Waitress: "How do you want that cooked?"
My response: "As bloody as possible."
Reminds me of one of the best lines in The Cowboy Way.
"Just knock its horns off, wipe its nasty old ass and chunk it down on a plate."
When asked one time in a restaurant how I wanted my steak, I told the waitress, "Get a cow, wipe its nose and its ass, show it a picture of a candle and bring it out here." She just looked at me for a second, nodded and a short while later, I had a steak that was gray on the outside, bloody on the inside and hot all the way through. Make my tablemates want to vomit, but it was one of the best steaks I've ever had. That lady got a huge tip.
Quite a few years back, a few of us used to hang around a body shop a friend of mine worked at. On the weekends, we used to drink beer and work on our cars or whatever. His boss was OK with it. Well, this one time, he was working an insanely long Saturday, and his boss grilled up an extra steak and brought it in for him. Huge, thick piece of meat. My buddy was in the paint booth at the time, and Larry, the boss, holds this thing next to the air blower that's feeding his suit. He's in there painting a car, and his hood is suddenly filled with this grilled meat aroma. But what sticks in my memory is the steak itself. This thing was a beautiful brown colour on the outside, with grill marks and everything, but totally red inside. I mean, there was no transition from brown to grey to pink to red. It was brown on the outside, red on the inside. The colour had no depth at all. I figure he must have got his grill about as hot as it would go, threw the steak on, gave it one good flip and took it off. At the time, I liked my steak a bit closer to shoe leather, but I've since taken a liking to medium rare. I've tried to duplicate that steak and have yet to succeed. I make a great steak, but that particular trick eludes me. Getting a deep brown outside and an ultra-rare inside is a hell of a skill.
