Year of the Cow (4 page)

Summer and Ben are looking at me like I'm about to raise my arms and make some sort of grand proclamation about dinner. They're hungry. “KC strip,” I decide, keeping my arms firmly at my sides. A lovely steak—and a familiar one.

The Kansas City strip steak comes from the short loin of the animal. It's far from the head and the hoof, which means that it doesn't do a whole lot of work moving the animal around. As a result, it doesn't develop a lot of connective tissue the way, say, a chuck steak would. It's best treated simply, grilled hot and fast, and served medium rare.

I open my freezer to pull it, sifting through all the packages I just managed to close the lid on. The strip steaks are nowhere to be seen.

They must be on the bottom.

For the fourth time that day, I begin to unload beef from my freezer. Not all the way—I just stack the packages on the edge of the freezer, excavating a hole into which I delve for steaky goodness. “Smart,” I think. “Less work loading and unloading the entire haul.” I pile the other cuts around the edge of the hole, spelunking into a man-made cavern of rock-hard, irregular bricks at subzero temperatures, searching for a single elusive gustatory prize. Finally, I find a single package of strip steak at the bottom of the hole. I reach for it.

Beefalanche. All the stacked—and, it turns out, slippery—cuts balanced around the edge of the hole tumble everywhere. I manage to grab the steak, but a five-pound London broil clatters to the concrete, barely missing my toe. Filets skitter across the pavement like hockey pucks. It's pandemonium.

However, I am victorious. I hold in my hand a slim, plastic-wrapped brick of beef. And with this package's absence, I have ever so slightly more room in the freezer than I did previously.

And I have a dinner to cook.

*   *   *

Safe in the kitchen, I thaw and rinse the steaks, pat them dry, then take a good look. They're not the Technicolor-bright red of grocery store steaks—they're a deeper crimson. This could be due to aging, or it could be because they're grass-fed. I don't know. And while they do have some marbling, they pointedly do not have the copious fat streaks of grain-fed beef. I'm told they cook faster as a result, so I'll have to keep an eye on them. I'd prefer to not wreck my very first meal from this enormous beef stockpile. Especially with guests.

I slather a little canola oil on my hands and rub it on the steaks. The fat will serve as a heat conductor and contribute to a quality sear. A liberal dose of salt and pepper and the steaks are prepped.

Each steak is about an inch and a half thick, which translates (roughly) to three minutes a side at 450 for medium rare. With some minor fanfare, I slap them on the grill.

Night's coming on. Somewhere, a cricket chirps. Ben and I are bone-tired, in the way that driving nine hours and juggling nearly a quarter ton of beef can make you. We're also hungry.

Timer says ninety seconds have elapsed. On a lark, I peek at the steaks.

Oh, they're ready. So very ready—seared beautifully and cooked nearly to half their thickness. Hurriedly, I flip them. They hit medium rare in half the time suggested for grain-fed. I'm very lucky I checked. My inability to spend a moment without a task barely kept us from eating shoe leather. It's a win for self-diagnosed borderline obsessive-compulsives everywhere. Another ninety seconds and the steaks are done.

I set them aside to rest, throw some broccoli in a pan to broil, and turn to find Declan watching me. This is the hardest part of my day: “Bedtime, little man.” My days are long and my evenings all too short. Usually, I'm only just arrived home from the office before it's time for him to sleep. We've barely seen each other this weekend.

Declan shares the blond mop and bright green eyes I had when I was his age, and to him everything is an adventure. He's a white-hot pulsar of enthusiasm and wonder, and I wish I got to spend more time with him. I give him the biggest hug in the history of affection, and he toddles toward his room. Summer reads him a story while I slice what looks to be a fantastic potato caraway bread she baked especially for tonight's meal.

A few minutes later, dinner is ready. Summer, Ben, and I sit down at the table in our backyard and survey the feast. Despite my kitchen ninjitsu, the steaks have nudged up toward medium. They're still gorgeous, however, with a deep-brown sear and a bright pink center. They're paired with just-picked sweet corn, roasted broccoli with Parmesan, and the aforementioned potato bread that Summer made, which couldn't have been easy or quick.

The table falls silent as we slice our steaks—the first sojourn into what will hopefully be a year of remarkable meals. My steak is unlike anything I've ever tasted. It blows the doors off the grain-fed steak I had the night before at the high-end steakhouse. But really, it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

The grain-fed steak was a luscious, succulent thing. Heavily marbled with fat and practically falling apart, it had an exorbitant richness to it. A luxury, it was certainly delicious—and exactly as I expected it to be. It tasted like a well-prepared steak.

This steak, both because it is a different cut and because it's grass-fed, is less marbled. Also well-prepared (if I do say so)—it tastes nothing like I expected. It tastes
far
richer. Not gamier per se, but beefier. More like itself. It tastes like everything a person would like about a steak—cranked to eleven. And then shot into space. And then kissed by angels.

Grass-fed beef, unlike grain-fed beef, is the product of a specific time and place. It has qualities usually considered only when discussing fine wine. To eat a grass-fed steer is on some level to taste the land and the
terroir
the animal came from, lived in, and experienced.

I've read about
terroir,
but I've never really been privileged enough to experience it firsthand. I've taken the word of wine labels—the brief stories on the labels designed to conjure an image of some half-invented idyll that you too can supposedly experience if you will only buy a bottle—but I've rarely visited a location, then sampled its wares elsewhere and had my impressions of the place come rushing back. It's a heady experience.

The three of us pop open a bottle of Pinot Noir as the sun first glows orange, then fades to the deep crimson of our steak, before finally vanishing. I swirl the wine in my glass. The way this cow lived—its
terroir
—is reflected quite dramatically in this steak. In its very flesh. These steaks taste like fresh air, lazy afternoons among fruit trees, and a life lived at a slower pace. I'll be cooking this meat for the coming year—I wonder what will be reflected in me. I hope that, a year from now, I will find myself somehow improved. Somehow better. Perhaps, through some act of sympathetic magic, somehow more at peace with the world and my place in it.

It should be a very interesting year.

 

The Simplest Strip Steak

Time: About 30 minutes

Serves 2 to 4 people, depending on what you serve it with

The strip steak is a major muscle off the short loin primal. It has almost no connective tissue, so it can be cooked hot and fast. It's also relatively lean and cooks quickly. Be sure not to overcook or you'll lose what makes this cut great. (Be especially careful if it's grass-fed, as it'll cook even faster.)

It's a simple cut to cook for dinner parties. Just don't be an idiot and overdo it; let the meat speak for itself.

2 Kansas City strip steaks (or New York strip steaks, depending), about 1½ inches thick

2 tablespoons canola oil (or peanut, sunflower, or vegetable oil, or clarified butter)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

  1.
Thaw the steaks and bring them to room temperature. If you're short on time, you can thaw the steaks in about an hour by placing the still-packaged meat in a bowl in your sink with a thin stream of cold (not warm!) water running into it. The cold water is warmer than the frozen meat, and the constant stream will gently thaw it.

Don't do this during a drought. Also, don't do it if you have an enormous dog who will make your dinner her own. Not that this has ever happened to me.

Be sure to bring the meat fully to room temperature or it won't cook evenly. Don't worry about food-borne pathogens here—they live on the surface of the meat, and you're going to sear that to oblivion.

  2.
Bring your grill to 450°F. Use an independent oven thermometer on the grill grate if at all possible. Lid thermometers lie. If you don't have access to a grill, a cast-iron griddle or skillet works as well. Place it over your biggest burner and heat it until it smokes.

  3.
Rub the entire surface of the meat with the high-heat-tolerant fat of your choice, and shake off excess.

  4.
Season the steaks with salt and pepper. Use more than you think you need, and use more salt than pepper. Pepper can burn, while salt can't—it's a rock. Also, a lot of your seasoning will fall off, so don't be shy.

  5.
Grill the steaks to medium rare, with an internal temp of about 130°F. (If grain-fed: about 3 minutes per side, flipped twice, for a total of 12 minutes. If grass-fed: about 90 seconds per side, flipped twice, for a total of 6 minutes.)

To check for doneness, you can (a) use an instant-read thermometer or (b) use the finger test: Touch your middle finger to the tip of your thumb, then feel the fleshy part of your hand at the base of your thumb. That's what medium rare feels like. Or you can (c) cut into the steak to check.

  6.
Remove the steaks to a plate and cover loosely with aluminum foil; let rest for 10 minutes.

  7.
Plate and serve.

You know that bottle of Pinot Noir you've been saving for a special occasion? Now's a good time to break it out.

 

2

Grind

Monday morning, I'm back at my workaday life.

At 9:00 a.m., full of optimism and the promise of a new day, I wheel onto the 101 Freeway on-ramp, point my car at the broad blue horizon—and stop.

I move another ten feet. Stop again.

This is how I spend the first hour of the day outside my house and the last before I return to it. Ten feet. Stop. Ten more. This is my commute.

By Los Angeles standards, I don't have
that
bad a commute. But that's like saying that by Kenyan standards, I don't get
that
mauled by lions. Oh, I still get mauled, mind you. Mauled horribly—just mauled less. But in order to do my job, I have to perform this daily ritual. This temporal sacrifice to whatever gods of commerce oversee the network promotion of primetime dramas.

My phone chirps, and I glance at the screen. It's an e-mail about work; I can answer it when I get in. Ten more feet. Stop. Eh, I can answer it now. I type a quick response and hit send. Ten more feet. Stop. Repeat.

I have a hard time disengaging from my phone. I compulsively check boxes, fix problems, and answer e-mails. I can resolve this issue now, here, in the car—so-and-so prefers HDCAM over D5 tapes,
send
—and then I won't have to deal with it later. I can get ahead! I can make a dent in my day's workload. I can get shit done, out of the way, and off my plate. I can make room for the stuff that really matters.

Oddly, though, it never really seems to work out that way. It's like bailing water from a boat in a rainstorm. Bucket after bucket—I can bail like crazy, but the rain still falls.

Today, however, is different. Today, on this bright, beautiful Monday morning, I feel like I have a secret. I have an entire cow in an iron box in my backyard. I am poised on the precipice of a fantastic adventure. Epic, even. The possibilities, though not quite endless, are close enough for jazz.

I'm a creative director at a marketing agency that specializes in the promotion of network and cable television programs. That blank look on your face right now is the normal reaction people give me when I tell them what I do. To put it a different way, think of your favorite show. Think of the commercials you see on television that tell you when that show is on and why you should watch. I make those.

I'm a small cog in a very large machine. This Machine is the sprawling complex of devices that converts desires into dollars and does so at a breakneck pace. Look, want, buy, rinse, and repeat. The Machine creates new appetites and provides endless ways to sate them. Desire begets consumption begets new desire, played out—in my world—in twenty-two-minute increments.

I do it because I love stories. On my best days, I'm a multimedia cheerleader for television shows that really deserve someone to cheer for them. And those shows are out there. Little neglected pieces of heartfelt entertainment that some writer poured their everything into because they had no other choice. The writer had to tell this story, and if no one listened—if no one in the entire world cared in the slightest—the writer had to tell it anyway. Because it'd burn a hole in that writer's soul if they kept that little bit of narrative imperative trapped inside. And my job is to say: Here it is. Here's why it's good. You should watch it.