641.5982 Mallmann: Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way

I love going to the Farmers' Market. I love that the food is grown nearby, harvested recently, and that the money I'm spending is going directly to my neighbors. Recently, Husband and I visited the Millerton Farmers' Market in Millerton, NY - just over the state line from our town. Along with a bunch of fresh veggies, we picked up some ground lamb and steak from the folks at Moon in the Pond Farm.

Moon in the Pond is located in Sheffield, Massachusetts and offers heritage breed, 100% grass fed meat via their website and at various local Farmers' Markets. We drive by their farm almost weekly, and I love seeing the cows grazing leisurely - they're Scottish Highland cows and have long wavy pelts like sheepdogs. They're super cute, these "fuzzy cows," as I like to call them, and, well, they're also super tasty. Always a winning combo.

The other night, the Husband and I wanted to make a simple dinner with some of our fuzzy cow beef. My first thought was to grill up the steak, maybe with a nice dry rub, and have a simple salad. Wanting to do the beef justice, I looked for a recipe that would honor the specific cut. What we had, however, was not exactly a grilled-steak type steak even though it was labeled "beef sirloin tip steak." Admittedly, my cuts-of-beef knowledge is a bit limited. I see the word "steak" and I assume it's all New York Strip. Perhaps my wishful thinking clouds my common sense at times. After much Googling, I learned that what we had was actually from the round of the cow, not the sirloin, and was best for stewing or braising, but not great for dry-heat cooking, unless you marinate first. Not having a ton of time to mess around with marinating, I spent a couple of hours looking through the library's cookbooks. Err...I guess I did have time to marinate after all. Alas...

I thought about beef and who might be an expert on it. South America! They love the red meat down there. I perused a few of our South America cookbooks, and when I pulled out Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, by Francis Mallmann, I knew I had found what I needed. I remembered seeing this book when it first came out and how it looked so interesting and the recipes sounded just delicious. And sure enough, it had a recipe that called for my specific cut of beef! Of course, it wasn't a recipe for steak. It was for empanadas! Hard to be disappointed when your beef will be surrounded with yummy pastry. I decided to make a couple of appetizer-type dishes, all from the Seven Fires cookbook.

Seven Fires is divided up into sensible chapters: appetizers, beef, fish, desserts, etc. But it also includes a primer on the various heat-based cooking methods Mallmann favors (the "seven fires"): Parilla (barbeque), Chapa (cast-iron griddle or skillet), Infiernillo ("Little Hell" - an oven with fire above and below the cooking surface), Horno de Barro (clay oven), Rescoldo (Embers and Ashes), Asador ("The Iron Cross" - a kind of upright spit next to an open fire), and the Caldero (cauldron).

The beef chapter offers recipes ranging from a simple "Perfect Steak" to a "Beef and Potato Pie" to "Sunday Asado" - a day-long grilling process that begins at 9 a.m. and includes four kinds of meat -- not to mention the recipe for Una Vaca Entera, which calls for "1 medium cow, about 1400 pounds" and "1 heavy-duty block-and-tackle attached to a steel stanchion set in concrete." When a whole cow is not the most difficult-to-find element of a recipe, you're probably in over your head.

The empanadas are much less terrifying. The meat is cut up in small bits and seared, then mixed with onions, scallions, potatoes, red pepper flakes, and hard-boiled eggs. While it chills in the fridge, you make a pastry dough that is simple, if a bit unfamiliar. Lard (or olive oil) is melted in salted water, then cooled. Flour is added bit by bit until the dough forms into a ball, which is then kneaded with more flour until it's quite dry and stiff. Eat your Wheaties that morning, you'll need 'em.

The dough is rolled out, fairly thinly. Mallmann even suggests a pasta machine for this task. I love my pasta machine, but I went lo-fi and used my rolling pin, which worked fine. After you cut the dough in circles, you put a bit of the filling in the circle's center, fold the circle into a cute little half moon, and seal the edges with a fork. While the empanadas can be deep fried, the basic recipe has you bake them for about 15 minutes, which is way easier and seriously, just as tasty.

I worried a bit that the doughy, meaty pillows would seem dry and require a bit of sauce, and I'm sure a classic chimichurri sauce would have been nice, but we trusted the recipe and just served them nekkid. They were excellent that way. The pastry was light and savory, and the beef was tender, its flavor coming through wonderfully with the starchy potatoes and bit of spice. To round out the meal, we also made Mallmann's "Crunchy Roasted Potato and Arugula Salad" and the "Burnt Tomato, Goat Cheese, and Anchovy Bruschetta," both of which were easy and delicious. So, our simple steak and salad idea got a bit inflated, but it really was totally worth it.

Our local farmers take the time and care to grow food naturally, humanely, and responsibly, which isn't easy, and isn't cheap. I wanted to be just as reverent towards the food when I cooked it as they were when they grew it. And it just so happens that not taking the easy and cheap route results in something far more pleasurable and rewarding than any money or time we might have saved could provide.