Year of the Cow (13 page)

Oven thermometer. Use one.

*   *   *

I'm a pretty solid home cook, but I'm no pro. My debacle with the oven thermometer—or lack thereof—suggests that perhaps I have a few things to learn. Before I flamboyantly ruin any more of this beast, I decide to consult someone who cooks for a living.

My friend Eben is a professional chef, having run restaurants in New York and Pennsylvania. I hit him up for some words of wisdom. It isn't the first time I've turned to him for food advice—in college, flush with student loan money, I suggested that we invite a couple of ladies over to my place for dinner. A real dinner. A grown-up dinner. He'd cook; I'd bankroll it.

The girl I invited expected overcooked spaghetti. She got five-spice shoyu-marinated Chilean sea bass, shiitake beggars' purses tied with green onion threads, and a from-scratch five-spice chocolate mousse served with tuile cookie spoons.

She was impressed. So much so that she later married me.

Eben has some great advice. He rather astutely notes that the middle meats on a cow aren't really going to pose any problems for me. Tenderloin, short loin, rib, and the like—they're all easy. These are New York strip steaks. Rib eyes. Filet mignon. Not a lot of connective tissue, plenty of fat to keep the cuts moist during cooking.

The cuts I need to give more thought to are those from the ends of the animal. Cuts off the chuck, which is the shoulder of the cow. The round, which is pretty much the animal's hip. The brisket, which is the two enormous muscles off the animal's chest, between the front legs. These primals are huge, so they'll yield a lot of beef—and they're rife with connective tissue, widely varying shapes, distinctive grain structures, and other attributes that will need to be specifically addressed in the cooking process. They are not slap-a-steak-on-a-grill cuts.

There are also cuts that aren't off either the round or the chuck and aren't especially familiar to the average home cook. There's a flat iron steak. Crosscut shanks. A hanger steak, which presumably hangs from something. Petit tenders, which I can only assume are like regular tenders, only smaller. (Of course, this begs the question: What are regular tenders?)

Basically, the beef animal is divided into primal muscle groups, each of which contains several distinct muscles and cuts. In America, there are eight primals:

Chuck.
The shoulder of the cow, back through the first five ribs. The chuck primal, situated as it is at the top of the leg of an animal that stands most of the time, is used almost constantly. As a result, it develops a lot of connective tissue as well as a pronounced “beefy” flavor. Relatively fatty, the chuck is also quite large. I have a lot of cuts from here. For example: big chuck roasts, chuck steaks (one of which I ruined), various pot roasts, and probably more than a little ground beef.

Rib.
Just behind the chuck, the rib primal encompasses the upper part of the animal's body from the sixth rib through the twelfth. This is one of those middle primals I don't have to worry too much about—rib eyes, standing rib roasts, and prime rib are the heroes here. Tender cuts with a thick layer of fat and not a lot of connective tissue to deal with. Tender, rich, and luxurious.

Short Loin.
Also known as the strip loin. Just behind the rib primal at the top of the animal, this is the next of those middle cuts that should be pretty easy to handle. Very tender cuts without a lot of connective tissue. Respond well to high heat and dry, fast cooking. Kansas City/New York strip, T-bones, porterhouses, tenderloins. Sexy and expensive.

Sirloin.
Just behind the short loin. If the steer had a waist, this would be the back part, by the spine. It's sort of a transitional primal—cuts nearer the short loin are more tender, and smaller, than those nearer the round, which lies just behind this primal. Cuts from the top are top sirloin, and I have a hunch that a lot of my packages labeled simply “stir-fry meat” and “kebab meat” came from here. Cuts from lower down are considered bottom sirloin and include the tri-tip, ball tip, and flap.

Round.
Behind the sirloin, this is the hip and back leg of the animal. Another muscle group in near constant use, so it has a fair amount of connective tissue, but not a lot of fat. It's huge, so I have a lot of cuts from here, mainly pot roasts, the odd round steak, eye round, and other cuts that generally benefit from moist, low, and slow cooking, like the descriptively labeled “stew meat.”

Because they're large sections of a large animal's legs, the chuck and round primals are suitably enormous. The chuck is the largest primal on the animal. The round is the second largest. My future is filled with roasts.

Flank.
On the belly of the beast, just in front of the round. This cut is relatively thin with a pronounced grain structure. There's really only one cut here—the flank steak. Not a lot of fat, but a fair bit of connective tissue.

Plate.
This primal is just in front of the flank, farther up on the animal's stomach, just below the rib primal. This is where you'll find short ribs, as well as the skirt steak, which is essentially a thinner, longer flank steak with a more pronounced grain structure. The Spanish word for “skirt steak” is
fajita,
or belt—and this cut was the traditional cut used for the Mexican dish. Meat here has a lot of connective tissue and a fair amount of fat, depending on the cut.

Brisket.
Finally returning to the front of the animal, the brisket consists of the chest muscles of the steer, between the two front legs. A brisket is only two muscles, the flat and the point, frequently cooked together. I have two briskets, each split into two pieces, making for four packages total. Good for Texas or Kansas City barbecue—as well as for Jewish cuisine, such as pastrami and corned beef (because kosher meat in the United States comes only from the front half of the animal). Absolutely riddled with connective tissue, so low and slow is a must.

With that general beef road map in my mind, Eben goes into detail on some of the less common cuts. The crosscut shank is the shank, or leg, cut across the bone. Essentially, it's beef osso buco. The flat iron steak is a piece of chuck from inside the shoulder blade, with a really thick band of connective tissue running through it. It turns out that once you remove that, this is the most tender cut of beef on the animal besides the tenderloin. Hanger steak is muscle that hangs between the kidneys of the animal. There's only one per cow, and it needs to be used wisely. Petit tenders come from the chuck and are a poor man's tenderloin.

But the cut Eben has the strongest opinion on is the eye round.

Specifically: The eye round just sucks. Or, more eloquently: “The most useless and misleading cut on the entire animal.”

Naturally, I want to cook this immediately.

The eye round is off the round primal, so it does a lot of work. It looks like a tenderloin, so people think they can treat it like one. They can't. Because it does a lot of work, it has a lot of connective tissue interwoven in the muscle fibers. If it's treated like tenderloin—that is, grilled hot and fast—that tissue will remain intact, resulting in a tough, nasty piece of meat. However, this cut is also very low in fat. Which means that if you cook it low and slow, it'll dry out.

The trick, then, lies in figuring out how to cook it fully without drying it out, while simultaneously dealing with the connective tissue in such a way that it doesn't turn into a fleshy pink football.

The answer Eben suggests: pho. (Pronounced “fuh.” Not “foe.” Not “foo.” Not “fah”-la-la-la-la. Nobody's decking any halls here.)

As fans of Vietnamese soup know, making pho involves painstakingly crafting an exquisite broth, keeping it lava hot, and dropping delicate slices of beef into it. The beef poaches in seconds, yielding a beautiful, savory soup. If done properly.

If done improperly, one may look forward to a tepid bowl of raw beef, accompanied by a side of
Listeria
and the everlasting enmity of one's friends and family.

Undaunted by my recent, beginner-level failures, Summer and I give pho our best attempt one Saturday afternoon. The weather is sunny and SoCal gorgeous, and I'm walking on air. This is exactly the sort of dish I would never try were it not for the whole cow in my backyard. This is a little bit nuts and a whole lot exciting.

We start with the broth. And, frankly, we'll end with the broth. Because the broth is where this soup succeeds or fails. I have exemplary beef and high-quality produce—I made a special trip to the store just for the occasion. The ingredients, which will go into said broth, are simple. The broth itself—that's where I can mess things up.

“Alright, Stone,” I declare with some degree of brio. “The boy occupied?”

“Legos,” she responds. That's a big, fat
yes.

“Ready to make some soup?”

“Pho sure,” she responds. Pronouncing the name of the soup correctly in that phrase—“fuh”
sherr!—
she has never sounded more like a Valley girl transplant than at this moment. I do not say this out loud, however, as I enjoy breathing and walking under my own power. “Let's do the thing.”

I begin by quartering some white onions while Summer starts filling a big pot with water. I toss the onions with some whole gingerroot in a little canola oil and lay them out on a sheet pan under my broiler to char. This is key. One theory of the etymology of pho is from
feu,
the French word for “fire.” Per this theory, when Vietnam was a French colony, they adopted the French tradition of charring their vegetables prior to inclusion in a stock to caramelize the sugars and get all the roasty-toasty goodness that the Maillard reaction could provide. In fact, this charred onion is one of the defining characteristics separating pho from other similar meat soups. Vietnamese cooks translated the French word for “fire” phonetically, and the national dish was born.

Because I'm making a broth, I'm working with bones. In this case, five and a half pounds of grass-fed beef marrow bones. I slip them into the water and crank up the heat. My sad little gas range, so eager to blast my chuck steak into oblivion, now struggles to boil these eight quarts of water. I hover nearby expectantly, literally waiting for a pot to boil. It's very clear, however, that this will take a while. The two of us stand in the kitchen, momentarily taskless.

“So we have a few minutes?” Summer asks.

“Until the water boils, however long that takes.”

“On this range? That's a while,” she says. “I have an idea.” She pops into the other room and returns with a slim wooden box. A chess set.

“You want to play me in chess?”

“I want to
destroy
you in chess.”

“Oh, honey. You're so cute when you're ruthless.”

She grins and sets up the board. We begin to play. She's good at this.

Thirty minutes or so later, I'm about to lose my queen. Meanwhile, in my stockpot, I have bubbles. I let the concoction boil vigorously for fifteen minutes or so, actually lose my queen, then pour out the water we boiled the bones in. This initial blanch is just to coagulate the proteins of the blood and fat and similar undesirables that I would otherwise have to skim off the broth as it cooks.

I return my attention to the chessboard. “Dec's been awfully quiet.”

“Legos. I'm telling you,” Summer muses, eyes on the board. “He's absolutely nuts about them.” With deft fingers, she slides a bishop to the center. “I'll go check on him.” She stands up and kisses me on the cheek. “That's mate, by the way.”

As she leaves the room, I look down at the board. She's right. “I'm so glad we had this time together,” I call out, half sarcastically. Her only response is laughter.

Back to the soup. Blanching done, I pour another six quarts of water over the bones and put the pot back on the heat. I have to return this new water to a boil—again. I can't rush this. I couldn't if I wanted to. But I do have to pay attention to it; I can't play video games or leave the area entirely to go do something else. I have to be here.

I toss my phone on top of a bookcase in my dining room, wondering how to pass the time. There, on my to-read shelf, I have more than a couple of books I've been meaning to put eyes on—I just haven't had the chance. I pick up Lev Grossman's
The Magicians
and sit down on the couch. This book has been on my shelf for a few months now, though I haven't yet had a chance to open it. I sit and turn to the first page, indulging in what has somehow become a rarer delight than I'd prefer.

I have another twenty minutes before the liquid boils again. Once I have a rolling boil, I add the charred onions and ginger, a cinnamon stick, some whole coriander seeds, some fennel seeds, a cardamom pod, some cloves, and half a dozen star anise pods.

Star anise is my first I-love-that-flavor-but-I-don't-know-where-it-comes-from revelation of the day. It tastes slightly of licorice, but in the best way possible. Not at all in a Grandma's-leftover-Halloween-candy way. There's a slight earthiness to it. A tang in the same olfactory universe, for me, as cloves. If I'd omitted it, I wouldn't be able to say what was missing. But I'd miss it.

Spices in, I follow up with some salt, sugar, and fish sauce.

Fish sauce is my second that's-what-that-is! moment. First, it's an astounding creation. It's made by piling several tons of fish into a vat—usually some variety of sardines, but it varies—adding salt, and letting the mass ferment. The resultant liquid runoff is salty and somehow brothy—with just a touch of fishy sourness that sounds utterly revolting but tastes like every good thought your mother ever had about you. It's just loaded with
umami,
otherwise known as “the fifth taste,” after sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Umami perhaps is best described as a sort of savoriness, a particular meaty fullness that you can feel on the palate and the back of the throat. In this case, however, umami is what makes fish sauce glorious. It's another thing I've tasted a thousand times but would never have recognized as missing had I not been present at the creation of this soup. It's a revelation.