Year of the Cow (14 page)

Summer drifts through the kitchen with a groggy little boy on her hip. “Hey, little man,” I greet him. His only answer is to rub a sleepy fist into his eye.

“He's pretty pooped,” Summer says. She smells the air. “Something smells good in here.”

I hold up the jar of fish sauce as explanation for the scent.

“It's a sauce for fish?”

“It's a sauce
of
fish.”

“How so?”

“It's the decocted syrupy runoff of a couple tons of rotten sardines.”

“Oh,” she says. “Got it. I'll leave you to it, then.” Dec buries his face into her neck. “Could you whip up some noodles for the kiddo?”

“No problem.” I switch gears briefly to make dinner for Declan. At this rate, he won't make it to dinnertime. That done, I return my attention to the soup.

Once all the spices have been added to the liquid on the stove, I reduce the heat to a simmer and sit back down with my book. This simmer will take several hours, with my only task being to skim now and again to remove anything that looks unappetizing. I can't really speed up this soup, so I have to slow down.

An hour or so later, I kiss my son on his blond moppet head and tuck him into bed. Then Summer and I chat while I prepare some condiments and accoutrements to accompany the soup.

I pour us each a glass of wine, and we talk about everything and nothing. All the little things we haven't gotten to speak about lately, what with our commutes and disparate schedules and sometimes conflicting daily imperatives. So now, as the soup simmers, we catch up on our days. On our everythings. On the million little details with which we fill our waking hours. It's nice. A moment just for us.

Soon enough, the broth is ready. I prep some rice noodles and pull the eye round from the freezer to thaw until it's still firm, but not frozen, which will make it easier to shear into slices of nanometric thinness.

The grain on eye round runs lengthwise through the roast from end to end. I slice the roast laterally, across the grain, as thinly as I possibly can. This is key; I'm not doing anything chemically to break down the connective tissue that riddles this cut (i.e., melting it in a long braise), so I need to break down that connective tissue mechanically. I need thin slices.

I set the condiment platter on the table. The magical part of pho, at least from my wife's point of view, is that it's served with a panoply of condiments and accoutrements and largely prepared in the bowl. There is no anticipating what people may enjoy in their soup—they prepare it themselves. We're accompanying our soup with basil leaves, cilantro, mint, sliced jalapeño, bean sprouts, lime, fish sauce, hoisin, more fish sauce, and plenty of Sriracha. And fish sauce.

I strain the liquid to remove anything chunky, and I'm left with a delicate golden broth just erupting with umami. I was excited before—now I'm ecstatic. I play it cool, though, to allow Summer to be duly and appropriately surprised. “What, this little thing? Just something I threw together,” I imagine myself saying. “Please, have a seat. I'll be by with a warm towel and apéritif momentarily. So glad you could join me for a little
quelque chose à manger
.” Of course, I say none of this.

“Someone's in a good mood,” Summer notes.

“Oh, yeah. You know,” I stammer with characteristic grace. “This soup's gonna be stupid good.”
Nice
.

We slip delicate slivers of glistening-pink beef into two bowls, then I ladle screamingly hot broth into each. The meat instantly poaches, darkening to a soft gray with just a touch of rose remaining in the center.

I pause, the recent failure of the Roast I Wrecked looming large in the back of my mind. Finally, I dip my spoon beneath the surface of the golden liquid and taste my handiwork.

Glorious.

“Wow,” I hear my wife say from somewhere far off in the distant reaches of my soup-induced Pleasuretorium. “Nice work, Stone.”

It's possibly not only the best soup I've ever made, but the best dish I've ever made of any variety. It's joy in a bowl. It's savory and delightful and rich—and a far better dish than I have any business creating.

We ply the broth with our accoutrements and pour another glass of wine. I'm heartened by this success after such a spectacular failure.

There's hope for this project yet.

*   *   *

My job may be a hot ball of stress dipped in anxiety and amphetamines, but my weekends are wonderlands of culinary experimentation. As I explore the beef that occupies my freezer, I realize that dealing with connective tissue is a major consideration. More than only thinking about it when I make a pot roast—connective tissue is a constant that I face with every cut in some capacity or another; it isn't something I can skip or evade or put off—it has to be dealt with. Since the two largest primals, chuck and round, contribute tremendously to moving the animal around—they are hunks of legs, after all—they have correspondingly large amounts of connective tissue, which is decidedly not delicious.

Connective tissue comes in two main types—elastin and collagen. Elastin is, oddly enough, elastic. It's the reason, for example, that skin snaps back into place after it's been pinched. It usually forms in thick bands and is fairly obvious to the eye.

Collagen, on the other hand, generally forms in threads between the muscle fibers themselves, though those threads can be quite thick in places. It's also an ingredient commonly added to lotions and beauty creams for the purpose of making them more expensive. (Also, it might decrease signs of aging. But mostly the first thing.)

When a piece of meat is cooked in a liquid at relatively low temperatures for a long period of time—that is, braised—the collagen in the meat transforms into another type of protein: gelatin. This aptly named protein is a powerful gelling agent and is the primary ingredient in Jell-O, as well as many similarly textured foods.

In a pot roast or other braise, this gelatin thickens whatever flavorful liquid the roast is cooked in, resulting in a sauce with a smooth, lovely mouthfeel. It's the reason why chefs boil bones when they're making soup and why enthusiastic amateurs boil bones when they're making pho. This transformation is a really remarkable bit of culinary alchemy—turning chewy, unappetizing collagen into rich, gorgeous sauces. Making lowly, tough cuts of meat into something divine.

From a chemical standpoint, the liquid that the roast is braised in isn't important so long as there is enough water content to facilitate the conversion of collagen into gelatin. From a culinary standpoint, it's nice to choose a liquid that complements the dish. Beef stock is an obvious choice. It doubles down on the beefy goodness already present in the cut. Wine is lovely—it adds a little acid and then turns a little sweet during the process as most of the alcohol and some of the water evaporates out, condensing the sugars. Some chili recipes braise in beer and water. Some classic pork recipes braise in milk. Or, in the South—Coca-Cola.

I try them all. Pot roasts become my go-to weekend dish. I have a free Sunday afternoon? Pot roast. No plans for dinner? Pot roast. Extra-long commercial break? You bet that's a pot roast. Solid experimental proof of the Higgs boson? Pot. Roast.

One fine Saturday evening, my wife is invited to a Drag Queen Tupperware Party. This is, I'm told, a Tupperware party hosted by a drag queen—and not, as I initially supposed, an opportunity to ensure that one's drag queen remains refrigerator fresh. With Summer in Eagle Rock catching dinner storage and a show, I'm staying home with Declan. Just the two of us. Guys' night.

It's the first night Declan and I have had alone together for quite a while. I'm usually running hither and yon, pulled in a thousand different directions, working on a million different things. Dec is usually getting ready for bed by the time I get home. But not tonight. Tonight we can do anything we want.

And guys gotta eat.

Declan is almost two years old. A few times while I was cooking, he's brought a chair over and tried to help. I gave him some carrots to “hold for me,” as there was never really anything he could actually do to pitch in. But tonight, that changes. Tonight, Daddy and Dec have a mission. Tonight, we're making stew. Appropriate for the evening, as a stew is just a pot roast in a wig. More liquid than a braise, but the same process underneath. Moisture. Low heat. Long time.

I'm going to let Declan take the reins of the project. We'll use all his favorite foods and let him do as much of the prep work as he's able. Nothing with knives or heat, of course, but that doesn't mean he can't wrangle some veggies. Maybe lots of veggies.

I prep the accoutrements I think we'll need—an assortment of stew meat, some stock, and all the vegetation we could find in the fridge. And, because we're a couple of dudes making stew—bacon. Lots of bacon.

I pull a chair over for Declan so he can sit at the counter and work with me, and I hand him a clove of garlic to peel. Unencumbered by civilized notions of proper sanitation, he ignores the chair, taking a seat on the floor next to the compost bowl, and begins to peel the garlic. I watch him for a moment, debating whether I should make him move to the counter.

Nah. Don't put your rules on me, man. It's guys' night.

Alright, I can do this. I take a seat on the floor next to him and likewise begin peeling garlic. My enormous Rhodesian Ridgeback, always entranced by any sort of edible matter whatsoever, lopes over and sprawls out behind me. We make a happy threesome on the floor. I'm okay with the dubious hygiene of the situation. It shouldn't cause any food safety issues in this particular case—and this isn't a meal for guests. This is a meal just for us. I'm careful to keep our veggies off the tiles and away from the dog; still, if my wife were to walk in and see this, she'd have a stroke.

Silence falls as we focus on our tasks. Declan has never peeled garlic before, and his fine motor skills are still developing. But he's diligent. I think he's happy that he gets to participate. With fat, stubby fingers, he delicately removes flake after flake of garlic skin.

I'm the first to break the silence. “So, how you been, buddy?”

“I'm peeling!”

“You certainly are, my friend. You certainly are.”

We finish the garlic and move on to peeling halves of an onion. This one is fun. Declan is painstakingly careful to peel only the very top layer of the onion and nothing more. Again, delicate. Deliberate. Focused.

“Wow, you're really doing a good job, buddy. Working hard over there.”

He beams. I melt a little inside. Finally, he hands me back an onion as pristine as if I had peeled it myself.

“More, Daddy?”

I look around. The rest of the veggies require tools. Metal tools, like vegetable peelers, that might scrape clumsy, not-quite-two-year-old fingers.

“More?” He eyes the carrots, hopeful.

“Can you be very, very careful?”

“I careful,” he insists.

“Okay,” I relent, handing him a carrot and the vegetable peeler. “Careful.”

“Careful. Carrot. Careful.” Like a tiny surgeon, he delicately pantomimes peeling the carrot, removing perhaps a nanometer of skin with each stroke. Whispering to himself, “Careful. Careful.”

I reposition the peeler in his hand, showing him more explicitly how it works. A moment of instruction later, he's legitimately peeling a carrot. Slowly, and in tiny strips, but he's doing it.

“Good work, buddy.”

“Careful, careful,” he responds. I pull out a paring knife and start peeling the potatoes.

Vegetables prepped, I survey our
mise en place,
such as it is. Of course, today half of it's on the floor, so I try to arrange my cooking area into some sort of order. I like to cook in an organized work space; I find it helps counteract my intermittent bouts of flamboyant stupidity. I have my onions, carrots, garlic, potatoes, and—off to one side—the stew beef. We can do better.

“Hey, D. What else do you want in your stew?”

He looks up. “I want peas.”

“Peas?”

“I want peas, Daddy.” I don't frequently cook with peas. The sight of them gives my wife “the vapors,” as she is wont to declare while fanning herself when affecting the accent of her antebellum roots. I'm not nuts about them either, but Declan is absolutely mad for them. He eats his weight in peas about every two weeks.

Summer isn't here. And I'm letting Declan call the shots tonight. “Peas it is!” I say, headed to the fridge.

“Yay!” he replies.

“Yay!” I echo. “Guys' night!”

“Guy nye!”

I dice some bacon. Some. A reasonable amount. Organization is great, but tonight measuring is for chumps. Tonight is relaxing and free. I throw the bacon into my Dutch oven and cook it until it's crisp. Then I remove the lardons and sear the beef in the bacon fat.

“This is gonna be good stew, dude.”

“Yeah. Stew dude!” Declan laughs. So do I.

I pull the beef, toss in the onions, and sweat them until they begin to soften. I toss a little flour into the bacon fat to make something like a roux. Then stock, bay leaf, fresh thyme. I bring it all to a boil, then return the meat to the pot, drop the heat to low, and put a lid on it.

Declan and I retire to the television parlor to watch a show in which things explode in an educational manner. Thirty minutes later, we return to the kitchen, and Declan helps me add the carrots and potatoes to our stew.

“Careful, careful,” he intones.

Another fortyish minutes later, veggies are soft, and the meat is like butter. I add the bacon back in. And, finally, the peas.

“Peas!” Declan exclaims.

I give the peas five minutes in the liquid to heat through and then ladle two bowls for Declan and me. We sit down at the dining room table, and I offer a toast to my almost-two-year-old son.