This filet may be used as a flotation device

“Whose bag is this?”

I had to have seen this coming.  It’s not every day the TSA sees aRead More

More from the 2009 Beef Draft: (1) Predraft Camp (2) The Burger-off (3) Thoughts of Our Cow

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The Fedex guy was bitter.

Six massive boxes up two flights of stairs will do that to a man.  But our cow had arrived.  W, a 578-pound steer, had been butchered, put into vacuum packs, frozen, and shipped from upstate New York to my East Village apartment.  And it was finally time to divide the spoils.Read More

Iris with one of her indentured servants

Not exactly the most profound question I’d asked myself all year, or even all day; however, as I was bringing my load of organic, chemical-free, artisanal worm food over to the nice lady with spiky blond hair at the Union Square compost dropoff facility, the thought did occur to me. I’d just made a fantastic Oaxacan dish of ground beef, cabbage, cilantro, and a few hot peppers, and in my bag of vegetable scraps lurked a couple of morsels that’d pop a capsicum in your ass. Would the worms go for them? And if they did, would they be leaving a trail of fire?

I knew I couldn’t answer the questions myself. I immediately thought of Chris Patil, who wrote the Science Bug column in our college paper. There were lots of Science Bugs; the title was passed down every so often as Science Bugs left, kind of like actors playing James Bond, and Chris was Sean Connery. His explanation of why the moon appears smaller when it’s high in the sky than when it’s close to the horizon is the stuff of legend – equal parts informative and humorous, using, among other things, the child’s game where you look at someone else between your own thumb and index finger, held up near your eye, and say “SQUISH! SQUISH! I’M SQUISHING YOUR HEAD!” to demonstrate his point. And nearly twenty years later, I still remember why that happens with the moon. I knew he was the man for the job.

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Delicious.

This is the type of blog entry that I set out not to write.

The problem I have with many blogs is that they tend to be more for the writer than the reader. I’ve read too many whose authors use the forum work out their own issues, to describe their day, or to do a host of other things that have nothing to do with making the reader’s valuable time worthwhile.

That’s not what I want to do here. I aspire first and foremost to make this column an enjoyable and informative read for the people who choose to invest their time here. I want to be entertaining and educational, Fat Albert-style: Coming at you with cooking and fun. And if you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done. Hey, hey, hey! But I think this blog installment may develop a distinct “get some stuff off my chest” feel – if that’s how it reads I apologize in advance.

The Beef Draft is all about cooking and fun. But there is one particularly not fun part of the draft, and it would be unfair to gloss over it:

Today the steer we bought was slaughtered.
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And in this corner, weighing one pound...

In part 1 of this column, we went over the raisons d’être for the Beef Draft, chief among them being: ensuring a steady supply of sustainably-raised beef, learning something about our food, and IT’S A GODDAMN BEEF DRAFT!

Two providers met the criteria for responsible raising of cattle, capability to deliver on a whole steer, and ease of sampling: Arcadian Farms and 8 O’Clock Ranch.

Next up: a battle to the death.
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Let’s do this thing

Ever since I found out that my favorite steak place, Les Halles on Park Avenue South, gives its animals the full factory farm treatment (warning: that video is gnarly; furthermore, it’s narrated by Alec Baldwin, whose authoritative, gravitas-laden voice makes it very difficult to turn away), I’ve pretty much limited my beef consumption to that which I prepare at home.

And it was there that I started realizing my beef knowledge limitations.

I’m a burger-and-occasional-filet man.  I make a big batch of boeuf Bourguignon once a year or so (side note: Amy Adams’ mangled pronunciation of said dish in the crappy half of Julie & Julia continues to haunt my dreams).  But really, that’s about it.
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You can run, but you can’t hide

104, actually. But let’s back up for a minute.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of Crossfit, this crazy-intense exercise program.  Its trademark workouts comprise a whole mess of weightlifting, bodyweight exercises like pullups, and sprints – all done as quickly as possible while keeping good form, like this one.  One of the main reasons I like Crossfit is this timing element; it puts the element of sport into it, and takes the tedium out of things – you’re so busy racing the clock that boredom never figures into the equation.

I had always wanted to apply this balls-out methodology to other walks of life. So when I realized I’d be cracking 104 eggs for this party (80 for Cremini mushroom frittatas, 24 for pâte à choux with Gruyere and Parmesan), it seemed a natural opportunity to incorporate some Crossfit-style discipline into my cooking. I would break nearly nine dozen eggs for time.
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