Cem

The ignoring advice is not wrong, but it is stated in a way that hides its precondition, and yours is the case where the precondition fails.

Ignoring works when the meowing is learned attention-seeking — the cat does a thing, a human appears, so the cat does the thing. Take away the reward and the behaviour eventually goes. The ten days of escalation you saw is the textbook pattern and you handled it correctly.

What it cannot fix is meowing that has a cause other than you. If the cat is hungry, cold, bored, in discomfort, or responding to something outside, then your attention was never the reward, so removing it changes nothing. She went quiet for three days because she was tired, then resumed because the actual cause was still there.

So the useful question is not "how do I extinguish this" but "what is she telling me". Your three quiet days are evidence: pure attention-seeking does not come back stronger after a successful extinction burst.

So the two rules are both right and both incomplete, because each one is quoting the answer for a different density of food. That is exactly what I was missing.

The ridges exist to hold food up out of its own liquid, and understanding that answers all three of your questions.

On a flat skillet, fat and juices sit under the food and the food effectively fries in them. That is usually what you want. On a ridged pan the food touches metal only on the ridge lines and the liquid drains into the channels below, away from the contact. It is imitating a grill grate: the point is what runs off.

Which is exactly why your steak steams. Only about a third of the surface is touching hot metal, so two thirds of it is sitting over a trench of its own evaporating juice, and it cooks in that steam. The pan is doing what it was designed to do and you were expecting skillet behaviour.

So no, the marks are not the point — they are a side effect of the drainage. But if drainage is not what you want, you are using the wrong pan and no technique will fix it.