Fried and Sugared

Fried dough, blistered and crowned with sugar, really should only be considered treat food for kids.

Not that I didn't scarf the corners of this disk until little of the middle remained. (Oh, I did.) But I'm saying that you don't make fried and sugared bread dough unless you've earmarked it for someone who can use it.  

Cultures the world round have such snacks. The French soak bread in cream and toss it in sparkly sugar. In the Middle East, fried dough gets a dunk in sugar syrup. The Anishinabe, my neighbors to the west, send fry bread into the sugar bin (maple or white) as well. 

My grandma often reserved a ball of dough for frying when she made a batch of white potato bread. She'd divide it into balls, pat them into circles, and fry them in a shallow pool of bubbling oil until the dough puffed and rode high on its brown bubbles. Then she'd set it on a pad of toweling to drain, douse  it with sugar, and throw it to the hungry children.

I have heard this story countless times from my mother, and I've heard the same rendition from lots of other people who had grandmothers, or mothers, or aunts, who made homemade bread. So when my six-year-old burst into the house after school the other day, the pan was hot and the bread dough was already bobbing in the oil. (One thing I've learned this year: this kindergartner needs his after-school snack immediately.)

As usual, it was a mistake that led to this discovery. This dough, intended as a flatbread for the grill--but made with all-purpose flour instead of bread flour, only because I ran out--was too soft and flabby for much else. But frying at high heat is a kind of miracle fixer. When the droopy dough hit the oil it blew out as if inflated, the edges grew crisp, and the insides stayed soft, moist, and webbed. 

This was not a cheesy after-school snack--"cheesy" being the current standard requirement for all of his meals--but my hungry guy devoured the warm sugary bread anyway. The genetic pull must have been strong.

Fried Flatbread

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups lukewarm water

Pinch of sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Canola oil

Sugar

Stir together the yeast, 1/2 cup of warm water, and a pinch of sugar in a large bowl and leave to sit for 10 minutes. When foamy, add the rest of the water, the oil, salt and 1 cup flour. Whisk until smooth. Switch to a wooden spoon and add the rest of the flour, stirring until smooth and combined. 

Cover the bowl with a towel and leave to rise at room temperature for 2 hours, or until doubled in size. 

Transfer the dough to an oiled ziploc bag and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours and as long as 3 days.

Heat a large cast-iron pan over medium-high heat and add oil to reach 1/2 inch up the sides. Divide the dough into 8 equal portions, and on a heavily oiled sheet tray, pat each one out into circle. (It's up to you, but mine were about 6 inches in diameter. )

When the oil is hot, carefully fry the bread dough one disk at a time, until evenly dark golden brown. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with sugar, and serve immediately. 

(Knowing my grandma, I can be quite sure she also buttered this bread before dusting with sugar; I'm not directing, just throwing that out there. )

Cheesecake Cupcakes

Did anyone else grow up with Cheesecake Cupcakes? My mother lined her cheesecake cupcakes up in rows in a plastic snap-top container and kept them in the second refrigerator in the basement laundry room, where the cheesecake part hardened to a creamy clay, and the sour cream puddle solidified to a cheese. The center spots of jelly remained bright and glowed like beacons. And on the dull days of summer, as my friend and I shuffled around the dim basement, avoiding the bright running life outside, they called to us.

We ate tons of them, usually grabbing two at a time, either nibbling from the centers out or working to the middle from the side.

Last week, I revived them for Easter. To hook the interest of my 5-year-old, I dug in the candy bin and came out with some gel coloring. (Any opportunity to give something false coloration; he's into that.) So the sour cream centers became a dark golden yellow, which looked nice against the ruby-red of the raspberry jam and the natural white cheesecake. (It also made the entire thing look like an egg--a fertilized one at that!--which was purely accidental. That they looked vaguely ovarian was the private joke I carried around all day.)

For the recipe, which my mother couldn't remember, I looked to two sources: The Pine to Prairie Cookbook, an upper-Midwestern home cook's bible from 1981, and Bakewise by Shirley Corriher, which is my own baking bible. Shirley spares nothing in making the most decadent, perfect versions of the world's most iconic desserts. She attacks each recipe with a scientific mind, and reading this book you're aware of all of the work, the repeated recipe testing, she went through to get the final, perfect result. In this case, she went diving for cheesecake with that perfectly dense yet creamy texture, and came up with a batter heavily spiked with sour cream and whipped cream. That last addition results in a texture that's fluffy-creamy rather than dense-creamy, but it's ideal, I think, for the cheesecake cupcake.

I think it might have been even creamier if I had poured the batter into a single pan and just-ever-so-slightly underbaked it, as the recipe directs. But even divided into 24 paper cups, the batter makes a creamy cupcake, much more delicate than my mother's, in fact, which were delicious but less fragile. They were intended as road food for wandering summer children, so that made sense. 

I had to reference Pine to Prairie for the sour cream topping, which is just sour cream and sugar, mixed together. It is some sort of miracle that the topping turns into something like mascarpone as it bakes. Incredible. 

You want to use a tart jam for the filling, not too thick (which will sink) nor too thin (which will run). If you look for a jam that has the perfect texture for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you've got it. 

Cheesecake Cupcakes

adapted from Bakewise, by Shirley Corriher

Makes 24 cupcakes

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Two 8-ounce packages cream cheese

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups sour cream

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup sugar

seedless raspberry or black currant jam

Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Drop paper liners into two regular-size 12-count cupcake pans. 

Pour the cream into a large bowl and whip with a whisk or a mixer to the soft-peak stage. Reserve in the refrigerator.

In a food processor fitted with a steel blade, or in a large mixing bowl with a beater, blend the cream cheese and sugar well to remove all the lumps. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and blend well after each addition. Blend in the maple, vanilla, and salt. If using the processor, pour the batter into a mixing bowl. With a large spatula, blend in the sour cream. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

Divide the batter among the 24 paper liners. Bake the cupcakes for 30 to 35 minutes, until they rise evenly and no longer jiggle. 

Meanwhile, stir together the sour cream and sugar for the topping, coloring it with a few drops of yellow food coloring if you wish. Drop a soft puddle of sour cream into the centers of each baked cupcake and then drop 1/2 teaspoon jam in the center of the sour cream. Return to the oven and bake 5 minutes longer.

Cool the cupcakes completely before storing in the refrigerator. 

Spicy Bacon-Sardine Fried Rice, Fargo, and Snirt

Spicy, smoky, perfectly fishy, and filled with so much vegetable matter that it’s more green than white, this plate epitomizes the kind of pantry-cooking I do when I’m alone for lunch or lost in thought. I reach first for the thing I want the most—the buttery canned sardines that no one else in the house likes, for instance—and then absent-mindedly round it out with whatever’s in the fridge. Sometimes I'll start by pulling out my small cast-iron pan to slowly toast a handful of whole walnuts in lots of butter, with smashed garlic and rosemary—another strange and totally personal beginning that usually gets poured over pasta or boiled green beans or cooked squash . . . anything to sop up the nutty browned butter.

The fried rice above is courtesy of our weekend trip to Fargo and my subsequent run to the Asian market there, where I stocked up on EVERYTHING: greens and ginger and taro, four kinds of rice (jasmine, sticky, round, and basmati), noodles (sweet potato, mung bean, rice, bihon—cornstarch stick, and dok), condiments galore (toban djan—chili bean paste, kochujang, daengjang, mirin, rice vinegar, sesame oil, kimchi, etc., etc.) and the sweets we like around here, Strawberry Pocky and ginger candy.

My project for the last few years has been Midwestern food, all the time, but my secret feedings, especially my solo lunches, usually have an Asian heart. I spent a really fertile year cooking in a Chinese restaurant in New York, and it's part of my cooking history--secondary to the food I grew up with, of course, but nonetheless always there. (These days, immersed in this place, I tend to Midwesternize my Asian food--with bacon, or butter, or whatever is lying around.)

I am thankful that the A & A Market in Fargo carries baby bok choy, chinese chives, gai lan, banana flowers, and the like. I wish I could get that produce truck to make a drop-off at my house on the way over.

Although the drive to Fargo is oddly scenic. When I was a kid, I thought it was the most boring trek in the world, but this time I was enthralled by the snow drifts on the fields, which looked like the surface of the moon. I went to take a snapshot of it with my phone, which happened to be set to video, and we happened to be listening to the Buzzcocks (because the 5-year-old demands it, believe it or not) and I left it on and ended up with this bizarre video. Playing it back, my teenage self finds me, and I am once again driving to Fargo, straight to the West Acres Mall, where I’m hoping to God to find Guess jeans. Focus on the running foot of “snirt”—the name that forecasters here have given to the plow line of “snow-and-dirt”—which looks almost animated, as if lifted from a 1980’s music video. Maybe I’m making way too much of this, but something about the bold drums against the flying landscape evokes this weird, soaring, adolescent sense that the moment is huge, and the future even bigger . . . or maybe it's just the dramatic effect of the prairie on yet another passing-by roadside customer.

Bacon-Sardine Fried Rice

Contrary to popular opinion, fried rice usually doesn’t contain soy sauce. It should have a little sesame oil, however. Fry it in a heavy pan, either a wok or a cast-iron skillet.



3 slices bacon, cut into strips

3 cloves garlic, sliced (or 1 tablespoon minced ginger, if you’d rather)

1 cup leftover white rice

handful of chopped garlic chives

handful of baby bok choy, washed well and chopped

1/2 chile, chopped, or a few shakes of red pepper flakes

handful Thai basil or regular basil (or cilantro), chopped

sesame seeds

2 fat canned sardines, backbones removed, roughly chopped

sesame oil


Heat the wok, and add the bacon. Cook, stirring constantly, until lightly crisp at the edges. (Remove excess fat if there’s a lot of it; I used fairly lean bacon so I just left it all in the pan.)

Add the garlic and stir to coat in the fat. Add the rice, and cook, smashing it to break it up, until the rice is hot. Add the garlic chives, chopped green vegetable, and chile or chili flakes. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables wilt. Season to taste now with salt and pepper, plus pinch of sugar if you like.

Add the herbs, sesame seeds, sardines, and a thin pour of sesame oil, stir to combine, and pour out onto a plate. Serves one, generously.

Arctic Fruit Salad

It's -23ºF. this morning, and the wind chill is unquestionably in the nether regions. At 6 a.m. I walked outside onto the porch to grab more wood to feed the fire, and during that 30-second jaunt I felt like I had entered a different atmosphere. At that temperature the air is thinner somehow, and harder to breathe. It takes lungs by surprise.

Winter here, at the very bottom of the Alberta Clipper, is histrionic. A day of blinding sunshine that saturates every hue will be followed by one drained of all color, drawn entirely in black and white. If it has any moisture in it, the wind paints the edges of the black pines with thick coats of frost; they're dry today, but last week they looked as if they had had a run-in with an over-zealous Christmas tree smocker. (As I remember, all of the Christmas trees of my childhood had accidents with the same fellow.)

Even weirder, somehow when it gets this cold, the house cracks at night, as if popping its joints. The birds at the feeder are spherical, their down inflated into life-saving ruffs round their necks. The morning butter is so hard it shreds toast. The internet weakens; like a jaw too frozen to talk, it just won't go where I want it to go. (I can get my email, but can't open any links. Universe? Does this have something to do with the cold or are you trying to tell me something?)

In cold snaps like this I tend to concentrate my daily cooking on a large, smothered hunk of meat. With that as the main event, I punctuate the rest of the day with a few well-tailored snacks. This morning began with toast topped with avocado cream, some plump, shiny fillets of sardine, and a wobbling cup of bibb lettuce. To that I add this midday fruit plate, which I will confuse with savories and olive oil until it tastes more to my taste, and more like lunch.

First things first, I needed the right plate--a neighbor's plate that needs returning should be just right. I laid out some slices of Minneola tangerines (zingy-tart and pretty much seedless), a perfectly ripe fuyu persimmon, scattered the plate with a handful of frozen wild raspberries, and then seasoned it all lightly with salt, pepper, a squirt of lemon and a good drizzle of olive oil.

Having plenty of wild raspberries to load into the freezer is my summer goal. I picked them last July from the canes that grew along the driveway, froze the berries on a sheet tray in a singular fashion, and then rolled them into a container--all so that I can now shake them out loose, as needed, like pellets of candy. Small, powerful, and deliciously frosty, frozen berries will always feel dear to me because they were the baby boy's favorite toddler snack. And now they're mine. Against the summery lull of the overripe slices of persimmon--which lay so softly on the plate they might as well be melting--the raspberries taste like droplets of sorbet.  They do a good job of representing the blunt, but bright, side of winter.

Holiday-Spiced Lard

This winter, as the wind blows gusts of glittering snow across the prairie, I've been thinking a fair bit about fat. Naturally.

A few weeks ago I cut up a pig for my winter cache, splitting a nice and plump one from a local Mennonite farm with our good friends, Bruce and Cheryl. The first order of butchering-day business was rendering the leaf lard. What's the leaf lard? I've written about it before but as it's such a specific thing, I think it bears repeating. You can see it here. It's the pure white, almost brittle fat that surrounds the kidney and lines the rib cage. The densest lard on a hog, it also has the most pristine flavor, making it a star in the pastry kitchen.  Once rendered, it looks and feels like heavy white butter and makes the finest, flakiest pastries.

When you butcher, ripping off the leaf lard is the first thing you do. It took about 4 hours to break everything down, and for some reason this year we ended up with some pieces that we had to call "mistakelaneous," but at the end of the day sat our half of the beast, illuminated by the lights of the woodshed. Half of a 250-pound hog is still a good haul.

The next day, I cut the leaf lard into small cubes, laid them in my largest, widest pot, added a small glass of water and popped it into a 250ºF. oven to start rendering. Lard-rendering has historically been conducted in a wide pan on the top of the stove, but I think it's neater, and more foolproof, to render out the lard in the oven. You want to melt the cubes and gently cook the lard until the cracklings turn golden brown and swim in the fat, which takes about 6 hours.

Halfway through, as the humid, primal aroma of the rendering fat swelled to fill the house, my thoughts turned to gingerbread, and sweet uses for my sizzling lard, and I had the idea to throw whole spices and a few knobs of fresh ginger into the pot. (After I took the photo, a wave of generosity came over me and I threw another handful of the same into the pot, so you should double it.)

The spices met the fat and let out a seductive sigh: layers of exotic spice, pepper and mace wafted upward. Strained and cooled, I was surprised to find that the aromatic flavors held. This was lard . . . or lard pot-purri?  Seriously, though, what will this spiced lard be like in cheese tamales? Or in cookies? Roasted potatoes? Oh, what decadent things are in the works.

And with that, a pot of melting pig fat and spices, we launch into 2013. Happy new year. Here's to hoping that the fat continues to accompany the lean, always.

Wild Cranberry Jellies

Here's something for the Christmas plate, glowing red jellies to stand out against all those sugar cookies and chocolates.

Wild highbush cranberries grow on the banks of the creek below my house, and when I'm in the canoe I always try to remember where they grow so that I can return when the berries ripen. It seems that they move from year to year, up and down the creek, but that can't be true. They're rooted; it's the creek channel that tends to shift.

If I wait until the leaves have fallen, the ripe berries glow siren-red against the gray and white backdrop. I give my load a good rinse, remove as many stems as I can possibly stand to pick (taking every single one would require OCD-like effort, which I try to keep at arm's length) and freeze them in bags. Later on, I thaw them in a bowl in the refrigerator, to save the juice. 

Among all of the wild fruit available here in the Two Inlets area, I'd say that wild cranberries are among the least popular. For one thing, they grow in cramped, inconvenient spaces, preferring the steepest of creek banks. And they have seeds. And as my neighbor declared one day across the counter at the Two Inlets store, as I was buying lids for potting up my cranberry jelly, "those wild cranberries," she said,  her mouth in a bunch, "they just STINK." 

I like their fruity, tropical flavor, but my neighbor is right: in the pot they have a somewhat feral odor. Maybe this is because they're not exactly cranberries (and thank you, Hank Shaw, for your deep woods-knowlege, and the correction) but actually a kind of Viburnum that belongs to the honeysuckle family. (The conventional low-bush cranberry is a Vaccinium, and a member of the heather family.) These two plants ripen around the same time, share a high acidity (and high levels of Vitamin C), and have been mistaken for twins for generations. When cooked, they taste just like cranberries, even if they emit a swampy plume when cooked. No worries, it disappears completely when it's mixed with sugar.

And I mixed them with plenty of sugar.

My son, a self-professed "sourtooth" himself, loves tart jelly candies more than any other kind of candy, so I decided to make a batch of "pate de fruit," a staple of the French mignardises plate, that array of tiny candies and cookies that you receive, gratis, at the end of a lengthy meal. In the professional kitchen, they are also known as "energy-sweets easily stolen from the pastry speed rack." Easy to make and cheap to produce, I've known a few pastry chefs to look the other way at the sight of a hand snatching away a pate de fruit. 

I've never seen this cube made from wild cranberry, but it's natural tartness was a perfect match. In searching for recipes that used common powdered pectin, which is easily found in any grocery store, I struck out, but was able to develop this perfectly squishy cube on my second try. (Compared to gelatin, pectin is pretty forgiving and really easy to work with.) I considered rolling the finished cubes in a mix of sugar and citric acid (Fruit-Fresh, found next to the pectin), for a stronger "sour-patch" effect, but in the end the cranberry itself was tart enough. 

These jellies hold their sugar coats best if you cut them and let them dry on a rack for a day before rolling them in sugar, and better yet if you use sanding sugar. Should the sugar melt a bit before you serve them, just give them a fresh roll in the stuff.

Wild Cranberry Jellies

14 ounces wild highbush cranberries (12 ounces, 1 bag, conventional cranberries)
1/3 cup port wine
2/3 cup water
5 tablespoons powdered pectin
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/4 cups sugar, plus more for coating jellies (or use sanding sugar for rolling)

Rinse the cranberries and combine with the port and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer, cover tightly, and cook over medium-low heat until the berries are split and soft, about 15 minutes. Crush thoroughly with a potato masher. Push the cranberries and their liquid through a fine mesh sieve, which should yield about 1 1/2 cups puree.
Return the puree to the clean pot, and whisk in the pectin and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil and cook for 1 minute.
Add the sugar, whisking to combine, and bring to a boil again. Cook at a rolling boil for 1 minute.
Pour the mixture into a square 8 x 8-inch pan. Cool completely before cutting into 3/4-inch squares. Leave the squares to dry for a day, and then toss in a bowl of sugar to coat.

The Tour of Beef

During the last year I've driven all over the Midwest to check out restaurants, meet with people, and talk about food--Midwestern food, American food.

Most of what I gathered goes into the book, but I want to post here some of the memorable outtakes and photos from these trips. So first up, we have South Dakota.

In the early spring I met up with legendary cattleman Jim Woster. He may be my friend Sara's father, but he's known across the state as an advocate for beef and ranching, and I couldn't have found anyone more qualified to lead me on a tour of South Dakota beef. Jim grew up on a ranch in Reliance, South Dakota and worked in the Sioux Falls Stockyards most of his adult life--first as a cattle buyer himself and then as a reporter. He hosted a TV variety show for many years, is a popular public speaker, plays guitar, yodels a bit, can sing a mean Auctioneer's Song, and can always be counted on to talk about beef and agriculture with humor or wisdom, and usually both at once.

We began with a cattle show at South Dakota State University, walked through their Animal Science program, and ended the day with a big, fat ribeye at my new favorite steakhouse, Minervas. Along the way he gave me some insights into the beef industry that made my initial question--so what makes a great steak, Jim?-- a lot more complicated, not less.

First, though, my husband, son and I drove from Two Inlets to Brookings. A deep ocean of blue rode above us the whole way down.

We met up with Jim at South Dakota State University just in time to catch the annual Little International, a agricultural expo for students known vernacularly as "Little I." The floor of the massive shed was laid with green-dyed bedding chips, and both the students and their cattle were buffed and shined for competition.

The black angus cattle looked like they were fresh from a salon-style blow-out, their coats shimmering like black velvet. The boys wore their best boots and the girls their best jeans, back pockets flashing with glittery bling. 

It was like the Westminster Dog Show for cattle. The handlers walked their charges around the ring and then lined them up, poking at their shins with long switches to make them stand straight and at attention. Clearly, cow control was rewarded, although Jim pointed out that the judges were looking at the proportions of the cattle, scanning them for good genetics. With that, it was out to see where the real cows lived. 

"So Jim," I said, turning on my recorder. "What is it that makes a good steak?"

His answer was quick. "Genetics. Genetics is what makes good beef." Not grass-fed nor corn-fed? Feedlot or free range? "It's mostly genetics."

Keep in mind that we were touring the Animal Science department at SDSU, a program devoted to training kids to succeed in the mainstream cattle business. The program isn't necessarily interested in parsing the differences between American and Japanese Wagyu beef, or even grass-fed wet-aged and corn-fed dry-aged. Their focus is trained on producing quality--not premium, mind you--beef to feed the world, and doing it as cheaply and quickly as possible. Once I understood this, I decided to settle into learning all I could about the mainstream system--thinking, hoping, that it would teach me something I didn't already know.

And I learned a lot. These animal science graduates were raising animals in the safest, most efficient and most economical way possible. Considerations of taste weren't totally sidelined but they was secondary to tenderness, that's for sure. For example, they showed me a machine--it looks like a drill press--called a shear force machine that measures the pressure (in cubic pounds) required to cut through a piece of meat. What contributes to the tenderness? The quantity and quality of the ration, absolutely, but also the way the animal was processed and chilled. Because most of these animals are raised on grass and finished on grain in smaller lots, their lifestyle varies little and isn't much of a factor. In fact, because it seems that most of the animals in America are reared according to a fairly standard script, the animal's genetic makeup, or parentage, which does affects how it puts on both muscle and fat, concerns these kids the most. 

Obviously, cattle finished on grain as opposed to grass reaches its butchering weight much more quickly. And because it's a younger, less mature animal it doesn't require a lot of aging to reach an acceptable tenderness. Even better, it's lean beef. "Which everyone wants," they said. I tried to introduce them to the idea that many people--by which I suppose I mean urban gourmets, or foodies such as myself--now prefer more marbling in their meat. That eating pork belly like a steak is popular. "Not here!" they laughed.

Then we walked out into the hallway, where the walls were lined with vintage animal science photographs. "Like that," I said, pointing to a particularly fat-bellied pig. "That's what people are getting back to." 

"Sure, everybody likes a fatty cut," the department head rationalized, patting his slightly round belly. "But it's not something you can eat every day!" 

I realized that these smart Animal Science kids will raise any kind of animal the public demands. If, someday soon, the public demands more flavorful, fattier beef, then those kids will be leaving their cattle longer on pasture, and breeding them for flavor, even if it takes longer for those animals to reach slaughter weight; and yes, they will be charging a premium for it.

I started to envision American meat production as cleaving into two veins: the cheap, lean, quick everyday beef, and the richer, pricier special-occasion beef. If breaking health news that makes sugar, not fat, the villain, and the collective gourmet appetite keeps growing as it has been, it seems to me inevitable that demand for cheap, everyday beef will shrink and the market for boutique beef will rise. 

As we were leaving, I asked them all what was their favorite steak. One guy said T-bone (the strip steak plus the tenderloin), but everyone else copped to the ribeye, the lushest, most marbled cut on a steer. 

No matter what practices they preach, that appetite for a nice, fat juicy beef is hardwired in a Midwesterner.

Case in point, for lunch Jim steered us to Nick's Hamburgers in downtown Brookings, where they sold the most succulent little griddle burgers, hand-shaped patties fried in a veritable flood of exuded fat until the edges turned crisp, brown and thorny. Tucked into tiny, freshly baked buns which drank up the fatty interior juices like a sponge, these burgers weren't anything like your new-style medium-rare char burger---but they were just as good. In fact, cooked until just blushing pink inside, their salted juices running down this side of greasy, they were sublime.

The tour continued. We went to Look's in Sioux Falls, Jim's favorite meat market, to ogle the steaks. Corn-fed, of course, the lines of fat in the Prime steaks were marled into a dense netting. Standing 2 inches tall and shining a bright garnet red, these steaks were more than proper. I bought one, to split, and even that set me back; but after looking at all these cows all day long I couldn't help myself. (Check out the cowboy ribeyes on the left! Oh my, there's nothing better than an oversized ribeye on the bone.) 

Then Jim drove me out to see a feed lot. This place--these rolling hills, this pond, these leisurely, uncrowded animals--is a repulsive feedlot? I don't doubt that some feedlots are a lot worse--some things I've read summon up the filth and density of Medieval London--but it's hard to imagine it when you're standing in the clean wind and under the bluebell skies of South Dakota. In any case, that day I saw a feedlot that I would describe as pleasant, so such places do exist.

Back home, we built a wood fire, rubbed the steak with rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper, threw it on the hot iron, and stood by with glasses of red wine to watch the transformation. Did you know that a steak larded with intramuscular fat cooks more evenly, more beautifully so to speak, than a lean steak? A roast cook illustrated this to me once, showing me how quickly the rectangle of Wagyu (Kobe-style) beef he was basting was firming up. With any kind of fattened steak, the crusts are lubricated enough to blister to a dark molasses and the heat runs up and down the veins of fat inside the steak, bringing the interior to an even, juicy medium-rare.

I let it rest for a long time before cutting into it, sipping my wine and turning it over and over again as we talked, visualizing the juice inside sloshing from this side to that. When we finally took a knife to it the interior was a bulging, shocking pink. It struck me as meat, and mineral . . . but also vegetable. Like it had a life force equal to a tomato straining against its skin.

Also, tell me again how this corn-fed Prime differs from American grain-fattened Wagyu? A cattleman would say Genetics. But I'm thinking, just going by taste, that the answer is, "by degrees."

Summer Shredded Beef (Crockpot Barbacoa)

From my mother I learned not to panic when the Minnesota summer explodes into a rare heatwave the very day that you have ten people coming for dinner. Do not even turn on the lights in the kitchen. No, just calmly get out the extension cord and leash it to a crockpot sitting outside. As hers did, my hot-weather crockpot usually contains a chunk of chuck roast which, after 8 hours, will slowly melt at the edges like an iceberg in a warming sea.

Her famous summer shredded beef swam in a shimmering copper bouillon that took both its color and potency from a packet of Lipton's Onion Soup Mix--and don't knock it, either. The low, sweet scent of dark onion burrowing into the unraveling beef stands tall in my childhood memory, lords it over the space of time like good pipe smoke.

But I can no longer stand the dry husk sound, that rattlesnake shake, of the seasoning packet, and over the years I've somehow lost my taste for it as well. Kids seem to like the high drama of salt and faux-flavor, but now my palate craves the floral notes of freshly crushed spices, the warmth of real onions. For authenticity, I try to maintain the perfect consistency of my mother's shredded beef, and make sure it's juicy enough to soak its bleached white bun all the way through to the plate. A properly made summer shredded beef requires a dimpled paper napkin.

Because my brother Bob--the Mexican-food-lover--was coming, I made barbacoa, or pulled beef with chiles. The marinade for the beef began in a bold way, with a hank of dried chiles and a handful of spices, but after eight hours of slow cooking it mellowed to a rusty sauce--tasty but benevolent. Bob, and he's an expert, said it was correct: barbacoa isn't necessarily spicy. (Good, because we had kids to feed.) But he needed hot salsa.

So for his potion I chopped up the first of my ripe roma tomatoes, a garden onion, the straggly ends of cilantro, a handful of basil and two full serranos, and hit it all with lime and salt.

In the end we had something much kickier than our mom's shredded beef. But the hard roll--its top skin crackled like an old map, one of the few breads that the local grocery store bakery still makes so right--brought it all home for us.

Crockpot Barbacoa

This recipe will serve at least 12.

7 dried pasilla or guajillo chiles (or a combination of both)
2 chipotle chiles (canned in adobo or dried)
15 allspice berries
5 whole cloves
2 teaspoons cumin seed
12 cloves garlic
1/2 medium onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, plus to taste
1 bunch fresh oregano
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, plus to taste
5 pounds chuck roast or Texas-style beef ribs
1 cinnamon stick

Pour boiling water to cover over the dried chiles and steep until cool enough to tough. Remove the stems and pinch out some of the seeds, and reserve the liquid.

In a dry blender, combine the allspice, cloves and cumin seed and process on high, until finely ground. Add the soaked chiles (including the chipotles, in whatever form), garlic cloves, onion, salt, oregano and apple cider vinegar. Process on high until smoothly pureed, adding some of the soaking liquid if necessary.

Place the beef in the crockpot container, add the seasoning paste and, if you have time, leave to marinate for at least 8 hours before cooking. Add the cinnamon stick and 1 cup of reserved chile-soaking water, cover tightly, and cook the beef on high for 1 hour, and then on low for another 6 to 7 hours, or until the feels tender when poked with a fork. (I do this overnight.) Remove the beef to a plate, skim the top of the liquid to remove the excess fat, and return the meat to the pot, shredding it roughly into the sauce. Season to taste with more salt and vinegar, if necessary.

Serve the beef on crusty rolls, with slices of avocado, fresh spicy salsa and crema, or sour cream seasoned with lime juice, salt and pepper.