Jocko's Snow White Cube Steaks

Poetry Scores food artist Jocko Ferguson, right, visiting with
his friend Karley M. King at Poetry Scores' Embirikos barbecue

We have received some recipe requests for the Snow White Cube Steaks that our food artist Jocko Ferguson translated from Anne Sexton's poem Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Poetry Scores always tries to cook from the poems we translate into other media, treating food as a medium. That was fun with the Sexton poem. She describes the seven dwarfs as "little hot dogs," so Jocko served little wieners. He got gummy worms for the worm-like loll of the wolf's tongue. The notorious apple in the poem was translated into apple pie (and Poison Apple cocktails).

As for the cube steaks, Jocko pan-fried them from a simile Sexton employs when the jealous Queen is scarfing down what she thinks is Snow White's salted-down heart, but actually is boar organ meats.
 
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Bring me her heart, she said to the hunter,
and I will salt it and eat it.
The hunter, however, let his prisoner go
and brought a boar's heart back to the castle.
The queen chewed it up like a cube steak.
Now I am fairest, she said,
lapping her slim white fingers.

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So cube steak seemed like a good anchor for our food table at our celebration of Snow White at Mad Art Gallery. Jocko cooked to scale from this simple recipe:
Jocko's Snow White Cube Steaks

Ingredients

2 -3 tablespoons salted butter
2 tablespoons dried, minced onions
3 -4 pieces cube steaks
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoon steak grill seasoning
salt and pepper

Directions
1 Melt butter in skillet, add minced onions and cook 1-2 minutes.
2 Mix flour, paprika and grill seasoning together and place on a plate.
3 Season steak with salt and pepper, then dredge through flour mixture, making sure not to coat the meat too heavily
4 Cook for 3-5 minutes on each side depending on size of meat.
5 Serve immediately.

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At the Mad Art celebration, Jocko was serving cube steaks graciously donated by the legendary O'Connell's Pub. Thanks to Jack Parker and O'Connell's for the steaks!

They were a critical contribution to a multi-media translation of the poem. At one point I heard "cube steak" read from the poem and then sang from Ann Hirschfeld's musical score of the poem while people were eating cube steaks. I heard a gasp and saw several people looking at their cube steak like they were eating a poem.

Thanks also to Food.com for a recipe that looks remarkably like Jocko's.