Year of the Cow (29 page)

 

Lengua
Tacos

Time: 4 hours, largely unattended

Makes 8 to 10 tacos

It's easy to be scared of tongue, the meat that tastes you back. Don't be.
Lengua
tacos are a good way to incorporate this unfamiliar cut into a familiar dish. The keys are to cook it for a long time, strip off the taste buds, and slice it thinly.

You may need to convince people to take the first bite. You won't have to convince them to take the second.

This is adapted from a recipe by Elise Bauer.

SALSA VERDE

1½ pounds tomatillos

½ cup chopped white onion

½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 jalapeño peppers, stemmed and chopped

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice

¼ teaspoon sugar

Kosher salt

TONGUE

2 large white onions, peeled and quartered

1 head garlic, separated into cloves, crushed, and peeled

8 bay leaves

1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 (2- to 3-pound) beef tongue

2 tablespoons olive oil

AT THE TABLE

1 avocado, sliced

1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1 red onion, finely diced

Corn tortillas

This meal is improved immeasurably by making the corn tortillas from scratch. They're easy to do: Pick up some Maseca from your local Latin market or supermarket and follow the instructions on the bag.

TOOL

Pliers

  
1.
To make the salsa verde, first preheat the broiler to high and line a sheet pan with aluminum foil. (You can make the salsa verde either in advance or while the tongue is braising.)

  
2.
Remove the husks from the tomatillos and rinse them well. (If they're still sticky, you haven't rinsed enough.) Cut each tomatillo in half horizontally, remove the stem cap, and place on the foil-lined sheet pan.

  
3.
Broil the tomatillos for 8 minutes.

  
4.
Transfer the tomatillos to a blender, and add the onion, cilantro, peppers, lime juice, and sugar. Pulse to liquefy. Add salt to taste, then refrigerate until ready to serve.

  
5.
To prepare the tongue, fill a very large stockpot two-thirds full with water. Add the onions, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, and salt. Bring to a boil, add the tongue, and reduce the heat to a simmer.

At some point during this process, pour 2 inches of water into a small saucepan and place a pair of pliers in the water, head down. Be careful that the level of the water doesn't reach up to the rubberized grips of the pliers, if they have them. Boil the pliers for 10 minutes to sterilize them. Then hold off on assembling that new Ikea bookcase until after dinner.

  
6.
Simmer the tongue, covered, for 3 hours, or until a paring knife slips into it easily.

  
7.
Remove the tongue from the liquid, and let it cool for a few minutes, until it can be easily handled. Using your sterilized pliers, peel off the outer surface of the tongue, removing all the taste buds and pigment. The outer layer of the tongue should come off easily in several large pieces. If it doesn't, you may need to simmer the tongue a little longer. If it comes off in smaller pieces, simply use a paring knife to help the process along, and be persistent.

  
8.
Cut the tongue crosswise into thin slices.

  
9.
Working in batches, sear the tongue slices in the oil in a heavy skillet over high heat.

10.
When all the slices are seared, cut each slice into strips, then rotate the strips 90 degrees and cut them into tiny cubes.

11.
Serve the diced tongue in a bowl at the table with the salsa verde and the accoutrements listed above.

 

10

Around the Fire

I am not a morning person.

I deeply wish that I were, but alas, it is not to be. When the morning sun finally just crests the horizon and streams through the partially drawn curtains into my bedroom—I want nothing more than to slumber on, basking in those sunbeams like a Benadryl-addled cat.

My wife is a morning person. This may perhaps explain why on this (presumably) gorgeous morning she is gently nudging me, rousing me from my slumber earlier than is usual. It
may
explain it, but somehow I know it doesn't. Not fully. As I open my eyes, she's sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she offers.

“Morning,” I croak. This is not an hour in which civilized people interact. “Everything okay?”

“Yep. Everything's good.” She smiles slightly. “I'm pregnant.”

Slowly, I grin. “Are you sure?”

She nods. “I'm sure. I'm very, very sure.”

“That's wonderful…” I grin wider. “That's fantastic!” I sit up to throw my arms around her and pull her back into bed.

*   *   *

“This looks wrong.”

I'm standing in my kitchen. On my counter are a can of cranberry sauce, a sack of Lipton dry onion soup mix, a bottle of ketchup, and a beer. “This looks very, very wrong.”

“I'm sure it'll be fine, sweetie,” Summer says. “Ellen knows what she's doing.”

Ellen is Summer's boss. Together, they negotiate the somewhat treacherous waters of acquiring the rights to use music in movies. What's more, Ellen knows everyone in town. Want to sell a car? “I know a guy.” Need to redo your kitchen? “Visit my friend, here. Drop my name.” Looking for a way to smuggle endangered monkeys across the border—
any
border? “Call this number, wait for the beep, and say, ‘The banana doesn't fall far from the tree.'” We call her the Godmother.

I'm cooking a seder this year, primarily because it seems like such a beautiful ritual. It's an excuse to sit with friends and loved ones and share a meal. How could I resist?

Naturally, when I began the search for brisket recipes, Summer suggested we turn to the Godmother.

“Best brisket on Earth,” she promised. “This recipe won a brisket cook-off competition at my temple. There were over a hundred entries, and this one won. Need I say more?”

Looking at the ingredients on my counter—maybe.

I turn my attention to the brisket. I haven't cooked this cut before. Because each steer has only two, I'm very cautious about wrecking them. For a seder, however, I'll take that chance.

The brisket is the breast of the steer, between and in front of the two front legs. It's frequently used in Jewish cuisine because kosher beef in North America is taken only from the front half of the animal. There isn't a lot of oxtail served up in Jewish delis.

Reading this recipe, I see it's essentially a braise. I know braises. I've done more braises than I can count. I'm the Baron of Braises. The Potentate of Pot Roasts. The Magister of Moisture. I can braise a chuck roast with one hand and spin commemorative plates with the other. I got this.

Generally, I would prefer to sear a piece of beef before braising. Searing, contrary to popular belief, does not “seal in juices” or anything of the sort. What searing does is make the surface of the cut golden brown and delicious. And golden brown and delicious tastes good.

“Honey,” I note, reading the recipe, “there's no sear in this recipe.”

“So?” my wife replies.

“I think there should be a sear,” I continue. “And I don't think there's enough liquid. I want to add some beef stock.”

“Whatever you want to do, sweetie. Ellen is simply a Jewish matriarch, having grown up in a kosher household cooking this for her own family every Passover for decades. This is only supposed to be the Best Passover Brisket Ever. But I'm sure you know best.”

My wife is so dry, she's got vermouth in her veins. But she has a point.

She continues. “You're overthinking it. Listen to the Godmother.”

“Okay. Fine.”

I prep my
mise en place
. This consists of setting everything on the counter and opening it: beer, ketchup, cranberry sauce, and dry soup mix. Then I dump it all in a big bowl and stir. This is without question the strangest braising liquid I've ever seen. It's fizzy and fruity, with big globular chunks of cranberry floating in it. I must have faith.

I pour the primordial sludge of the braising liquid over the meat and slide the whole morass into the oven. One thing this recipe has going for it is that it suggests cooking the meat the day before serving and just reheating it before service. This is smart; the flavors in the meat and the liquid meld during the time between when they're cooked and when they're eaten. That's part of the reason that, say, chili is always better the next day (if your chili happens to consist of braised meat).

When the brisket is soft but not falling to pieces, I pull it from the oven, slice, and return to the liquid before stashing it in the fridge for the night.

The next day, I skim the fat off the top of the braising liquid and slide the pan back into a warm oven. Ellen suggests pairing the brisket with mashed potatoes and asparagus. So, asparagus and mashed it is.

Mashed potatoes was the first real dish I learned to make.

During the heyday of my misspent youth, I worked as a grip on indie film shoots in the Midwest. That's how Ben and I met; he was my key grip, and I was one of the guys in his crew. If a director with more vision than money needed elegant solutions to ridiculous problems, we were the guys for the job. In film, and especially indie films, crews can get pretty tight. Working with the same bunch of guys on twenty-hour days in rain and sleet and snow, in gorgeous penthouses and grimy industrial parks—doing hard, heavy, yet deeply creative and mentally challenging work—you get to know your guys really well. You become almost like family.

One of the guys in our crew was a gaffer named Ian. He was the human equivalent of those walking stick insects that live in Borneo and look like twigs. He may still be the tallest person I've ever met. When we worked together, he had hair down to his waist and never really stood fully upright during the daytime lest the rest of us try to tell time by charting his shadow.

Ian liked potatoes. A lot. Once, I mentioned that I didn't really know how to make mashed potatoes, and he looked at me like I'd just spontaneously started Tuvan throat singing. Without hesitation, he grabbed a spare scrap of paper and jotted down his recipe for mashed potatoes. “You'll like these,” he said. “Don't lose this paper.” To this day, I haven't.

Ian's potatoes became the basis of my own mashed potato recipe, which I've tweaked and modified over the years. When pulled fresh from the oven, the dish offers a gently caramelized crust atop garlicky pillows fluffy with dairy. The potatoes aren't difficult to make, but they are labor-intensive. I set to work, while prepping the asparagus to roast.

I should note at this point that we're not actually Jewish—on my better days, perhaps I'm Jewesque—but I enjoy the idea of a seder. A meal, shared with family and friends, lingered over, appreciated. The excuse it offers for us to sit together on a dark night and enjoy one another's company.

More pointedly, however, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I'm in luck, though. Seders have instruction manuals called Haggadahs, which detail the ins and outs of the ritual—mostly a series of specific dishes and a retelling of the story of the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. To cover my cultural ignorance, I'm using Michael Rubiner's
Two-Minute Haggadah,
printed out from
Slate.com
. I even stapled the printout on the right-hand side for veracity, just like real, nonridiculously abbreviated Haggadahs. I want to make sure Declan has a wide range of cultural experiences, even if imperfectly administered. I've skimmed the document, so I figure I can drive this boat, at least well enough to satisfy a three-year-old.

Once seated around the table, we begin. I look over my Haggadah. “Thanks, God, for creating wine.” Amen there. I reach to pour some wine for Summer, to find her hand over her glass.

“Nope,” she says.

I smile. “Sorry—habit.” I hop up to get her a glass of water.

“No problem,” she says. “As soon as this baby arrives, it'll be wine, sushi, and cold cuts for days.”

I laugh and continue reading. “Thanks, God, for creating produce.” Um, wait. What? I must have missed that part when I skimmed the Haggadah earlier. I see parsley referenced. I don't have parsley. Hmm. I need vegetation. I have pickles. Kosher dills, even. I offer dill pickles to everyone, though pregnant wife turns a delightful shade of nauseated green when the pickles come within five feet of her. I retract her pickle offer and give them instead to Declan. Done.