Steak - Mark Schatzker [141]
Back in Scotland, Laurent Vernet had warned me that a wet steak can lead to boiled flavors in the meat. I mentioned this to Elzinga, and he patted the blood off the rib eyes with a paper towel. When he flipped them, the cooked side was an even, gorgeous brown.
I looked up at Taylor Butte, the outline of which seemed to glow on the horizon. I thought about the asteroid that, sixty-five million years ago, smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula and put the world on course for steak. Fifteen million years later, the Pacific Plate bumped into the North American Plate and raised the mountains that give Alderspring steaks their particular flavor. Two million years ago, hominids discovered that meat held over a fire turns brown and delicious, and ten thousand years ago their descendants, now featuring bigger brains and smaller jaws, tamed the tastiest beasts roaming Europe and Asia, the aurochs. For all this, I was thankful.
Over the past many months, I had visited seven countries, all told, to eat steak. Considering there are 195 countries in the word, that’s a rather meager percentage. I had witnessed a mere handful of geographical points on a planet whose immensity and diversity defy comprehension. I did not visit Ethiopia, for example, but I wish I had, because Ethiopians are fond of a very lean steak tartare called kitfo. I would like to visit the grass-growing paradise that is New Zealand for its “steak of origin competition” that attempts to determine, on a yearly basis, which farm is raising the most outstanding beef. On the way there, I’d drop in on Australia for a steak or two. Uruguay is up there with Argentina in terms of steak consumption, and I have heard stories about Uruguayan steaks served with the hide still on—I need to see and eat such a steak in person. Koreans have their own breed of ultra-marbled cattle called Hanwoo, which, despite being the color of suede, are related to Japan’s black Wagyu. Koreans consider their steak superior to any other, but those steaks may be on the path to ruin because recently they have taken to crossing their Hanwoo with big and tall Charolais cattle, all in the name of improved yield. Lament not, however, because there are pictures on the Internet of North Korean Hanwoo cows eating grass and pulling wooden carts. They appear to survive off mangy forage and I have fantasies of airlifting a herd to Bridge of Earn and leaving them in the care of Angus Mackay.
In Mongolia, cattle survive on land so dry and barren it looks like the moon. Could they marble like a black Wagyu or a Hanwoo? Is their meat finer grained than a Highland’s? How saturated is their fat? What would a Mongolian cow taste like after twelve months under Allen Williams’s supervision? No one seems to know. Another Asian breed said to fatten very well on grass is known as an Aulie-Ata. That’s a name I would like to see on a restaurant menu, but chances are I won’t.
Steak remains a mystery. Its greatness is, at best, only dimly understood. The one secret the world has mastered is how to produce steak in the greatest possible volume. But a few people—Glenn Elzinga, Allen Williams, and Angus Mackay among them—have taken up the fight for quality, for less-saturated fatty acids, slow-twitch muscle fibers, terpenes, flavonoids, carotenoids, and flavor. Perhaps one day ranchers will walk through mountain valleys collecting soil samples and sporting refractometers, all in the hopes of finding land on which to create sublime steak. The story, really, has just begun.
Elzinga reached down and tested