Five hour steak

The perfectly cooked steak is the holy grail of many chefs and home cooks.



For me a steak is a treat, a rare (no pun intended) but glorious treat. As a result if I cut into one that is overdone the disappointment can easily ruin the entire meal and the next thirty minutes will be spent in a deep sulk that only time and some well-cooked chips can offset.

The happy inverse of that is slicing through a piece of beef that is cooked to the ideal doneness – a quivering pink throughout with a crisp, charred and heavily seasoned exterior. Oh, the sheer delight.

I can think of few other gustatory pleasures that can measure up to a perfectly cooked steak.



Fillet, for so long the posterboy of the steak world, doesn’t quite measure up for me.

It may be tender but its leanness is also its Achilles’ heel. For the fat is where the flavour is and a muscle that has done no work (its position in the anatomy of the cow ensures this is the case) hasn’t enough depth for the truly discerning steak lover.

Instead I prefer a muscle that has worked, one that has led a life of hardship and built up a rich marbling and intense flavour as a result. Give me an onglet or bavette to work my teeth into over a chateaubriand any day of the week.

The problem with these cuts is they can be a little too tough. Served beyond rare they turn into slabs of meat that could resole a rudeboy’s Doc Martens. Even cooked momentarily, with a brief kiss of a searingly hot frying pan, the presence of connective tissue and sinew can offer a mandible workout of intense proportions.

Enter the water bath – a way of cooking meat to perfection. Every. Single. Time.

High end restaurants have long known about the benefits of cooking sous vide. Four or five years ago I ate a piece of lamb at Midsummer House, a two-star restaurant in Cambridge. It was delightfully tender and so flavourful I can still recall it now. I couldn’t quite believe it when I was told it had cooked for six hours. How was it still so pink inside? And uniformly so?

Thomas Keller is such a convert that he has written an entire book about the method. More top shelf gastro porn from the author of The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon.

I’d looked into buying the kit (called immersion circulators) to achieve the results at home but they were bulky and astronomically expensive – designed for commercial kitchens rather than the shoebox I have at home.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was sent one aimed at home cooks from these guys. It’s small, easy to use and delivers results you would expect in top restaurants.

And as someone who delights in the science of cooking and the potential of gastronomic experimentation, it is fast becoming my new favourite toy.

For beef junkies, skirt steak is the ideal cut. It’s incredibly tasty and bargain basement cheap. Cooked right it’s a joy to eat but its window of deliciousness is small. In other words, the perfect guinea pig for my first forays into sous vide.



Each piece was well seasoned with black pepper and sea salt then placed into a plastic zip-lock bag. Apparently sous-vide means ‘under vacuum’ so enter the vacuum cleaner. I sucked out as much air as I could then quickly sealed the top before dropping the whole lot into a stockpot full of water at 52 degrees.

Why 52? 50-60 degrees is the temperature window at which the meat proteins co-agulate, or cook. Pick a point between these two magic numbers and your steak will be between rare and medium rare and gloriously juicy.

And there it remained for five hours, bobbing up and down and gradually turning an unappetising shade of grey-brown before being removed and shocked in an ice bath to stop the cooking process.

A frying pan was heated to ‘scorching’ and a small drizzle of cooking oil – enough to cover the bottom – was poured in. Whilst it was coming up to temperature, the steak was seasoned again then cooked on either side for about a minute until a generously dark colour covered each side.



After a five minute rest on a warmed plate it was time to cut and see if experiment one had worked:



What surprised me most was the uniformity of the cooking. The meat was at the rarer end of medium rare all the way through. There was no gradation towards a pinker centre but the same colour throughout, aside from the dark brown crunch of the exterior.

The flavour was assuredly beefy, intense and unmistakably steak like. The outside crisp, rich and earthy and the interior almost sweetly bovine and wonderfully soft. Whilst the meat could have been slightly tenderer – which could be achieved over a longer cooking period – it offered enough resistance to be satisfyingly chewy.

It was, easily, one of the best pieces of meat I’ve ever tasted. From now on, for me, there is only one way to cook steak. Now, I wonder if pork belly will work…?

Ten minute Tartiflette

Everyone loves leftovers.



From a rare beef sandwich that brings memories of yesterday’s roast flooding back to a slice of cold pizza, picked out of the box amidst the empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, leftovers can be a culinary experience worth savouring. Not to mention a winning hangover cure.

As a result, most nights I try and cook a little too much for dinner. Lunch often consists of a bowl of reheated pasta, liberally dosed with ketchup and extra cheese or a steaming plate of freshly microwaved noodles.

But, for me, it is potatoes that top the leftover tree. That hit of carbohydrate is just what I need as a late, second, breakfast or early lunch. Boil, roast or mash a few extra and your midday meal the following day is sorted: sautéed with a fried egg, dipped into pungent aioli or even squashed into cakes and fried, they are darn near perfect.

The absolute best way to use up leftover spuds, however, is to make a speedy tartiflette. Potatoes, bacon and cheese? That’s three boxes ticked and a guarantor of a very happy lunchtime indeed.

Dice a few rashers of bacon and fry in a little oil. Meanwhile, finely chop a couple of shallots or a small onion. Once the bacon has started to crisp up, turn down the heat and add the onion. Fry a few more minutes until it’s softened.



Add a handful of cooked potatoes to the pan and allow to heat through. If you get a few crisp edges then all the better. Top with a generous amount of soft cheese – camembert, brie, reblochon – and grill until the top of the cheese starts to bubble and the underneath has melted into a gooey sauce, slathering the bacon and potatoes in its cheesy goodness.



Eat immediately. And feel no shame if you squirt some ketchup on the side, it’s not like anyone’s looking.

For more sundry leftovers, why not follow me on Twitter?

Where food comes from...

Recently this food related story caught my eye.

In order to teach children about the realities of food production (carrots come covered in earth, potatoes don’t grow chip shaped on trees – that sort of thing), a school in Kent set up a smallholding complete with vegetable patch and livestock.

Meat production is something that has become so sanitised and the end product so far removed from the realities of raising and killing an animal that I applaud the efforts of the head teacher in her attempts to make her pupils aware of where meat actually comes from.

It was made clear from the very beginning of the project that Marcus the sheep would be slaughtered and the meat sold off to pay for some piglets (not only are the kids learning about husbandry but also rudimentary economics. Brilliant).

As the slaughter date grew closer, a group of parents decided to launch a campaign to save Marcus. Despite support from tabloid fave Paul O’Grady, they were (rightly) unsuccessful in their attempts and the sheep met his inevitable fate a couple of days ago.

Cue outrage. The headmistress has been labelled a murderer and one parent, whose daughter, in the most delicious of ironies is called Liberty (Liberty?! Armando Ianucci couldn’t come up with a better tale), is threatening to sue the local education authority for alleged distress suffered by her daughter.

It is a sad, sad state of affairs when we have become so far removed from the realities of eating meat that some people, despite being willing to consume it, are in denial about the consequences of it.

If you eat meat then something has to have its throat cut, that is just the way it is. Well done to the headteacher for implementing this and I can only hope that more schools follow her lead. And that the only form of compensation offered is a rosemary studded leg of lamb.

What to do with courgettes...

Glut is such a wonderful word. Glut.

Its harsh consonants give it the feel of one of the more abrasive swear words but it also has an inherent softness that makes it warm and cosy – a small cuddle of a word that presents ample opportunity for elaboration.

Glut. Glutton. Gluttony. Gluttonous. Gluttonously.

Words that speak of the decadently indecent.

The garden is, finally, offering up its bounty. Potatoes were dug up a fortnight ago, the maize stems are starting to bulge at the halfway point suggesting that sweetcorn is not far off. The tomatoes are barely threatening to turn from acidic green to sweet red and the courgettes?

The courgettes are taking over.

For each that we pick, two more seem to grow in their place overnight. They are like the mythical Hydra and I am failing in my Herculean task.

As a result we have them lined up in the kitchen, a rag tag bunch of all shapes and sizes. The Usual Suspects as re-imagined by a vegan pacifist.

They’ve made their way into most things. Last night’s lasagne had a layer of them, thinly sliced, in between the ragu, pasta and béchamel. Diced and fried with a little garlic added at the last minute, they make an excellent addition to pasta.

Those that hid deftly under the expansive leaves and transformed into marrows have their insides scooped out and replaced with a tasty filling before being roasted.

I’m well aware that I am not alone. Courgettes seem to be as ubiquitous as Simon Cowell this summer so here is a ten point plan for what to do with them. You might guess that by the end, I was struggling. But that might be because I used up all the good ideas above…



One – Courgette Fries

I first had these crispy little bites of wonder at Italian restaurant l’Anima. Finely sliced and dipped in a light batter, deep fried courgettes are a joy and the perfect vehicle for some rich aioli.



Two – Courgette Bread

Grated and added to a sweetened bread mix in place of – or in addition to – banana, courgette adds a welcome moisture to this cake.



Three – Baked Courgette and Tomato

Layer thinly sliced courgette into a roasting dish, season and cover with a rich tomato sauce. Add another layer of courgette, more sauce and then cover liberally with cheese. Bake for 25 minutes and eat straight from the dish. Plates not necessary.



Four – Chutney

Ah, the forgotten art of preserving. Courgettes are perfect chutney fodder and take on a remarkable range of flavours beautifully, especially warming spices. We have a solitary jar of last year’s ‘Glutney’ left and it’s disappearing fast. most delicious with cheese and cold cuts. There are plenty of recipes out there but this one from HFW is a real winner.



Five – Roasted courgette with pine nuts

Simple, quick and very good with pasta. Slice or dice, dribble with oil, season, throw in a handful of pine nuts and bake. Top with Parmesan and commence nom.



Six – Barbecued Courgettes

Chargrilling courgettes really brings out a depth of flavour that is often lost when they are boiled or steamed (eurgh). Make sure your griddle or barbie is searingly hot so you get those tasty black tiger stripes on thin slices of courgette and serve with a sweet/sour yoghurty dressing.



Seven – Courgette Wine

I have no idea if this is possible but it must be worth a go? Anyone? Hello?



Eight – Doorstep Courgettes

Wait until nightfall. Take one, two or three of your largest courgettes and leave them on the doorsteps of your neighbours. Run. Go to bed happy in the knowledge that you’ve successfully ridded yourself of that particular problem. Until tomorrow and you discover that your neighbours had exactly the same idea.



Nine – Stuffed Courgette Flowers

OK, so this doesn’t really help you with eating your way through the courgette mountain taking over the kitchen but they are tasty. Stuff the flowers with well seasoned ricotta, dip in batter and deep fry. I cannot recommend these highly enough.



Ten – Courgette Portraits

Take pictures of your courgettes in various different poses and use them to illustrate a piece on what to do with a courgette glut. Realise that you still have nineteen to eat and a further seven peeping through the vegetable patch. Give up and promise not to plant so many next year.

Required Reading: In Defence of Food

The holiday to Umbria wasn’t entirely about stopping and smelling the rosemary. I did some work too. Sort of.

In between dips in the pool, singeing my hair in a pizza oven and trips to hilltop towns, I read In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan.



It’s a book about food. Really, really about food. Proper food. More an extended essay than a fully-fledged tome, it is the most intelligent, impassioned treatise on the subject I’ve ever read.

With so much extraneous information bombarding us everyday, seeing the topic of food stripped down to its bare essentials is both refreshing and important. Crucial even.

Pollan writes about food with a sense of unhurried urgency and seemingly effortless intelligence. He is a man who, if you’ll excuse the pun, knows his onions. And shallots. And garlic and all other members of the allium genus. He knows what is wrong with the food industry and, more importantly, he knows how to fix it.

One of the criticisms levelled at many polemicists is that they are happy to point out problems and often less able to talk of solutions. Michael Moore, take note. Pollan does both with equal skill.

In Defence of Food is the sort of book that comes along so rarely it makes you want to buy copies for everyone you know, thrust it into their grease-flecked fingers and sit watching to make sure they consume it. And consume it they will.

It is, without a shadow of a doubt and no degree of hyperbole, the best book about food I have ever read. Ever. Now, go and get a copy, sit ye down and read it.

And follow me on Twitter. But only if you really want to.