DOS HERMANOS: BANK HOLIDAY BEEF

So I found myself at the counter of the Jack O’Shea concession in Selfridges on Saturday, gabbing with the man himself about meat in general and Beef in particular, when he asked me what I fancied. I scanned the display cabinet.

There were Veal Kidneys encased in a thick coat of creamy fat, to be roasted whole; a Popeseye, a cylindrical cut seamed out of the Rump, deep coloured and etched with a fine lines of fat; or my favourite the Ribeye on the bone – what the French call a Cote de Boeuf – beautifully marbled and crying out to be slapped onto a searingly-hot ridged grill, rested and served with a pile of matchstick frites and a tangy béarnaise. Decisions, decisions. In the end I went for the cut right in front of me.

Short Ribs (aka Jacob’s Ladder) are a mainstay of menus throughout the US. Sort of an equivalent to the British Lamb Shank. They’re also very common on Korean menus. It’s difficult to find them in the UK because, sad to say, British butchers are becoming rather thin on the ground. Finding a decent one is even harder. Finding one who knows what short ribs are , well, now you’re talking about something on the level of the P v NP problem.

Short Ribs can be braised or barbecued but after talking to Jack decided to slow roast them. The Ribs were brought to room temperature and sprinkled with some rock salt. They were put into an oven at 100C and left to cook untouched for several hours.

While the ribs were in the oven I cooked up some Razor Clams I’d also bought. Preparation is as for other shellfish like clams or mussels i.e. discard those that don’t close when handled and those that are still closed after cooking. There is a dark intestinal sac that can be removed beforehand.

Cook some chopped garlic in Olive Oil then throw in the clams and cook them until they open. Chucked on some chopped parsley and give them a squeeze of lemon juice. Done. Some bread to mop up the juices would be handy too.

After about four and half hours I lost patience and got the ribs out. All the fat had been rendered but the ribs were still moist. They had a little bit of a chew to them but were good and beefy. They needed little more than some peppery Watercress, Horseradish sauce and a bottle of red from the Monsant region in Spain that belied its six quid price.

DOS HERMANOS SUNDAY EDITION: PICANHA PEQUENA

While the rest of Britain shivered London sweltered (no, really) under an unrelenting sun. Well, that’s what it felt like in our south-facing living room. What with the heat and Brazilians doing so well in the EPL it seemed apposite to go Brazilian…food and drink-wise that is.

First up Caipirinha. Scrunch up lots of lime segments with some sugar in a thick glass until the sugar dissolves and the lime has given up it’s precious and rare oils. Fill the glass with ice then pour in a suitable amount of Cachacha. Stir around and drink while soaking up the sun and listening to some Tropicália on the stereo.

Next up a cut of Beef I’ve never tried before. Picanha is the Brazilian name for what we know over here as Rump Cap (aka Tapa de Cuadril in Argentina). My piece of meat was about 1.5 kg and came from the estimable Jack O’Shea. I was thinking of making some Empanadas for starters but settled for one of J’OS’s Sausage Rolls.

I forgot to give the roll an egg wash but after forty-odd minutes in the oven the pastry was nice and flaky and the meat well-seasoned , meaty and dense.

The Picanha went into a oven set at a fearsomely high heat for about 20 minutes. The oven was turned down for the remainder of the cooking time (about thirty minutes). This gave produced a joint that was mostly medium rare. I prefer it a bit rarer so if you’re a like-minded soul reduce the temperature for the second phase. You also need to rest the joint after cooking.

Compared to our usual Beef Rib the Picanha was quite different. You can cut big slabs of tender meat that have (obviously) a great taste – a combination of properly hung beef with nice layer of fat – but it does become a bit samey if you’re eating a lot.

I’d have to say I prefer the visceral pleasure of the Rib where you have a wider variety of bits to try and, of course, there’s a big bone or two to gnaw on. That said, it would be perfect if you were cooking it for a number of people as it’s easy to carve and there’s no waste.

For an accompaniment I made some Chimichuuri. Recipes abound on the internet so taking a bit from each my version was a mixture of the following: Olive Oil, Red Wine Vinegar, Oregano, Flat Leaf Parsley, Paprika, Spring Onion, Tomato, Garlic, Red Pepper and Chilli (dried and fresh). I made it a couple of days earlier and it was very tasty (I’m still eating it with the leftovers of the beef).

A bottle of Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva ’96 I had knocking around still had legs and brought everything together nicely.

Saúde !

STEAK I: HELLO 2009

To celebrate my survival into my mumble..mumble..ieth New Year I bought myself a new camera. To be honest it’s probably too good for me and I still haven’t worked out how to use it properly. Nevertheless I needed something to take a picture of.

Wandering around Selfridges I noticed the Jack O’Shea concession in the food hall was being manned by the, er, man himself. So after a quick confab we decided a kilo of grass-fed, aged beef on the bone would do the trick. It’s worth buying beef from Mr O’Shea just to see his butchery skills and soon my steak was ready.

Regular readers will know the steps towards preparing the perfect steak at home but they’re worth repeating. Here then are the DH commandments of steak:

· First and foremost get a decent piece of meat and if possible get it cut to order, preferably thickly.

· Lightly sprinkle rock salt over the steak at least an hour beforehand. This time I experimentally upped the salt quotient and the texture fell apart a little at the surface, so don’t overdo it.

· The meat must be at room temperature before cooking.

· The salt will draw some moisture to the surface of the steak which must be ruthlessly expunged.

· Get your grill pan very hot.

· You don’t need to oil either the pan or the steak.

· Cook to your liking. I like it rare, baby.

· Put it into a low oven. I put mine in for about ten minutes. I also put a little butter on top which mixes with the meat juices to form a rudimentary sauce. The time spent in the oven allows the steak to warm through completely and ensures an even colour.

· Use a good steak knife – I use some rather nice ones from David Mellor (no, not that one).

· Lose the mustard and horseradish. When the product is this good most condiments are an unnecessary diversions from the taste of the meat. Having said that a little homemade béarnaise always goes down well and gives you something to dip your chips in.

Oh and lest you worry that I was tackling rather a lot of meat there was a small bowl of dressed microgreens on the side to counteract all that flesh. My diet is nothing if not balanced.

STEAK III

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

I’ve got a beef and it’s a big one. This time a piece of bavette (aka skirt, aka flank), from master butcher Jack O’Shea (see Dos Hermanos passim). There was some fantastic looking Onglet on offer as well but the lure of a cut I’d never cooked before proved just too much.

Booty safely in hand (always a good thing) I hurried home to start preparations. I now find salting my steaks beforehand works really well. It doesn’t affect how succulent the steak ends up and I always end up with a good crust. Bavette is quite big in surface area and is relatively thin for a steak so I had to use my big grill pan and get it searingly hot before the cooking could begin.

I haven’t made a béarnaise sauce for years but I thought a rich and buttery sauce might make a good foil to a big beefy steak. I’d heard all sort of horror stories about split sauces or worse, scrambled eggs, but it was pretty straightforward. The resulting sauce could have been a tad looser in consistency but the taste was excellent.

Once the grill was white hot the steak was slapped on. One of the nice things about cuts like Onglet and Bavette is that the lack of external fat means the kitchen and adjoining rooms don’t become as smoky as an Amsterdam Café. A minute or so for each side was enough and, following my usual routine, the steak was stuck in the low oven for a few minutes.

Not unexpectedly the beef was terrific. Similar to Onglet, the taste is much stronger and the texture more interesting than the usual cuts. As suggested on the Jack O’Shea site this cut would also work for fajitas (think the extreme variety, as you’d get at a Chotchkie’s say).

There was a little bit on the side as well - a couple of roasted marrow bones (natch), a lightly dressed watercress salad – and a bottle of Rosada from Muga. A nice nod to DH’s recent trip to Haro.

The only possible improvement would have been some chips. Maybe next time.

STEAK II

Holding hands with the man from Rio
Would you care to explain

A little follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago on Steak. I had received a mail from HS requesting Ale, Red Wine and a Steak (in that order) when he returned from the exotic East. I wanted to try a different cut of beef so I wandered down to Jack O’Shea’s in Knightsbridge to see what he had on offer. The Onglet caught my eye. This cut, also know has hanger, is becoming a more common sight on restaurant menus, indeed I had some the other day at El Gato Negro.

If you buy the whole steak as I did you get two thick strips of beef that have a slight offally but not unpleasant whiff. As with my last steak, I salted the meat a few hours beforehand, and got my extra-large grill pan as hot as possible. I gave the steaks about a minute and a half on each side and then put them on a hot plate in a low oven for about five or six minutes.

I was so excited by the successful cooking I forgot to take pictures but the result was a dark crusted exterior, a beautiful ruby red interior - it looked as good as any resto version. After resting there were loads of meaty juices which made an impromptu gravy. The taste of the meat was excellent: clean tasting and deeply beefy. There isn’t a lot of fat in this cut of meat but this had the advantage that you could eat more of it (hurrah) as it wasn’t too rich or fatty. A Watercress Salad and a big Gigondas were the only accompaniments but in the future I could see some frites and béarnaise being involved.

I now understand why Onglet is also known as the Butcher’s Cut (they want to keep it for themselves) and I can wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re looking for something a bit different. It’s much cheaper than the other prime cuts too. Oh, and there were some marrow bones in the mix as well...

Welcome home Hermano.

STEAK

I crouch on the carpet
Not breathing just being

A good Steak is like a Dry Martini. A deceptively simple thing to prepare but devilishly hard to get right. I make a decent enough Martini (shaken not stirred - prefer them that way chez moi) because I have complete control over the preparation which basically comes down to making sure everything is sufficiently chilled. I can do an ok steak as well, but something was always lacking. I suspected it was my griddle pan which couldn’t possibly be as good as a commercial device.

I decided to have another go a few weekends ago. I tried a new (for me) butcher, Jack O’Shea, who supplies The Fat Duck. A very friendly chap, he started off with a place in Brussels and now has a shop near Harrods. He can do all manner of cuts for you including quite a few South American ones I hadn’t heard of before like Picana. His website features a video of him butchering a Leg of Lamb to produce several different cuts which made me wonder why we don’t get this sort of stuff on TV instead of the usual celebrity-driven guff.

Anyway, he suggested a 40 day aged Forerib. The beef had come from Aberdeen Angus stock raised in West Cork. The rib was a bit large side with the bone in the middle but he split it for me. He’d got some marrow bones on display so I scored a couple of them too.

About an hour or so before cooking I let the steak come to room temperature and got the griddle pan heating up. Jack suggested that I give the steak a good sprinkling of sea salt a few hours before to help to give it a good char.

When I was ready to cook there was a bit of surface moisture on the steaks which I removed then I cooked the steak for 4 minutes per side. I seasoned it and put it straight in a low oven for about ten minutes to let it rest and warm through. I served the steak with the previously roasted the marrow bones and some lightly dressed watercress.

I have to say this was the best steak I’ve ever cooked and the flavour was up there with the best steaks I’d ever had. Damn, it even looked professional. I knew it was good because I’d made a little horseradish sauce and put out some Dijon mustard and I preferred the taste au naturel.

Sometimes I have difficulty finishing large steaks but had no problems this time. The taste was so clean it made very easy eating and I finished the lot. A glass or two of Finca Valpiedra 97 accompanied it very nicely.

Buoyed by my success, I went back a week later and bought a Rib of Beef to have for Sunday lunch chez Dos Hermanos padre. Served with all the trimmings it was rated a great success. A lot of the cuts on display in the shop looked a bit too well trimmed of their fat which is probably how the good bhurgers of Knightsbridge like it. If you want something with more fat, age etc. they seem happy enough to see what they have in stock and butcher for you. I look forward to returning and seeing what their other meats are like – I’ve already tried their Oxtail pie (mmm...pie) which was excellent.