Steak!

[rodster]

Rosemary and wine on steak !?! Argh! That's it -- I'm calling the National Cattlemens Association!!

Cold smoking with Jack Daniels wood chips is the ticket.

Remove the bottom bowl of your R2D2-looking smoker and fill it half full of JD chips. Heat the bowl over a stove flame until the chips just begin to smoke. Quickly put the bowl in the bottom of the smoker. Put two cans of Sterno under that bowl so the tip of the flames touches the bowl. Put the best filets you can find on the top rack (and don't butterfly them).

Walk away for three hours and don't lift the lid. Open the side door to check on your chips and sterno if you must but only for a short period. (You're cooking with very how heat and don't want any to escape.)

After three hours (or four, if you like), pull the filets, put them on a cookie sheet, salt and pepper to taste (nothing else) and slide under a hot broiler for 20 minutes.

Remove and enjoy.

Out west our cattle gratefully die like samurai to serve their masters. If you must sully their honor with parsley, sage, rosemary or wine, GOOD GAWD man, do it in a sauce on the side.

And that is all.

Until someone starts a thread on serving octopus. I'll be all over that.