Steak as she should be cooked

A well-cooked steak leaves lots of nice bits in the pan to flavour a "fond". Picture: Tony Jackman

A well-cooked steak leaves lots of nice bits in the pan to flavour a "fond". Picture: Tony Jackman

Published Sep 11, 2013

Share

Cape Town - Life wasn’t always a Spur steak ranch. There was a time when your local steakhouse in this country was as England is now, with a curry house on every high street. For us it was the steakhouse, which we thought was as South African as braaivleis, sunny skies and – well, the car company would like us to think “Chevrolet” but in fact many other models of car were higher up the commercial ladder than that old American standard. Volksy Beetle, more like. Now that was a Suthefrican car, despite its dodgy Nazi origins.

This was the Sixties, whenthere were different radio stations for black people and white people, and no, your black or coloured friend could not go with you for a steak and then out to a movie. In the unlikely event that you had a black or coloured friend.

This was the realm of that Nazi sympathiser BJ Vorster, a man too kindly dealt with by the hand of history, while most of the flak falls on his predecessor Hendrik Verwoerd (rightly, but I’m speaking comparatively) and his successor PW Botha. Somehow piggy in the middle tends to be largely ignored, but these were seminal years for my generation, being in our teens and moving into young adulthood, so he’s the guy some of us hated the most and who most represented all of that s*** we were growing up to understand and detest.

These were days when what we think of as high-end fine dining palaces were barely 5 percent of what passed for a restaurant in Cape Town. There was a smattering of Italian joints – not the franchises we have now, but family-run places owned by real Italians, and some of those are still in business with new generations in charge. For the rest, it was the ubiquitous steakhouse, for those of us lucky enough to have had the privileges that went with being born in a white skin. When you were a kid, by and large, it all just seemed normal because it was all you had ever known.

If, like me, you were a thinking kid, it would come to you in spurts. When you’re on the bus to school and the black people all have to move right to the back if it’s a single-decker or upstairs if a double-decker. And one day, boarding the double-decker after school, you pause and, instead of turning left as usual, on an impulse you quickly trot upstairs and make your way past wary, watchful and some resentful eyes to take a seat further back. What’s the conductor going to say?

You go out with your parents that night to your local steakhouse where dad has the monkeygland (a very South African sauce with almost everything you can think of in it – it’s not for nothing that its popularity has waned as palates have matured), mom the steak Diane (a classic, then, which was often flamed at the table) while I would always argue the case for a simple chargrilled rump because I liked the flavour the charring gave to the fatty edge. I still do, and I miss that; nobody does it any more for fear of the Big C.

Then, in the same time frame that saw the old certainties of white privilege seismically shaken by black resistance, in came the chains thanks to the advent of the Spur and later Mike’s Kitchen and others, now happily forgotten. Gradually the individual style of old-fashioned steakhouses disappeared, with few exceptions. Some have hung in there like a doggedly stubborn bull determined not to leave its field, and then we welcomed the change as first pizza parlours sprang up and proliferated and, in the later 1980s, the beginnings of the Cape’s dining revolution slowly became the tide that has swelled to a plethora of restaurants offering the cuisines of the world.

The part of this that I dislike is the entrenchment of a culture of franchises, and, like those early individually-owned steakhouses, I still prefer a restaurant, whether Indian, Thai, French or steakhouse, that has a flavour and style all of its own. I’d sooner retreat to my own kitchen and cook the steaks myself than venture into most of those saccharine franchise copycats where everything is formula and nothing is left to chance. Where’s the excitement in that? Give me a real chef with passion and a willingness to try something new.

Like a brandy cream sauce for a steak, finishing a steak with sesame oil, or reducing the pan juices down with a vintage balsamic vinegar and thyme reduction, such as I made the other day.

I swear by Nomu fonds, which are highly concentrated stock reductions. Fond, actually, is a concentration of the bits you find at the bottom of the pan after you’ve cooked meat, the little bits that, when you add stock, wine etc, are incorporated to add depth and flavour to the sauce.

I’m giving no measurements list for this because it really is all about tasting as you go until it is just the way you like it. Be strong, Daisy, you can do this.

Whichever steaks you’ve cooked, whether rare or medium, wrap them tightly in foil to rest. Put the pan in which you’ve cooked them on a high heat and add beef stock, preferably a home-made one or 2 Tbs of Nomu beef fond stirred into boiling water. A cup or so should do it.

Scrape the bottom of the pan vigorously to dislodge the “fond” and reduce, stirring. Pour this through a fine sieve into a small saucepan, and add a cup or so of quality, well-aged balsamic vinegar, which should have an intense depth of flavour and a fair degree of sweetness. Add three or four sprigs of thyme and reduce this down, stirring, until it becomes a pourable thickish sauce, rich in colour and flavour. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Strain again to remove the thyme, and serve with your steak.

As you tuck in, drink a toast, if you’re of like mind, to the fact that we are no longer separated on buses and cinemas, and that the likes of Balthazar John Vorster have long since passed. - Weekend Argus

Related Topics: