Take a Vow

fig. a: taking a vow

While others were still trying to get over their New Year's Eve hangovers, I spent New Year's Day trying to get over my New Year's Eve hangover and taking a solemn vow.

It went something like this:

My Beautiful Dry-Aged Steak

I make this vow to you.

I will do almost nothing to you. I will not get fancy. You are not the canvas for my ideas about how Cambodian and Croatian cuisines relate to one another. You, like very few ingredients in the world--gray pearls of beluga caviar, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Oreos--do not need my help to be delicious. I will do everything in my power to avoid fucking you up. I will not get in the way of your magnificence. I shall season you well. I will brown you deeply. I will cook you rare, and let you rest as long as you need. When I slice you, I will slice against your grain, and season you again. I will adorn you only in pan drippings, and perhaps a simple compound butter. I will consume all that you are, and leave nothing uneaten.

"My Beautiful Dry-Aged Steak" appeared in Issue #2 of Lucky Peach, of course, and it followed up "another transmission from Harold McGee's Orbital Desk in Outré Space" about enzymes and their role in the dry-aging process. As McGee explains, by harnessing the powers of enzymes, "we can get our food to make itself more delicious," which is why he refers to them as "nanocooks--the true molecular cooks." Examples of this enzymatic process in action? Ripening, fermentation, and, yes, dry-aging.

For those who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing the joy of dry-aging, it involves keeping parts of the carcass in a carefully controlled environment (one with cool temperatures, and fairly high humidity) for a period of several weeks. Doing so allows enzymes to work their magic--"[breaking] down the meat's proteins, fats, and glycogen... into amino acids [including glutamate], fatty acids, and sugars," as well as causing the meat to lose some of its moisture (hence the name) and thereby concentrating its flavours--and the result is beef that has an extraordinary complexity and depth to it.

Sounds great, right? It is. Astounding, actually. The problem is, dry-aging is a costly, time-consuming process, one that doesn't jibe with the economic logic of our supermarket culture. Consequently, it's hard to find dry-aged beef. It's also a process that's hard to duplicate at home because of the smells and flavours that occupy your basic household refrigerator, but also because your basic household refrigerator isn't particularly well temperature-controlled (think of how many times per day your refrigerator door gets opened and closed). As McGee puts it: "Dry-aging is very difficult to do well at home."

What's the answer? Get more butchers to take their beef more seriously.

Start by frequenting a local butcher shop. Ask if their beef is dry-aged. If it is, great--consider yourself lucky. If it isn't, ask them to consider doing so. Then, while you're at it, ask them where their beef comes from. Are they able to give you a straight answer?  If not, move on to another butcher, one who's more willing to make an effort, or just keep asking.  The more people ask, the greater the likelihood that things might improve.*

As it turns out, we'd just paid another pilgrimage to our friends at Fleisher's. Not only do they dry-age their steaks at Fleisher's, but their beef is local, grass-fed, organic, and sustainably raised. The combination is pretty much impossible to beat.

fig. b: our beautiful dry-aged steak

Our beautiful dry-aged steak was pricey (understandably), but it was one-and-a-half inches thick, and it wasn't just beautiful, it was gorgeous. It was also a hell of a lot cheaper than a comparable steak from a reputable steak house.

We took the vow seriously. We kept things very simple and we didn't fuck it up. Just the steak, the jus, some sautéed mushrooms, a Caesar salad, and a killer bottle of wine. We browned the steak deeply, finished it in the oven, and gave it plenty of time to rest.**  We did those enzymes proud. It was a glorious affair.

Taking a vow, committing to dry-aged beef may sound silly, but it's actually a pretty great idea. It'll probably mean that you eat a lot less beef, but it'll definitely mean that you enjoy it a lot more when you do.***

aj

* In Montreal, things are a little difficult when it comes to sourcing high-quality beef, a fact made all too clear in the pages of The Art of Living According to Joe Beef.  There are a few establishments that dry-age their meat (Boucherie de Tours and Queue de Cheval come to mind), but locating beef that's dry-aged, locally and sustainably raised, grass-fed, and organic is another matter.  Customers need to be more demanding.  Restaurants need to be more demanding.

** Not sure how to prepare your beautiful dry-aged steak? We've been following the Fleisher's Method for the last couple of years. You can find directions here. Given the size and thickness of the steak, our oven time was about 14 minutes.

*** Those familiar with the work of Michael Pollan will recognize this basic argument.  Pollan has argued time and time again that we, as a culture (North American culture), should be eating a lot less meat, but he's not vegetarian.

This is the way he responded to the vegetarian question in an interview with Democracy Now!:

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Are you vegetarian?

MICHAEL POLLAN: No, I’m not. I eat meat. I eat much less meat than I used to. And I don’t think the answer is necessarily, you know, giving up meat. There are kinds of meat that have much less of a carbon footprint. I mean, we’ve been describing grain-fed beef. But what if you feed cattle on grass? When you feed cattle on grass, they’re not competing with humans for food, because we can’t digest grass. They’re geniuses; they can digest grass, because they have a rumen. And that — and well run, rotationally grazed cattle, on grass, actually build carbon in the soil. They can be used to sequester carbon. So there is a way to organize meat production that would reduce its carbon footprint dramatically. Now, it must be said, that meat is much more expensive and harder to find, with the result that I eat very little of it. But that’s the kind of meat I eat.

What he leaves out here, but discusses elsewhere, is the all-important taste factor.

Summer Picnic/Barbecue 101

fig. a: not bad

1. Find yourself a perfect spot to spend the day. Preferably one with easy access to a big, clean, and natural body of water. Preferably one that allows for barbecuing.



figs. b & c: afternoon snack

2. Bring yourself an afternoon snack to give you plenty of energy for an afternoon of swimming, and to tide you over until your late afternoon/evening barbecue.

Sample snack:
Maplebrook Farm burrata
Red Hen Baking Company ciabatta
extra-virgin olive oil
fresh basil
farm-fresh tomatoes

Drizzle your ultra-ripe burrata with extra-virgin olive oil. Serve with a fresh tomato salad and a crusty loaf of bread. Devour.

fig. d: don't hold back

3. Go swimming. A lot. (Note swimming pier + floating swimming platform to the right of the frame.)

fig. e: read a book

4. Do some summertime reading. Bring a good read. Relax. Take in the breeze. Listen to the birds.





figs. f, g, and h: steaks, corn, beets, cipollini

5. Plan a simple meal: one that doesn't take a great deal of preparation, one that makes full use of the barbecue, and one that's not overly elaborate. Part of the goal, here, is to make sure you'll have as many opportunities to swim as possible. Your meal should be a complement to this goal, not an impediment.

When it is time to prep your meal, crack open a crisp beer or a nice bottle of wine. You're picnicking, after all. You're outside and the weather's beautiful. Enjoy yourself.

Sample meal:
Santa Barbara steaks
grilled corn
grilled cipollini
grilled summer squash
roasted beets
fresh tomato salad

fresh peaches

for the steaks:
sirloin or rib steaks, preferably grass-fed

Using your hands, apply Santa Barbara rub generously to your steaks. Allow the steaks to reach "room temperature." Grill over a medium-hot fire for 2 minutes per side. Move steaks away from the coals and continue cooking over indirect heat (without flipping them) for roughly another 4-8 minutes, depending on your preferred doneness (and on the thickness of your steaks). We like ours rare to medium-rare.

Santa Barbara rub works wonders with tri-tip, but it's also pretty great with sirloin steaks, rib steaks, and t-bones.

We mixed a batch of Santa Barbara rub before we left home, based on the following recipe:

Santa Barbara Spice Rub

1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup ground cumin (preferably toasted)
1/4 cup chili powder
1/4 cup ground black pepper
1/8 cup cayenne pepper
1/2 cup sweet paprika (preferably Hungarian)

Mix everything together and keep in an air-tight container until use.

[recipe from Jane & Michael Stern's Popular Plates BBQ 2010]

for the corn:
Keeping the husks intact, remove the silk from your ears of corn. Pull the husks back over your corn cobs and soak your ears of corn in water. Tightly wrap the corn in aluminum foil. Place the foil-wrapped ears of corn directly onto your medium-hot coals, and cook, rotating a quarter turn every 10-15 minutes, for about 45 minutes. Some of your kernels should have caramelized. The others should be moist and perfectly tender. Peel back the husks, add salt and butter or chipotle-lime butter, and serve.

for the beets:
Peel the beets and chop them. Place them on a sizable piece of aluminum foil. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and add salt and pepper. Wrap the piece of aluminum foil into a tight package. Place the package directly on the coals and cook, flipping once, for about 40-45 minutes. The beets should be perfectly tender, with some signs of caramelization showing.

fig. i: sun set

6. Get back in the water at least one more time before the sun sets.

When you've gotten your fill, climb back out of the water, find a seat with a view on the beach, on a rock, or on the grass, and pause to watch the sun set. Fully.

7. Pack up your things. Put out your fire. Leave nary a trace.

aj

Fleisher's Follow-up, or Down to the Bone

fig. a: on the cutting board

Without question, the finest steak either of us has ever tasted. We only got one because we knew we wanted to eat it relatively soon, and because Fleisher's dry-aged rib steaks were the biggest, meatiest rib steaks we'd ever had the pleasure of purchasing. We knew one of those honking steaks would be more than enough for the two of us, and we were right. We ate and ate well, and we still had enough for leftovers (yes!) the next day.

And, the thing is, buying, cooking, and eating grass-fed beef from a place like Fleisher's is not only ethically and environmentally sound, it's also a game-changer. Once you get that taste, why would you want to eat anything else? I'm happy to hold out until the next time we get a chance to visit Fleisher's. Why would I want to settle for less? Hell, I can still taste that steak right now as I write.

fig. b: in the pan*

We cooked our rib steak exactly the same way we always cook our rib steaks: first in a searing-hot cast-iron pan, then in the oven, followed by a good 5 minutes of rest. This is an excellent way to prepare perfect steaks at home and it happens to be exactly the way Fleisher's recommends preparing their beef. Once again:

1. Oven preheat 300º [10 minutes]
2. Heat pan on stovetop to smoking point
3. Pre-salt each side [5-10 minutes ahead of time]
4. Put into pan / sear for 2 minutes each side
5. Put steak into oven w/ pan
6. Steak > 4-8 minutes in oven [120º]
7. Take out of oven--let sit [rest] for 5 minutes

That steak was so tender, so tasty, so good, there wasn't a scrap left.

aj

* Just to give you some perspective: that's an oversized 13 1/4" Lodge cast-iron pan.

ChangesTwo

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

fig. a: smoke gets in my lens

Ever since May, when we finally made the switch back to charcoal grilling after years of working a gas bbq, I've been like a kid with a new toy. The toy in question, is just a classic 18.5" Weber One-Touch, but the charm has yet to wear off, and with Michelle working crazy hours, I've had a whole lot of time to carry out a lot of experiments in lump-coal burning, slow & low barbecuing.

I pity the birds that happened to build their nest just a few feet above our barbecue spot. They got seriously smoked out--over and over and over again. (At least, the smoke in question was fragrant applewood, hickory, and mesquite.) I kinda pity our neighbors, too. They weren't getting blasted with smoke the way those birds were, but the sweet, sweet smell of all that applewood-, hickory-, and mesquite-smoked meat must have been torture.

How much grilling are we talking about? Jerk pork, jerk chicken, jerk shrimp. Pulled pork, ribs, and smoked chicken. Steaks and kebabs of all sorts. Salmon steaks and halibut fillets. Fennel, eggplant, bell peppers, potatoes, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

One of the best of our recent grillfests was a night where we made a Cowboy Rib Eye recipe by Dallas chef Stephan Pyles that we'd found in Saveur (it wasn't difficult, the recipe was featured prominently on the front cover).

We followed Saveur's recipe closely, although we replaced the ground chipotle with ground Oaxacan (smoked) pasilla chile (because that's what we had on-hand), we started the entire process just a few hours before we started grilling instead of a day earlier, and we made it for two instead of four. We didn't change anything about Pyles' accompanying onion rings, though. We figured there was no sense with frying up half an onion's worth of onion rings, and that if there were any leftovers, we could refry them the next day.

fig. b: in the raw

Texas-Style Steak with Spicy Onion Rings

1/8 cup plus 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
3/4 tbsp ground guajillo chile
3/4 tbsp ground pasilla chile
3/4 tbsp ground chipotle (or smoked pasilla chile)
3/4 tbsp sugar
2 x 16-oz bone-in rib-eye steaks
Canola oil, for frying
1 small yellow onion, cut crosswise
into 1/8"-thick rings
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/8 cup of the paprika, 1 tbsp of the salt, the guajillo, pasilla, and chipotle chiles, and the sugar. Put steaks on a parchment-lined baking sheet; rub with the chile mixture. Refrigerate steaks for several hours or overnight.

Make the onion rings: Pour oil into a 4-qt. saucepan to a depth of 2"; heat over medium-high heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350°. Meanwhile, put the onions and milk into a bowl; let them soak for 20 minutes. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining paprika and salt, flour, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, and pepper. Working in batches, remove the onions from the milk, shake off the excess, and toss them in seasoned flour. Fry the onions until crisp, about 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels; season with salt. Set aside and try not to devour them before the steaks are done.

Build a medium-hot fire with mesquite charcoal or lump charcoal + pre-soaked (minimum 1/2 hour) mesquite chips. Grill steaks, turning once, until medium rare, about 12 minutes. Serve with the onion rings.

Serves two hungry souls.

This makes an utterly stupendous steak, and the mesquite really brings out all its Tex-Mex/cowboy qualities. The onion rings are outstanding too. As much as I love a great beer-battered onion ring, these were way simpler and spicier, and just as satisfying.

Now, never wanting to waste a good charcoal fire, I had the idea the bright idea of cooking a rack of ribs while the steak was chilling in the fridge. We made an old standby of a recipe, but this was the very first time we'd cooked them on the grill from start to finish. It was also the first time we'd cooked them over mesquite. What took us so long? Who knows? These new, improved ribs were thoroughly mind-blowing. We had them as our "appetizer." Absurd, I know. We made a bunch of vegetables in addition to the onion rings, but, sadly, they've since disappeared into a smoky haze.

One last thing: the Texas-Style Steak rub makes for a great Texas-Style Barbecued Chicken rub too (as I found out about a week later).

"Texas-Style" Barbecued Chicken

1 whole chicken
Texas-style steak rub
2-4 garlic cloves
room-temperature beer
cider vinegar
crushed red chile flakes

Rinse and pat dry a whole chicken. Add a bit of olive oil, rub it all over with that chile-based rub, add a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves to the cavity, and let it sit, covered, in your refrigerator for at least a couple of hours and preferably an entire day or overnight. Take your bird out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Meanwhile, start your fire, setting your barbecue up for some indirect cooking (coals and/or mesquite wood to one side, water-filled drip pan to the other, vent overtop the drip pan). You want a medium fire for your chicken. You can also make your mop now, mixing equal parts warm beer and cider vinegar, and adding salt and crushed red chile peppers to taste. When the coals are ready, place the chicken (breast-side up) on the grill over the drip pan, and close the lid, keeping the barbecue fully vented. Smoke the chicken for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, without ever moving the bird if at all possible, just adding some coals/wood from time to time to keep the fire at a relatively consistent temperature. Resist the temptation to check the fire for the first hour. After an hour, check your fire every 30 minutes, taking the opportunity to mop the bird each time. The bird is done when a knife poked into a thigh produces juices that run clear. If you want to be more accurate, use a meat thermometer to check for doneness. But be patient--a medium-small chicken will take a good 2 1/2 hours. It's worth it, though. The first time you make it, you might have your doubts (in spite of your mopping, the skin will look leathery and dry), but this makes for one fantastically flavorful fowl (juicy too!), and any leftovers can be transformed into a chicken salad that is simply heavenly.

Note: again, I highly recommend the use of mesquite for this dish. Its mineral smoke marries particularly well with this rub.

Okay, people--get your grill on.

aj

Grilled Steak with Chiles & Salsa Verde

Grilled Steak with Chiles
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

OK, the photo's a little out of focus, but that's only because I was so excited to dig in I could barely contain myself. We'd been wanting to make this dish for several months, ever since we'd come across the recipe (and the mouth-watering photo that accompanied it) in Saveur a while back. At the time it wasn't BBQ season yet, though, so we were forced to hold off. By last Sunday, we couldn't wait any longer.

We picked up a couple of flank steaks and some red chiles at Latina, headed over to Park Ave. to pick up some shallots (as well as a few other ingredients for our salsa verde), then rushed home to get to work.

The prep couldn't have been easier. We salted and peppered the steaks, then set them aside to sit for 15-20 minutes. I fired up the grill and threw on the red chiles and the shallots (in their skins), keeping them off to the side of the flames so that they wouldn't get overly charred, and grilled them for 15 minutes, until the chiles had turned smoky and sweet and the shallots were cooked through and very tender. Michelle then peeled the shallots, chopped them, and tossed them in olive oil with the chiles while I cooked the steaks. The cooking time on the steaks was pretty quick--about 2-3 minutes per side over a medium fire, depending on the thickness of the steaks. When they were grilled to our liking (rare for me, medium-rare for Michelle), I took them off the heat and let them sit at room temperature for 5 minutes. This method results in a particularly juicy, tasty steak.

We served the steaks over mixed greens from the garden, and dressed the steaks with the chile and shallot sauce. The finishing touches: guacamole and salsa verde with tortilla chips, and a couple of beers.

salsa verde with grilled tomatillos
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

You can make a pretty excellent salsa verde on the stovetop, but the best salsa verde is made with grilled tomatillos. I husked and rinsed 8 tomatillos, brushed them with oil, then grilled them until they were nicely and fairly evenly blackened on the outside (I also grilled a serrano pepper at the same time). I then added them to a blender, along with 2 garlic cloves, about 1 tablespoon of minced white onion, 1/3 cup of cilantro, 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, the grilled serrano pepper, salt, pepper, and lime juice to taste. Like I said, salsa verde off the stovetop is also very satisfying, but nothing beats the smokiness of this grilled tomatillo version. Tomatillos aren't the easiest thing to find in Montreal, but most, if not all, of the Latin American specialty stores carry them and Michelle found the ones we used up at Jean-Talon Market.

aj