Steak - Mark Schatzker [144]
Step 14. Resist the temptation to smother your steak in a sauce or rub.
Steak sauce is like crystal meth—habit forming and ruinous. There’s no point in following Step 1 if you’re going to cover your steak in intense seasoning and smother it in a sauce so tangy as to make ketchup seem refined. Some sauces—particularly those from France—celebrate a steak’s flavor without masking it. But if you’re dealing with good steak, then the flavor of steak will be the best thing on your plate.
Step 15. Eat the steak.
A fine steak knife is not always essential, but using one is fun.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Despite the single name—mine—appearing on the spine of this book, Steak was nonetheless a collaborative endeavor. I will be forever grateful to Rick Kot at Viking, who gave a Canadian writer his first book contract, and who, along with Laura Tisdel and the rest of the fine Viking team, invested so much in making it better. This book would never have happened if not for the efforts of my agent, Richard Morris of Janklow and Nesbit. You are a fine representative and a better friend.
Steak is a far bigger subject than I ever realized, involving everything from animal science, meat science, flavor science, human evolution, and ruminant evolution to the history of crop farming in Argentina. The list of people who have helped me along the way is long, and the collective effort is huge. Thank you: Dr. Alberto Alves de Lima, Elizabeth Andoh, Jan Busboom, Dario Cecchini, Seiichi Chada, Nirupa Chaudhari, Rufus Churcher, Anne and Clive Davidson, Carolyn Dmitri, Dorothée Drucker, Susan Duckett, Anne Effland, Karen Eny, Cinzia Fanciulli, Kevin Good, Dr. Juan José Grigera Naón, Andrea Grisdale, Claude Guintard, Andrew Isenberg, Randy Jackson, David Kasabian, Steve Lantos, Douglas Law, John Leffingwell, Paul Link, Jim Logan, Vicky Lux-Lantos, Hazel McFadzean, David MacHugh, Emily Maggs, Charlotte Maltin, Stephen Mennell, Markus Miller, Holly Neibergs, Mari Okada, Alan K. Outram, Emmanuelle Perrier, Bob Pickering, Keith Redpath, Don Reeves, Jerry Reeves, Alan Richman, Andrew Smith, John D. Speth, Craig Stanford, Mike Steinberger, Helena Tchekov, Julia Turner, Cis Van Vuure, Tommy Wheeler, and Hanya Yanagihara.
Thank you, Klara Glowczewska, and the rest of the excellent staff at Condé Nast Traveler, for helping propel me on my worldwide quest in ways that only you can.
A special thanks to Wes Brown for waking up at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday and driving three hours with his ultrasound machine. Thank you to the many good people of Texas, including Markus Miller and the rest of the faculty at Texas Tech University, and to Bill O’Brien, for reaching out to a big-city journalist to show him a feedlot from the inside. Thanks to the generosity of Glenn and Caryl Elzinga, I slept in their home and spent more than a day on a horse exploring Idaho as it ought to be explored. Thank you, Christophe Raoux, Alain Ducasse, Laurent Vernet, Charlotte Maltin, Jim Cameron, Keith Redpath, Russ Maytag, Carla Hanisch, Ted Slanker, Michael and Nobuyo Stadtländer, and Temple Grandin. Thank you, Richard Bazinet, for bartering nutrition science for steak. And thank you, Allen Williams, for the hours of Meat Science 101 you so patiently visited (and revisited) with me.
Years ago, I wrote a story for Slate.com about steak. Not long after, I received an e-mail from a Wyoming cattleman named Paul Butler. Thus a long-distance, steak-obsessed e-mail relationship was born. Thank you, Paul, for your encouragement, your knowledge, your wisdom, and your enduring faith that great steak is out there, waiting to be tasted. The day will come when you create a truly beautiful beefalo steak. I will be there to taste it.
Fleurance, I don’t know what to say other than that I miss you. Thanks for everything (literally). I have your hide to remember you by, and