The Culinary Tales Week 8: Where’s the Beef?
Would you believe that up until culinary school, I had personally never cooked a steak? It’s the kind of thing I didn’t bother cooking for myself at home, or even on a dinner date. And every BBQ I’ve ever attended always had a man in charge of the meat, which explains why I managed to destroy my roommate’s grill.
As it turned out, I learned steak is easy to cook. It’s also very easy to overdo, as my grades demonstrated: a stray 100, a couple of 90s, and several 70s and 80s marks, due mainly to overcooking the meat.
During Week Two we were taught the various ways of cooking beef: stewing, sauteeing, grilling and roasting, as well as the various cuts of meat and what method was best to cook them.
My stomach jumped for joy at the prospect of making Hungarian Goulash. Some of you might recall from my travelogues that Goulash is one of my favorite foods in the world. I had an initial taste of it during my first trip to Europe in 1996. When I returned in 2004, I made it a point to order goulash everywhere I went: Czech goulash, Slovakian goulash, Hungarian goulash.
Our starch side for goulash was spaetzle, which means “little sparrow.” It’s almost like a pasta – made with the same ingredients of egg and flour with the addition of milk and butter. To make the little sparrow shapes, you run it through a steel plate with round holes (imagine a cheese grater but with slightly larger holes) and the teardrop-like pieces fall into boiling water and form their sparrow-like shape. Spaetzle rises to the surface when it’s cooked, then it is drained and sauteed to give it a crunchiness.
Another pleasant surprise was the Italian Pot Roast we learned to make. The Italian way is rustic, intentionally making the stew chunky. Because I was going to a French school, we had to strain the chunky ingredients (carrots, onions, etc.) to make a smooth sauce. I highly recommend the chunky route – it’s much, much tastier and just to show up the French snobs. 🙂
Another of my favorite new recipes was a breakfast dish (albeit a heavy one) of grilled beef tenderloin on a toasted brioche, with bearnaise sauce (hollandaise in tarragon/vinegar clothing) and asparagus. Technically, this was supposed to be served with a poached egg, but Chef Chill mercifully made it optional, and not feeling like being pushed that day, took him up on the offer.
One thing that was becoming clearer as we progressed was that my sauce work didn’t suck. Sure, I had days when I didn’t quite get it right, but for the most part, my sauces held and were flavorful. Working as a saucier didn’t seem like a terrible proposition.
Now, it’s important to consider, when cooking beef, the method with which you will cook it because that determines what cut of beef you need to be getting.
The chuck is the shoulder and the round is the butt and hip area; the meat here is tough and takes a long, slow cooking process like braising or stewing to tenderize it.
The loin area is in the lower torso area. This is where you’ll find the tenderloin, and from where popular steak cuts are derived: Porterhouse, T-bone, New York steak, filet mignon, etc. The meat here is tenderer, so sauteeing or grilling the meat is called for.
On one night, we got to enjoy a prime rib dinner. We didn’t actually get to make this individually, because if you know anything about prime rib, you’ll know that you’ll need a big chunk of cow. Chef Chill handled the cooking, demonstrating for us what you do with roughly an eighth of a cow, and left us to figure out our own starch sides. He talked about a cheesy spaetzle dish he used to make when he worked in Germany, so Class Buddy and I teamed up to make it. That dish was pure love!
The least pleasant part of the week was having to watch “Fast Food Nation” for homework. I vowed never to do McDonald’s (or any fast food joint) ever again. Not because of the surprises you can get with (or rather, in) your food, but really more because of their socioeconomic and ecological impact on the world. (You could say I grew an eco-conscience that week.) But my vow lasted all of 36 hours. You know, sometimes, after a tediously long day of the work-traffic-school routine, sometimes, all it takes to make everything better is an ice cold Coke and fries.
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