The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [119]
Fondo Bruno
Piemontese Meat Broth
Cesare uses the rosy meat from the breast of a white bovine creature peculiar to Piemonte, halfway between a veal calf and a steer. This deeply flavored broth can be used as the base for any hearty Italian soup, is indispensable in sugo d’arrosto, and adds a savory undertone to the browned sage and butter sauce for tajarin with white truffles.
Extra-virgin olive oil
2½ pounds vitello albese or brisket of beef, cut into 3-inch pieces
3 fresh rosemary branches, each 6 inches long
1 celery stalk
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 onion, 3 to 4 inches in diameter, peeled and cut into eighths
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 small ripe tomatoes, cored and seeded
3½ quarts cold water
Put a wide 9- to 12-quart pan over high heat, film the bottom of the pan with olive oil, and brown the meat very well on all sides, lowering the flame if the meat juices threaten to burn. After the pieces of meat have browned on one side, begin adding the rosemary, celery, garlic, onion, and salt, waiting 30 seconds between additions as the meat continues to brown. When the meat juices begin to caramelize on the bottom of the pan, add the tomatoes.
When the meat is well browned, add the water. Let the water come to the boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 3 to 4 hours. During the first 30 minutes, skim the white foam that collects on the surface. Then cover partially and skim occasionally. Strain. Refrigerate any broth that you do not need for that day’s cooking; it will keep for 3 to 4 days if you boil it for 15 minutes before using. Makes 3 quarts.
February and September 1989
Where’s the Wagyu?
Three hundred dollars’ worth of Wagyu quivered and sweated on my countertop. I watched it, paralyzed by indecision and ignorance.
To the unaided eye, it looked like an ordinary, raw, boneless prime rib-eye steak, two pounds in weight and two and a half inches thick. But to my eyes, aided by reams of misinformation, this was Kobe beef, the most famous, expensive, and delicious beef in the world, taken from an ancient strain of Japanese black cattle that are raised on a diet of beer and sake-soaked grain and pampered throughout their lives with massage and acupuncture. Wa means “Japanese” in Japanese and gyu means “cattle.”
Now for the first time ever, Wagyu was being imported into the United States and, to my unbelievable good fortune, was being sold exclusively by my friendly butcher, Charlie Gagliardo at Balducci’s in Greenwich Village, for $150 a pound. Minutes after hearing the news, I rushed down to Balducci’s, negotiated a ridiculously low wholesale price of $45 a pound, and returned home with a sheaf of press releases and a two-pound hunk of Wagyu. The surface of my Wagyu was intricately laced with delicate veins of off-white fat—by laboratory measurement, three times more marbling fat than U.S. prime-grade beef, though with slightly less cholesterol. This is the fat that made Wagyu famous—rich and tender and juicy and sweet, the foie gras of beef.
But with only two hours left until dinner, how would I cook it? I felt like a diamond cutter—one slip and a fortune in Wagyu would be destroyed.
I sat next to my kitchen counter to keep an eye on the Wagyu while I read through my Japanese cookbooks and the articles and publicity I had collected. I discovered how little reliable information is readily available in English about this culinary treasure. The best way to prepare Wagyu, I read, is to grill it or panfry it or cook it in shabu shabu or sukiyaki, or not to cook it at all and to serve it raw, like beef sashimi, sliced a generous eighth-inch thick and called tataki. When prepared like a steak, it should be left two inches thick or maybe cut down to a half inch, the fire should be very high or very low, the timing will be longer or maybe shorter than for U.S. beef, the external fat should be removed or left on, the ideal state of doneness is rare or maybe medium-well, and the perfect