The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (27 page)

Everyone had questions. Among them, what the difference is between organic and “natural,” two common distinctions, and the controversy over grain-fed beef.

To start, it's worth knowing what's in commercially produced meat. About 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced in the United States are fed to healthy livestock, including pigs, chickens, and cows.
²⁴
Most commercial beef breeders in the United States and Canada inject their cattle with hormones designed to promote rapid growth. The beef industry maintains that the hormones have been vigilantly tested for safety. Critics argue that hormones cause everything from early onset of puberty to increased predisposition for certain types of cancer.
²⁵

Most commercially produced cattle start on an individual farm but are “finished” in a feedlot by being fed copious amounts of corn and grain, foods that cows are not physically designed to eat.
²⁶
But much of that stems from consumer demand; many people prefer corn-fed beef and its more heavily marbled texture to the leaner flavor and mouthfeel of grass-fed beef.

By contrast, organic beef farmers are prohibited from giving their charges antibiotics, growth hormones, or anything other than organic feed. The “natural” description for beef
²⁷
allows more flexibility, but generally the beef must be free from growth hormones and antibiotics and minimally processed, although in some cases it simply means that it wasn't ground into hamburger.

“A lot of smaller farms that produce grass-fed beef don't meet organic requirements, and some organic beef comes from cattle raised in feedlots that are just fed organic corn,” I said. “I sound like such an old saw on this, but the only way you know the difference is to know the company that developed your beef. Look up the companies that supply your supermarket or butcher. Ask them questions.”

Robin chimed in. “Meat isn't cheap. Look at your grocery bill for a month. How much are you spending on meat? It's probably a bigger investment than you think. So it's worth thinking about.”

Beyond cooking, I wanted to instill the idea of considering the provenance of meat, not just its cost. So I told them the story of Betsy, the one and only cow we ever had on the farm growing up in Michigan. Betsy was a gentle bovine with a lazy disposition and impossibly long eyelashes. When we named her, my mother was not pleased.

“Don't name the cow,” Mom said.

My brother, a gifted artist, drew a loving portrait of her. “Don't draw any more pictures of the cow,” Mom said.

The kids spent hours taking turns walking her through our ample meadows blanketed with clovers and petting her rough brown coat. “Don't pet the cow,” Mom said.

One day in autumn, a man in faded gray overalls showed up at the farm with a trailer. Dad said that he was going to take Betsy to a nice farm for the winter. Betsy docilely filed past the kids, who stared, stunned, and then, as if on cue, started bawling in unison. My sister couldn't take it. She tore herself away from my dad's leg and ran over to her, dramatically throwing her small arms up toward the cow's neck. Sobbing, she kissed her good-bye. “We'll miss you, Betsy! I will dream about you every night until you come back next spring.” My father gently pried her away.

About two weeks later, my sister discovered new paper-wrapped parcels in the chest freezer in the barn. The first night we had spaghetti made with beef, she looked up at my brother's charcoal sketch of Betsy and then stared back down at her plate. She ate it anyway.

Half the class looked mortified. “You ate your cow,” Donna said flatly.

“Yes, and all this”—I waved my hand over the remainder of the meat we'd moved to the side table, still covered in plastic wrap—“was once a Betsy,” I said. “But we knew what
she
ate; she didn't get any antibiotics or hormones. She also didn't eat any corn. She just ate grass, which is what cows are supposed to eat. So the closer you can get to meat from a cow like Betsy, the better.”

Although we could have talked about beef all night, the clock was ticking. We set out bowls of onions, carrots, and celery. Everyone plowed through their mirepoix as if they'd been doing it for years. What would have taken a half hour in the first class took less than ten minutes. “Wow, you guys are good,” Robin observed as Lisa and I collected it all in bowls. I felt like a proud stage mother.

Then we shifted to pork to practice on a cut no one in the class had ever purchased: pork shoulder.
²⁸
Robin, Lisa, and I handed a hunk of pork shoulder to each student. Robin guided them through breaking down the larger pieces, feeling for bones and removing unwanted pieces such as gristle, tough sinew, and hard tracts of white fat.

Trish, the gentle sixty-one-year-old part-time vegetarian, gave it her best. I watched her from across the room. She looked anguished as she held her chef's knife poised above her pinkish meat. But then she calmly set it down, stood back from the table, and purposefully took off her apron. Trish walked over to where I stood near the door. “I'm sorry, but this is just too much meat for me,” she said apologetically. She picked up her purse and left.

The rest of the class, however, seemed transfixed. While they had seemed so squeamish around the chicken, they had no such inhibitions with beef or pork. Most had never tackled a chunk of meat, and who could blame them? Given this era of prepackaging, you can go your whole life never having to cut anything beyond the bite-sized portions required for mastication. No reason exists to explore the sinew, to feel the complexities of muscular development, or to feel the stiff line of a bone giving way to softer flesh unless you plan to break it down as we were doing that day. Dri, who had been so reluctant to touch her whole chicken, now maneuvered her knife with the laser focus of a passionate scientist. Jodi explored the flesh with her fingers, massaging it and trying to understand the contours.

Robin wandered around the table inspecting, offering advice and quiet support. “Exactly, let your blade follow the line of the meat,” she told Shannon. Cheryl had seemed a bit intimidated to start. Robin literally held her hand. “Just like that. You're doing really well. See? You can do it.” Cheryl asked if she'd learned about meat in culinary school. “Oh, no, I didn't go to school,” Robin said. “I kind of fell into cooking. A chef took me under her wing and I never looked back.”

Standing next to Cheryl, Shannon overheard the conversation. “Was your mother a big cook?” she asked without looking up as she tenderly cut her meat into cubes. I thought of Shannon's response on her initial questionnaire, that her own mother had invariably shooed her out of the kitchen.

Robin let out a robust hoarse laugh. “Ha, no! My mother is a terrible cook. Her ideal house would contain no kitchen. I think part of the reason I started to cook was to rebel against her.”

We shifted to start the evening's braise. This time, we handed out a two-quart sauté pan to each person and gave her the option of a single gas or electric burner at stations around the kitchen. “We can also have at least two people at the big six-burner stove,” I said. Like a shot, Dri moved into position before anyone could take it away from her. During the classes, some of the students had seemed intimidated by the high heat emitted from the commercial stove. Not Dri. She seemed almost ready to trade her urban planning job for a spot on a restaurant hot line.

As we had for the chicken, we started by searing the pork in hot oil to brown, nearly crispy. Then each volunteer added the mirepoix, some stock, wine, and some herbs. The air took on a heady, meaty fragrance. One by one, the volunteers covered their pans and shifted them into the oven, holding the hot handles with their diapers. “Remember where you put it in the oven, so you can remember which one was yours,” I advised as we slammed the oven doors shut.

“Great!” Robin said. Aware of the time, she moved swiftly onward. She heated a large skillet on one of the electric burners and waved everyone to join her around the worktable.

“One simple way to add a lot of flavor to any cut of meat is to coat it in a spice rub,” Robin began. Spices have a shelf life of about a year, less if exposed to light or heat. Spices left intact in their original form, such as allspice berries, cinnamon sticks, or whole nutmeg, last significantly longer. “I'm as guilty as the next person. I've got ground oregano that I've had for twenty years in my cupboard. I'm sure it tastes like nothing. But one thing you can do, either with whole spices or those that you've kept around a little too long, is to bring out the flavor by toasting them.”

She demonstrated by adding cardamom to the pan. A common ingredient in Indian curry, cardamom pods resemble sunflower seeds shrouded with a light green or dark brown papery exterior. “Notice I'm not using any oil,” she said. “We're just dry-toasting them.” She swirled them around in the pan. After a minute, everyone started to sniff at the air as the pods released their strong licoricelike scent.

“I can smell that, totally,” Sabra said. Everyone nodded.

Robin smiled. “Mmmm, doesn't it smell great? After a last swirl, she dumped the pods onto a plate. “Next, I'm going to do the same with cumin. A lot of people know it from making chili and usually buy it ground.” She tossed the oblong, ridged, beige-hulled seeds into the pan. Again she swirled them over the heat. “Just heat until you can smell them and dry them a bit further.” Cumin has a distinct scent, at once reminiscent of a pot of chili and falafel. It's a common ingredient in both Tex-Mex and Middle Eastern cuisine, arguably one of the few things those two regions have in common.

When the toasting was over, Robin grabbed the large gray marble mortar and pestle from the kitchen's spice rack. She combined a few pinches of both the toasted cardamom and the toasted cumin in the heavy bowl along with some coarse salt and whole peppercorns. “Who owns a mortar and pestle?” she asked. “These are a great investment,” she said as she put her weight into the pestle, crunching and crushing the whole seeds into the bottom until they crumbled into dust. “You know, you can get one for about ten bucks. You can buy whole spices and then grind them up. They'll store longer and taste fresher. Plus it's therapeutic, a great way to take out the frustration of a bad day.”

Robin put a spoonful of the powder on a plate. She instructed them to smell or taste it and passed it around the table. “It's really powerful, almost pungent,” Shannon said. “That's just something that I would never have thought to do.”

“Now we want you to make your own,” Robin said. “Just think of flavors you like. Your taste is something to listen to. Trust your instincts,” she said. In many ways, it was a reprise of the vinaigrette lesson, but this time without oil or vinegar. “Be bold,” Robin advised. “Experiment. Strong flavors make good rubs.”

As she talked, Lisa and I had gathered up all the various dried herbs and spices in the kitchen and put them into a jumble on the worktable. At Robin's invitation, the women exploded with activity, grabbing for jars and canisters, inhaling deeply, rejecting or selecting one here and there to spoon onto their plates. A few took turns at the mortar and pestle. Everyone seemed happy and talkative yet mindful of their own creative mission, rather like kindergartners at art time. “Taste it,” Robin said. “If it's strong or spicy, just put a tiny bit on the end of your tongue.”

Dri and Jodi looked at each other as they daintily tasted a dab and started laughing at the sight of their outstretched tongues. “Tongues are
so
not attractive,” Jodi said, once she regained her composure. “But this cumin tastes yummy.”

Each person coated a small piece of steak or a pork chop with her spice rub. One by one they rotated through the grill. “The key to grilling something like this is to start it hot,” Robin said, swirling her tongs around the preheated portion of the commercial grill. “You want to sear it on one side until it's slightly caramelized with a good brown color, but then move it off the fire to a cooler spot and cover it. Do the same for the other side.”

Gen shrugged. “That explains why I always end up with charred meat. I must be leaving it on the actual fire for too long,” she said, which led to a lot of discussion around grilling mishaps.

Once again, Maggie put a piece of tape with each person's name onto a plate. As the meat came off the grill, each of the volunteers took a bite of her own and then passed it on. The rubs varied from a fiery combination of cumin, cayenne, and oregano to a sweet one seasoned with cardamom, brown sugar, and cinnamon. “The great thing about rubs is that you can use them on anything, even vegetables. They're good for last-minute seasoning and they can be simple or complex. Just trust yourself,” Robin said.

One by one, Lisa and I pulled the hot pans with the braised pork from the oven. The heat from the center of the table felt as if we'd set a fire. Each person claimed hers and tasted.

“This is great,” Jodi said of the pork. “It tastes . . . I don't know, like
home
. Does that make any sense?” Everyone went quiet, eating. She noticed. “Wow, this must be good. No one is saying anything.”

“This is better than food that I've had at a restaurant, and I made it. I mean, really made it, from scratch. Cutting up the meat, everything,” Dri said. “It makes me feel like I'm cooking
Top Chef
food or something.” It was an offhand reference, but particularly amusing given that we had a cheftestant teaching the class.

Everyone thanked Robin profusely. As she packed up her knives and we cleaned, we tried to pry some gossip about the season from her. Robin wouldn't share anything other than that she was the only contestant who didn't have a culinary degree. In past seasons, that had always been an obstacle. No one without a culinary degree had ever won. Robin had never worked in fine dining, nor did her résumé include a stint under a famous chef.