Steak - Mark Schatzker [61]
Then we tried the steak from the second farm, and it was better.
My late uncle Chuck, a steak lover through and through who breathed his last breath while eating prime rib, told me that if I was going to Scotland, I had to find Highland beef. Not one to dishonor the memory of one of the better joke-tellers I have known, I phoned the Highland Cattle Society and managed to get my hands on a copy of the Highland Breeders’ Journal. In the back, I found a long list of farmers raising a breed known as Highland cattle, and I began phoning at random. Most didn’t have any steak. One who did—thousands of pounds, by the sounds of it—assured me that it tasted no different from the shorthorns and Galloways he also kept, and he explained at length how good he had become at fattening Highlands—which are notoriously slow-growing—quickly and getting them onto refrigerated shelf space by the time they were just over a year old. Laurent Vernet warned me about people like that.
One farmer sounded quite promising until he mentioned where he and his Highland cows lived: on the Isle of Mull, a rainy, wind-battered chunk of rock off the west coast of Scotland, which was three hours and a ferry ride away by car. Such a trip, I decided, was best saved for retirement, when I could take my time and collect bottles of Scotch and jars of marmalade along the way. At length, I found myself scanning the Highland Breeders’ Journal, looking for the most Scottish-sounding names. There were some good ones: Mr. Iain McKenzie, Mr. Archie McIntyre, Mr. Donald McDonald.
I settled upon one A. R. Mackay and dialed the number. A man with a deep voice picked up the phone, and I asked him if he sold Highland beef. “Aye.” The following exchange ensued:
Me: “Would you say your beef is any better, or different, than the beef other people sell in Scotland?”
Angus Ruadh Mackay: “I think beef can be every bit as distinctive as a glass of single-malt Scotch, depending on where it’s made and who makes it. My beef is the most intense I know. If you like a rich flavor, then this is the beef for you.”
Jackpot.
Some take the view that Scotland gets progressively more Scottish the deeper into the Highlands you go. The whiskies become peatier, as do the accents. Clinging to that tundralike landscape is a breed of cattle that is fittingly called the Highland. They graze the rocky slopes and somehow thrive on land that would kill ordinary cattle. Centuries ago, their meat was so loved by Londoners that Highland beef fetched two cents a pound more than the meat of other breeds. Angus Mackay represents the continuation of a long tradition. He travels to far reaches to find cattle: the Isle of Islay, the Isle of Mull, and the Isle of South Uist, where he once bought cattle from a woman who shared her home with her Highlands, one of which provided the family with milk. One door led to the kitchen, another to the bedroom, and another to the byre, which is Scottish for cow barn. The lady saw nothing wrong with that.
Rather than walk his cattle hundreds of miles south or southeast, Mackay loads them onto a trailer. He doesn’t cook steak on a shovel over an open fire, either, though he has heard of the technique and would like to try it. His Highlands fatten on a shaggy mane of grass that grows next to the river Earn, near the town called Bridge of Earn. (When Mackay says the words “Bridge of Earn,” he rolls his r’s in a manner that brings to mind a drumroll.) They eat clover and ryegrass, a diet that won’t get them fat for two years, an eternity compared to the five-month turnaround achieved with steamed, flaked corn. At that age, a steer or heifer has a poorer kill percentage than a younger animal. There is more bone, more guts, less meat. But it is Mackay