by Edward Lee
1 cup kosher salt
½ cup sugar
Curry Paste (recipe follows)
1Trim off any excess fat and sinew from the surface of the lamb leg. Make the first cure by combining the salt, sugar, and black pepper in a small bowl. Put the leg in a large tub that holds it comfortably and rub the cure generously over the entire surface of the leg; it is best to wear disposable gloves when doing this. Scoop up the excess cure that falls to the bottom of the tub and keep rubbing the lamb leg with it. Cover the tub with plastic wrap and put it in the back of your regular refrigerator for 18 days; turn the leg every 2 days or so.
2After 18 days, remove the lamb leg from the tub and rinse it under cold running water for 10 minutes. Make the second cure by mixing the salt and sugar together in a small bowl. Rub this cure over the lamb leg (wearing disposable gloves) just like you did the first time. Then smear the curry paste over the entire surface of the leg. Cover the tub with plastic wrap and put it in the back of your regular refrigerator for another 8 days.
3After 8 days, remove the lamb from the tub and rinse it under cold running water for 10 minutes. Transfer the lamb leg to a clean large tub and fill it with cold water. Soak the lamb leg for 1 hour.
4Take the leg out of the water and pat it dry with paper towels. At this point, the lamb leg is cured, but it needs to hang in a cool, dry environment with good air circulation to dry out. Tie it up with twine, then suspend it, fatter end down, from the rack in your curing refrigerator for at least 40 days.
5After 40 days, the lamb prosciutto is ready to slice and serve. You can continue aging it for up to another 30 days if you want, or cut it into chunks and freeze it. Store leftovers in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
Slicing cured meats is an art unto itself, but suffice it to say, slice it as thin as you can.
Curry Paste
Makes about 1 cup
4 garlic cloves
A knob of ginger, peeled and sliced
¼ cup canola oil or other neutral oil
3 tablespoons unsweetened coconut milk
2 tablespoons tomato puree
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Combine all the ingredients in a blender or a food processor and blend until a thick paste forms. The paste can be made ahead and stored in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to a month.
Salad of Curried Lamb Prosciutto with Dried Apricots, Pine Nuts, Fennel, and Tarragon Vinaigrette
Fennel is a nice foil for salty curried lamb. Here the fennel adds brightness to the salad, while the apricots lend a layer of sweetness. But you can be creative with the mix: Try it with fresh figs, washed-rind cheeses from Alsace, or pickled watermelon rind. And enjoy the salad with a crisp Pinot Blanc. / Feeds 4
Vinaigrette
3 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, finely minced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large fennel bulb, stalks removed
½ teaspoon kosher salt
8 to 10 slices Curried Lamb Prosciutto (page 36)
4 dried apricots, sliced very thin
¼ cup toasted pine nuts
1To make the vinaigrette: Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together until emulsified. (The vinaigrette can be made ahead and stored in a glass jar in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.)
2To make the salad: Using a mandoline, shred the fennel as fine as possible. Transfer to a large bowl, add the salt, and toss gently. Allow to wilt at room temperature for 15 minutes.
3Toss the wilted fennel with enough of the vinaigrette to just moisten.
4Arrange the lamb slices on a plate. Layer the fennel on top and scatter the apricots and pine nuts over it. Drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette.
Curing
I never know how to explain why I love the process of curing so much. We make a lot of cured meats at my restaurant, from country hams to duck breasts—we even cure sea urchin roe. It’s the most gratifying form of cooking I know, because it takes the most time to complete. I’m always trying to teach our guests how to do it. I’ll start by saying, “It’s easy. If a caveman could do it, so can you. It’s nothing but salt and sugar.” Then I go on about salt solutions and fermentation and the philosophy of preservation, and next thing I know, I’ve lost them. Yet to me, the greatest gift of a chef is the ability to distill a complex process into a few simple steps that anyone can wrap their brain around. Yes, the sublime art of charcuterie and salumi, with its infinite permutations and flavor combinations, requires a lifelong dedication to a craft that most chefs, including me, will never completely master. But (and here is where you come in), just because you may never make the perfect culatello, that shouldn’t prevent you from participating in the great pleasure of curing. So let’s take all the smoke and mirrors away and bring it down to brass tacks.
Curing is a process that results in an absence of moisture, which is what bacteria need to multiply. Salt is your tool to draw moisture out of a piece of meat. The bigger your piece of meat, the more salt and time you need to cure it. The most important ingredient when curing meats is patience. When you eat a slice of properly aged ham, you are tasting the culmination of time passing. You are eating a slice of the past, of history. Damn it, I’m getting all dreamy about curing again.
There are three important things to remember about curing.
Nitrates are helpful but not necessary for the curing process. They’re a chemical agent used mostly to preserve the appealing color of the meat. I do not use nitrates for any of my cured meats.
Most meat from commercial sources has been properly air-chilled to kill harmful bacteria, but some organically grown meats slaughtered at small family-run abattoirs will not have been. So, just to be safe, before curing any cut of meat, freeze it until the meat gets down to 42°F; putting the meat in your freezer overnight will usually do the trick. Thaw the meat completely before curing it.
Traditional curing requires a vermin-free environment in which to store the meat at a constant temperature of between 50 and 60°F, with humidity at around 75 percent and constant air circulation. If you have an environment like this to hang your meats, that’s great. A wine refrigerator is perfect. Most of us don’t have a wine fridge, though. If you really want to get into curing, you could buy an extra no-frills refrigerator for it. The lower temperature of the refrigerator, around 30 to 34°F, means it’ll require more time for the curing process to happen, but it will ensure that you won’t have a bacterial outbreak. Remove all but the top rack from the refrigerator. Set the temperature to its highest setting, usually about 38°F. Hang your meats by tying them to the top rack with butcher’s twine. Be sure to leave plenty of space between the meats for air circulation. If there’s anyone in your house you think might interfere with your curing process, put a padlock on the refrigerator door.
The Cheesemaker
I first met Pat Elliot at an American Cheese Society Conference in Louisville. For most of us, one profession is enough to keep us busy. Pat has three—physician, farmer, and cheesemaker—and she is brilliant at all of them. She raises her own sheep, and as a physician, she looks at animals with an added perspective that the average farmer does not have. I love that about her. Conversation topics with her can skip rapidly from animal feed to medicine to the density of
cheese rinds. I have used her cheeses from the day we opened 610 Magnolia. If Pat is in a good mood, she’ll send me some samples of unpasteurized sheep’s-milk yogurt with the cheese delivery. That doesn’t stay at the restaurant, though—it comes straight home with me.
“Sheep are not dumb. They are not weak. They are stoic animals. They have an incredible ability to withstand pain without showing it. This is because they are flock animals, and the wolves always go after the weak ones. Over time, sheep evolved to show no pain, even when they were sick, so they wouldn’t be singled out by predators. Farmers who raise sheep sometimes complain that their sheep will drop dead out of the blue without showing any symptoms. That is not true. You just have to observe them more closely, because they hide their pain when they get sick. They are extraordinary animals.”
—Pat Elliot, cheesemaker (and physician), Everona Dairy, Rapidan, Virginia
Cows & Clover
Beef has been both my favorite meat and my biggest disappointment. Korean barbeque—the holy trinity of salt, sweet, and smoke—still acts as a sensory trigger for me that starts with that first bite of tangy, charred meat and ends in a cradle of childhood euphoria, when I could eat beef to my heart’s delight without the worry of indigestion or lipids. Kalbi, with its charcoal-fired sweet-soy-and-pungent-garlic aftertaste, was the reason my family would venture out to Koreatown. Those trips provide some of my fondest memories of being a kid. So naturally, when I opened a restaurant, I tried my hand at a Korean BBQ joint, in a location on Mott Street that no one else wanted.
What started as a tiny place to sell hot plates of kalbi soon became a full-blown hipster restaurant. We added salads and desserts, then we added wines and cocktails to supplement our original offering of OB beer and Heineken. I was twenty-five and still very green. My original plan was to sell Korean BBQ to white people and make a little money so I could enroll in cooking school. But within a few months, I was entertaining celebrities and fashionistas and selling lychee martinis by the dozens. I was making too much money to close, and I was having too much fun to stop. Every night, we started out as a marginally respectable restaurant, but by midnight someone was dancing on the bar or making out in the kitchen, and suspiciously long lines would develop for the bathroom. I hung out with artists and designers, I dated a Japanese actress, I watched the sun rise with random people who became my friends, and I got to spend one idiotically epic night with Joe Strummer and Bob Gruen. My culinary aspirations were on hold—actually they were marinating in a tequila bottle.
On one particularly chaotic night, in walked Jeremiah Tower. For those of you too young to remember him, Tower was the other half of Chez Panisse. He and Alice Waters propelled Chez Panisse from a neighborhood Berkeley restaurant to one of the most important institutions in the history of American cuisine. Their eventual split was very public and very acerbic. Like Kobe and Shaq, they both moved on to great careers, but never as blindingly bright as during their heyday at Chez Panisse. If I’m sounding like a sycophant, it’s because I am. For a young chef like me, they represented the pinnacle of what could be accomplished when a restaurant and a committed philosophy of agriculture come together. They were revolutionary, and they inspired a generation of chefs to follow their lead.
I was born the year Jeremiah Tower started at Chez Panisse, and here he was sitting in my tiny hipster restaurant. I wanted to impress him. But with what? Some watercress and a dying Asian pear? There was a girl passed out on the bar; she happened to be my waitress. I had some frozen skate in the cooler and a badly butchered duck in the back of the reach-in. I decided to stick with my ace in the hole: grilled kalbi short ribs. We sold bus tubs worth of them every night. I had a packed restaurant devouring them. I sent out a heaping sizzle plate of short ribs, along with our tray of condiments. I drank a beer and waited for the accolades. But they never came. What did come back was a plate of cold, congealed, barely touched short ribs. All he’d eaten was the rice and condiments. Orders were flying in on my board, but I didn’t care. I sat on a milk crate and died. All that revelry and cash started to feel like failure. I took a bite of my own kalbi; the sweet-and-salty marinade was pretty good, but the meat underneath was remarkably bland. God, I’d just wrecked everything Tower ever stood for. I went to his table expecting the worst. But he was polite, gentle even. He had nothing negative to say, but nothing glowing either (which, of course, said it all). He asked me a few harmless questions about the restaurant, looked around at the drunken hipsters spilling out of their chairs, and smiled indifferently before skipping out into the evening.
It was one night, one customer. Best to shrug it off and keep going. But it bugged me, and the feeling festered; it was taking the fun out of all the fun I was having. I called my purveyor and ordered the best beef he could find. I asked him where the meat came from. He said Iowa. I asked where in Iowa. He said he didn’t know. I hung up the phone and called another purveyor. I asked more questions; I asked what the cows were fed. I got silence. I hung up and called another purveyor. That guy lied to me. I called farm after farm, and after two hours on the phone, I found a guy in upstate New York who could sell me Hereford beef—but I’d have to take a quarter of the whole animal and he could only deliver on Tuesdays. And it was double the price of what I was paying. I looked around my tiny kitchen and saw my chickens and eggs and pork ribs and squid and celery and mangoes and carrots and spices and beans and rice and . . . and I thought, “Oh, this is gonna suck.”
I didn’t transform my kitchen overnight. It’s been a long road, and any chef out there who starts down that path knows that the rabbit hole is very, very deep. But once you start, it’s almost impossible to turn back. The hardest part is the first step, and the best part is turning a disappointment into an inspiration.
I was a literature major, so I like to see things as metaphors. The beef was only the surface of this hulking mass of a disappointment I’d built. I’d thought things were all going my way, and they kinda were. But I knew inside that there was more to life than grilled meat and tequila shots. Three years of the restaurant had gone by in a blink. My girlfriend had moved to Italy; my new friends were creepy. And then two planes reduced the Twin Towers to ashes. I lost a dear friend. I lost all the money I’d saved. I needed a break.
I don’t remember exactly why I decided to go to the Kentucky Derby. For a city kid from Brooklyn, that seersucker-and-bourbon spectacle somehow seemed like the panacea to my urban hell. A friend of a friend knew of a restaurant in Louisville that would hire me for the weekend of the Derby, so I could make a little cash and see a bit of the bluegrass. I wanted to take my shoes off and walk barefoot through fields of clover. I wanted to walk alongside the cows that grazed on the same grass that was below my feet. I packed my bag for a week. And it was a week that would change my life forever.
Rice Bowl with Beef, Onions, Collards, Fried Egg, and Corn Chili Rémoulade
Whenever I can succesfully marry my love for Asian BBQ with my favorite Southern ingredients, I know I’ve made something special. The marinade for this beef was inspired by the popular Korean bulgogi sauce, and the collards are a true Southern icon. The history of collard greens begins with the African roots of the slaves in the colonial South, and the need to feed families with a hearty and nutritious green that was easy to farm, but it has grown into a tradition of abundance, celebration, and comfort. And here the collards seem right at home in a simple but satisfying rice bowl. / Feeds 4 as a main course or 6 as an appetizer
Corn Chili Rémoulade
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
2 ears corn, shucked and kernels removed
¼ cup Perfect Rémoulade (page 6)
1 teaspoon chili powder
Marinade
1 garlic clove, grated (use a Microplane)
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (use a Microplane)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil
2 te
aspoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
One 1-pound flat-iron steak, thinly sliced
Collards
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 cup diced onions
1 bunch collards (12 ounces), ribs removed, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil
Eggs
1½ tablespoons unsalted butter
4 large eggs, preferably organic
4 cups cooked rice (see page 4)
1To make the rémoulade: Melt the butter in a small sauté pan over medium heat. Add the corn and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes, until tender. Remove from the heat, stir in the rémoulade and chili powder, and set aside.
2To marinate the beef: Combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl. Add the steak slices, turning to coat. Allow to marinate for 20 minutes at room temperature.
3While the steak is marinating, cook the collards: In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat until the butter melts. Add the onions and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until caramelized and nicely browned. Add the collard greens, salt, and vinegar, and sauté for 5 minutes, or until the collard greens are wilted. These aren’t braised collards, so don’t cook all the color out of them—they should be wilted but still with enough crunch to keep your mouth happy. Transfer the collards to a warm plate and cover to keep warm.
4Cook the steak: Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the steak slices, with the marinade, and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 to 5 minutes, until the beef is browned and cooked all the way through. Transfer the beef to a bowl and keep warm until ready to serve.
