese on the narrow side of the grater that has the single concave blade that you never use. This will shave your cheese into nice, long, strips; once you have a good amount of these strips, crumble them up a bit more in your hands, so there’s enough cheese to disperse through. Add the cheese to the bowl and toss everything together as best you can.

Now it’s time to slice the steak and serve. You’ll notice that both flank and skirt steaks have lines running throughout them; these are collectively referred to as the ‘grain’ of the steak. It is of the utmost importance that you slice your steak at a perpendicular angle to the grain and not alongside the grain. If you cut perpendicular to the grain, your steak will be impossibly tender and delicious; if you cut alongside the grain, your steak will be extremely tough and chewy and altogether unpleasant. I recently made this salad and sliced the steak the wrong way, and my jaw was sore for a couple days afterward. If you are having trouble visualizing where the grain is and/or where to make your cuts, please refer to the below picture:

Serve the salad into bowls, place sliced steak on top of each bowl, and go to town. None would dare call this salad boring, and none would dare fail to notice how gross and decadent it is. If you must continue your protestation that this is a salad and all salads necessarily suck, please take your Ron Swanson cosplay over to the kids’ table. We grownups are enjoying ourselves too much to suffer your complaints. Also, I just heard the microwave beeping; your tendies are ready.

Divisional Round Results

At the risk of kicking Bills fans while they’re down, I must say the Divisional Round went just about as well as it possibly could have. My 14-point, 13-point, and 12-point playoff pool picks all hit; yes, missing my 11-point pick does still hurt a bit, but I made my peace with that particular brainfart a week ago. That said, the Lions’ second playoff victory did stick me with a net loss – in hindsight, I was entirely too confident the Rams would beat them in the first round – but that loss was only a single point. My pool differential is sitting at a healthy +28, and that’s good enough for me.

And, as a spread-betting dilettante, I am pleased as punch to have gone 3-1 against the spread, and having come within a failed two-point conversion of a perfect 4-0 record on the weekend. (As a reminder to any offensive playcallers who may be reading this, remember: if your plan for making a two-point conversion is calling an end zone fade, you don’t have a plan.) My faith in my own ball knowledge is restored; the nice thing about picking only four games is that it’s possible to actually research each matchup in some detail during one’s leisure time. Through the power of taking things seriously, I was able to assess each team’s relative strengths and weaknesses and synthesize my findings into cogently reasoned picks. And they were mostly accurate, too!

It is my sincere hope to keep this success going all the way through the Super Bowl! Yes, expressing this desire does mean I have secured an 0-2 faceplant this weekend, but that’s a problem for Monday morning. To the picks!

Conference Championship Picks

All lines pulled from ESPN at 11:17 AM Eastern Time on Thursday, January 25th, 2024.

My pick for each game, and the relevant spread, is always listed first. Home teams are displayed in bold.

Kansas City Chiefs (+3.5) over Baltimore Ravens

There are two broad points to take away from the Ravens’ sound thrashing of the Texans last week. The first and most important of these is that the Ravens have an answer for absolutely every problem, in all three phases of the game. Houston did manage to make things interesting in the first half, at least defensively. Yes, Lamar is a singular player operating near his peak, but he’s also susceptible to blitzes, and the Texans used that knowledge to slow the Ravens’ offense down in the first half. But it only worked in the first half. Eventually, Lamar proved inevitable. Baltimore’s defense tolerated no bullshit of any sort; I stand by my claim that Houston made things interesting, but were it not for returning a punt for a touchdown, it would have been a bell-to-bell blowout.

And yet! I have a hypothetical question for all of you, something to get your brain firing as you contemplate this game. What’s scarier: a whole team that doesn’t have any real weaknesses or a quarterback who doesn’t have any weaknesses? Don’t ask me how they managed it, but it’s clear that the Chiefs have found a way to make their offense work in the playoffs, which makes sense now that it’s happened but seemed all but impossible by the end of the regular season. Their lack of receiving talent seemed too great an obstacle. But now Mahomes is on fire, Kelce looks like his old self, and the ground game is effective. (The other receivers made some plays too, but it’s best not to count on that happening again.) In other words, I’m not convinced Mahomes and Reid can’t find a weakness to exploit, even against a defense with no weaknesses.

The Chiefs must be taken seriously at all times. A team without weaknesses is obviously a formidable opponent, but when a quarterback without weaknesses is playing at the top of their game, there is nothing that can be done about it. On top of that, if Lamar is in face susceptible to heavy blitzing, he’s going to have his hands full against the much-improved Chiefs defense and Steve Spagnuolo, who was always going to blitz early and often, anyway.

Football is a complicated sport, but that doesn’t mean every question the game poses has a complicated answer. The Ravens are a better team top to bottom, and hell, they might have the better quarterback, too. They will probably win on Sunday. But, quite simply, I’m picking the Chiefs here for the same reason I picked them last week. This line is far from astronomical, but it’s still too high for my liking. Even if the Ravens go on to thrash the Chiefs as thoroughly as they’ve thrashed every other good team they’ve played this year, I’d be at peace if I didn’t see it coming. But if I pick against the Chiefs and they cover anyway, I’d have no one but myself to blame.

Detroit Lions (+7) over San Francisco 49ers

Congratulations, 9ers! You somehow just barely managed to survive against the rampaging 7-seed Packers, which is more than the Cowboys can say for themselves. That’s good! Once again, you’re also one game away from the Super Bowl. That’s also good! But alas, your no-shit MVP candidate quarterback looked like a 7th round pick in his second season last Saturday night. Some of his throws were so terrible, even the Packers secondary almost made plays on them. That’s bad!

It is probably unwise to overreact to Brock Purdy’s horrendous performance against the Packers, if for no other reason than football makes a fool of anyone who overreacts to the previous week. And yet, there were stretches of that game where the 9ers offense fizzled out and the defense got pushed around in the trenches, too, which was tremendous surprise. The 9ers have the best front seven in the league! The Packers offensive line, while competent, isn’t as monstrous as past years, either. What gives!?

This line is entirely too damn high. Yes, the 49ers are a more talented team, but unlike the Ravens, they are obviously mortal. It does not take all that much imagination to figure out how the Lions might pull this off. The case for the Lions starts in the trenches. The Packers offensive line is competent, certainly, but the Lions have arguably the best offensive line in the game today. Had the 9ers handled business on the ground last week, I would have a lot more faith in them, but they didn’t, so I don’t. Like Purdy, they will need to perform much better than they did last week, or else they may become a liability.

Speaking of Purdy, the direct quarterback comparison doesn’t favor San Francisco, either. I’m not going to praise Jared Goff too much in this space – like Purdy, when he plays poorly, he plays abominably – but he’s been playing well most of this season, and has enough weapons at his disposal to test the 9ers’ somewhat suspect cornerback depth. (Charvarious Ward is great and all, but there’s only one of him.) The Lions are also a team that doesn’t want to fall behind, but falling behind isn’t nearly as much of a problem for them as it is for the 49ers. Hell, if anything it’ll be an excuse for Dan Campbell to go for it even more than usual.

Therefore, it is imperative that the 49ers stay with the Lions offensively, and this is where their case improves. The Lions’ pass defense is still riddled with problems and deficiencies. Decent receivers have a tendency to get Kyle Shanahan levels of open against them, so I can only imagine that the actual Kyle Shanahan is going to do everything he can to send that secondary straight to hell. If that happens, Christian McCaffrey will easily drag the run defense down with them. That should be enough to keep the pace with Lions even if the defense falters; if the defense plays to their potential, they could run away with it.

I don’t expect them too, though. You can’t stop the Lions on the ground; you can only slow them down. I think Purdy is on his way to having an excellent career, but I can’t trust him to play well in a conference championship until I see him do it. And again, it is all but certain that we will see levels of aggression previously considered unthinkable, even by Dan Campbell standards. It is just as certain that the Lions won’t quit until and unless their wheels come completely off, and they might not even then. This game is fascinating, and I expect a great one.

Enjoy the games, everyone!