Year of the Cow (17 page)

Once upon a time, buying an entire cow wasn't a vote for locavorism or even a show of foodie street cred. It was a function of the fact that I owned a cow—and now that cow is dead. I'd better eat that cow, because otherwise it's going to go to waste. You buy most or all of a cow because that's how they come. Upright. On the hoof. Mooing.

For a long time in many parts of the world, there wasn't a debate about getting an entire cow. If you had a cow, you'd eat it. If you had a duck, you'd eat that. Chickens, goats, peacocks, pigeons, pigs, and pheasants—same deal. Protein came from animals. And if it came from a bigger animal, it meant that you could wait longer until you had to resupply, especially if you had a freezer or a method of preservation. That's why, though Western minds consider whale slaughter immoral, it's actually accepted in some varieties of Buddhism as the lesser of several evils—if a single large animal dies, many small animals may live.

Admittedly, I also thought that buying a whole cow was a little bit nuts. But as I get into living with and cooking this beast, I'm starting to change my mind. It isn't nuts that I drove to a ranch, bought a steer, and drove nine hours with it in the back of my car. In a way, given how dependent we as a culture are on animal protein—it's nuts that more people haven't made the same trip. It's nuts that we depend so mightily on a food production infrastructure that's largely invisible to us. It's nuts that we can accidentally eat so much without realizing it because calories are so cheap. And it's nuts that we know—that I know—so little about the material that eventually makes up my body. The very stuff that becomes “me.”

But I'm learning.

*   *   *

The best thing about
Nourishing Traditions
is the absolute glut of recipes. Sauces, fermented dairy dishes, appetizers, soups, and more ways to treat vegetables than a vegan potluck. I enjoy vegetables, though admittedly more in the abstract than on an everyday basis.

One lazy Sunday, I'm flipping through recipe books, trying to let the accumulated knowledge of generations of French chefs somehow osmose into my mind. I could get lost in a
Larousse Gastronomique
hole for days. As it is, I've been reading about vegetables for a solid hour, and now I'm craving a salad of some sort.

I head to the kitchen to see what my vegetable options are. Maybe I'll be inspired by my botanical bounty and some salad idea will spring fully formed from my brainpan like Athena from the brow of Zeus.

I have an onion and a single head of romaine lettuce.

Okay, that won't really do. But I can throw together a little side salad, I suppose. There's a whole section of
Nourishing Traditions
on salad dressings, not to mention the
Larousse,
Bittman, and the entire Internet. I can make this work.

With my salad plans duly modified, I head into the backyard to see what my options for a main dish are. Dec and Summer are out shopping; maybe I can put together lunch for the whole clan.

I sift through the packages of beef. I'm finding that in trying to make the best use of every part of the animal, I'm becoming somewhat protective of each little package in my freezer. I really don't want to wreck any more dishes. With several of these cuts, I have only one. If I mess it up, that's it. No do-overs. For example, hanger steak? There's only one on the animal. Gotta save that. Chuck roast? It's huge. Way too big for three people. Gotta save that. Flank steak? There's only one, cut into two pieces. Gotta save that.

I find a package of tenderized round steak and pause. This is interesting. The round is enormous, so I should have plenty of these—doubtless enough to spare one for a quick Sunday meal. The package, at just over a pound of meat, should be just the perfect size for two adults and a child. I pull the package and head back inside the house.

In college, I waited tables during the graveyard shift at a pancake house popular with college students, drunks, and insomniacs. In a college town in the conservative Midwest, all the crazy comes out at night. At my job, it was in my best interest to notice crazy coming in the door, give it a high five, and pour it a cup of strong coffee. It was at this pancake house that I developed an appreciation for our most popular dish—chicken-fried steak.

Chicken-fried steak is, essentially, a steak treated like fried chicken. It's usually one of the more humble cuts of meat—such as top round—tenderized, floured, and pan- or deep-fried. I haven't fried any beef at all yet, and I have a brand spanking new Jaccard begging to be used. A Jaccard, also known as a needler, is something like a self-inking date stamp someone might use in an office—only instead of the date, it stamps two dozen razor-sharp needles into the surface of your choice.

I slip my package of beef into a bowl and turn on a thin stream of cold water. A half hour later, my steaks are thawed, my Jaccard is ready, and I'm eager to perforate some steak.

I lay the steaks on the board. They're already tenderized by my butcher, but I can do better. I stamp them with the Jaccard like a nefarious bureaucrat from Terry Gilliam's
Brazil
.

Once they're thoroughly perforated, I dredge the steaks in some seasoned flour, then an egg wash, then more seasoned flour, and then drop them into some hot canola oil in my Dutch oven. A couple of minutes per side, then I stash the steaks on a plate and stow them in a warm oven.

The main course is ready, now it's time to turn my attention to the side salad. What the hell can I do with white onions and lettuce? I start considering dressings. I have herbs, I have vinegar … and I also have all this oil. Just sitting there. Barely used for frying my steaks. Still warm, in fact. Sitting right there.

I glance back to my onion. Back to the oil.

Since I'm on a kitchen gadget kick, I pull out my mandoline, which, like my Jaccard, I rarely use. The mandoline is essentially a small, elevated table with a blade set into it for slicing. If you recall those ancient credit card machines that used to take an imprint of the entire card rather than just swiping the magnetic strip, you have some idea of what a mandoline looks like. Only instead of pressing carbon paper onto a credit card, it slides the veggie of your choice through a razor-sharp blade.

The theme of today's meal is Deadly Office Supplies, apparently.

Five minutes later, my white onion is sliced into delicate concentric rings of identical thickness. I dump the flour from the dredging station but create a new, identical one on another clean plate. I put the canola back over the flame and bring it up to about 350 degrees. I drop the onion rings into the oil, one at a time, working in small batches to keep them from sticking to one another. Ten minutes later, I have a stash of beautiful, golden-brown onion rings. I stow them in the warm oven as well.

Finally, I drain off most of the oil from my fry station and whisk in a little flour to make a quick roux. I add a little chicken broth until I get the right consistency, then a little milk to make a cream gravy. Pleased, I survey my work.

I have created nothing remotely resembling a salad.

The head of romaine sits unused on the counter opposite the detritus of my fry frenzy. Somewhat embarrassed, I chop the romaine and pull together the saddest vinaigrette mankind has ever known.

Also, I've cooked an entire meal in canola oil. It's a highly processed oil that oxidizes easily, leading to all sorts of maladies
Nourishing Traditions
lays at the feet of the Western industrialized diet. I feel a bit guilty.

Still, when Summer and Declan return home, I'm ready with the chicken-fried steak, onion rings, and my punchline of a salad.

“Nice job, Suzy Homemaker,” my wife comments, surveying the meal. She pauses and cocks her head. “Is there anything in that salad besides lettuce?”

“Um … no. There is not.”

She laughs. I set the table.

As chicken-fried steaks go, this is glorious. Better than anything I've ever had in a restaurant. Summer forgoes the steak in favor of the ludicrous little salad I made, but Declan dives into the steak with gusto. He rarely eats meat, so this is a welcome surprise. Similarly, the onion rings blow the doors off most restaurant fare.

We eat and laugh as Summer tells me of their afternoon adventures. I love these little moments when I can put food on the table literally, instead of just figuratively.

I'm encouraged by how well this meal turned out, but it isn't really what I set out to do initially. I wanted a salad. I'm dismayed by the dearth of vegetables in my house. I glance over at my copy of
Nourishing Traditions
lying on the kitchen counter. Mocking me.

Something needs to be done.

*   *   *

“What is it?”

“I'm not sure,” I reply. Summer and I are standing over an open cardboard box. It is overflowing with all manner of vegetables. Some of these vegetables are familiar. Others—such as the enormous white carrotesque roots in the center of the box—are not. “I think they're turnips.”

“I've seen turnips. Those are not turnips.”

“Maybe rutabagas?”

“I don't think so,” she says.

“Have you ever had a rutabaga?” I ask.

“No. But they're like big round globular things. Not giant carrots.” She thinks. “Go check the list.”

I jump on the computer and pull up my e-mail. We've signed up for a vegetable delivery service, and our first delivery has just arrived. We don't get to pick what we receive, though. Each shipment is simply an assortment of whatever's fresh and in season at the time. They e-mailed an inventory of the first shipment.

“Parsnips.”

“Oh, cool,” she says. Then, a second later: “I have no idea what that is.”

“Me neither,” I reply, examining the gigantic roots before moving on to the rest of the box. There are huge green leaves everywhere. “We have kale for days, though.”

“So much kale. What are we going to do with all of it?”

“We'll figure it out.” I smile. “It's an adventure.”

“It certainly is.”

“What doesn't
kale
us—”

“Stop,” she interrupts. “Let's get this stuff in the fridge.”

*   *   *

Thursday night. All is not well.

I walk in the door to the sound of a screaming toddler. Dec is cranky, sobbing his lungs out in his room. Meanwhile, Summer is riffling through our kitchen stores.

Summer hears me come in. “Check on him,” she says, gesturing to the far side of the house. I drop my bag and head for Declan's room.

The little man is in a bad mood. There's nothing really wrong with him, but he's hungry. Toys aren't calming him. I try to read him a book, but he won't hold still. He's hungry. I hoist him up onto my hip and head back in Summer's direction.

“Do we have any chicken nuggets?” she asks.

“Trade me.” I pass Declan off to Summer and take her place in the kitchen.

Go time.

We need food for the munchkin, and we need it yesterday. I raid our vegetation-crammed fridge.

Snow peas! Dec likes peas.

Broccoli! Superfood. Everybody likes broccoli.

Asparagus? Why not.

Edamame—definitely. Another toddler favorite.

Declan likes all this stuff. Surely he'll be in the mood for one of these.

Now, what to do with it all? I could do tapas—in our house tapas is another word for lazy buffet. But raw broccoli and raw asparagus are nasty. Luckily, I have brown rice in the fridge. Brown rice plus a boatload of vegetables equals stir-fry. Beef for a protein. Done.

I raid the freezer and pull out a pound of round. At least, I think it's round. The package is conveniently labeled “stir-fry beef.” Good enough for me. I throw it in the sink under a thin stream of water to thaw.

That done, the knife comes out. I slice everything into approximately equal-sized pieces. In a stir-fry, prep is everything. Once the cooking process begins, there's no stopping it. You have to have all the ingredients ready to cook, standing by in the proper order, and know how long everything needs to stay in so that the entire dish is ready at once. Good prep makes that easier.

I begin the rice in a pot on a back burner. Meanwhile, I pull together a quick sauce out of soy sauce, some rice vinegar, a little mirin—Japanese cooking wine—I had on hand, and the juice of an orange. I also dice a couple cloves of garlic. Garlic is always good.

Summer pokes her head in, still holding a grumpy child. “How long 'til dinner?”

“Soon. Ten minutes. Ish.”

She nods and darts back out. I slam my wok down on my biggest burner, splash in some oil—organic, virgin coconut oil rather than canola—and crank the heat to high.

When the oil shimmers, I toss in the thawed beef. There's a frenzy and commotion in the wok as the meat hits the oil. When the beef is browned, I pour it into a bowl to wait.

More oil into the wok. Then, all the veggies. I cook them until they're only slightly soft—overcooked veggies are gross. Just undercooked veggies are crisp. Besides, they'll continue to cook as they cool.

I pour in the sauce, which responds with a hiss and a cloud of steam. I let it just warm, then add the beef back in to heat through.

The rice is done. I drop a scoop in three bowls and fat ladles of stir-fry over the top. I add extra veggies for Declan, in hopes that there's something in the bowl he likes. I'm playing the screaming-toddler lottery here. Dinner is served.

It's a good dish—a little rushed and a little sloppy for it. But we enjoyed it; the sauce was bright and lovely. Declan wolfed down the edamame, largely ignoring the rest of the dish. But that's okay. He ate. Perhaps through sniffles, but he ate.

Summer likewise approved. “I love broccoli so much.”

“Me too. And it's so good for you it's silly.”

She nods. “Nice work, Stone. And on a weekday, to boot.”