Day 63: Wagyu Beef

So we now have contestant #3 on this short list of the quintessential food (recall contestant #1 was Iberian Ham de Bellota, and contestant #2 was Foie Gras)

Look at that. Is that your typical piece of beef? Yes, my friends, get ready to bow to the Wagyu cow -and yes, those white streaks absolutely are the marbling of fat! Isn't that the most absolutely intensely, beautiful, wonderful piece of meat you'll ever see? Well, probably not. In Japan, they rate beef marbling on a scale of 1 to 12. According to the butcher, he gave me an 8 or 9. To put this into perspective, the top cuts here in Canadian groceries are 5-6. Only this week, they found a supplier in Australia who get them this incredible cut. the price is surprisingly not too bad at $40/pound, or $88/kg. For those of you who don't shop, ground beef might go for about $4-6/pound, a nice steak (Filet Mignon, New York etc.) might be in the $15-$20 range . So in comparison, $40/lb is not bad. An 8 oz portion of this is therefore $20, which is affordable for many households on a special occasions basis. And keep in mind that in Japan, Kobe (Wagyu beef, but from the capital of Kobe province) beef often runs for $300 per pound.

I just seared it (naked - no seasonings) on a thick bottomed pan, although the cast iron would be more ideal. Nonetheless, ended up with a great sear on both sides, and a wonderfully rare inside (almost blue, actually, unintentionally). Waited for 5 minutes, then thinly sliced. Right before serving, I threw on some sea salt.

The smell is fatty, almost resembling - wait for it - foie gras. That was the biggest, and most pleasant, surprise. The texture is soft, and the little nuggets of salt explode in your mouth when they hit. The taste is exceptionally meaty, and the caramelizing on the edges give it that final crunch. And you have to wonder why life is that good to you. What have you done in a past life to deserve this, because certainly there's nothing in this life that made you deserving.

On Wagyu Beef:

Wagyu beef refers to cuts of beef from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyū cattle. If raised according to strict tradition in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, it is called Kobe beef. If it is cross-bred with Angus cattle, it is called "Kobe-style" beef. What is pictured above was "Kobe Style".

Farms in America and Britain have attempted to replicate the Kobe traditions, providing their Wagyū herds with beer. U.S meat producers claim that any differences between their less expensive "Kobe-style" beef and true Kobe beef are largely cosmetic. The cattle are fed American and/or British grass and grain, which is different from the more expensive Japanese feed. Cuts of American "Kobe-style" beef tend to have darker meat and a bolder flavor.

The meat is generally considered to be a delicacy, renowned for its flavour, tenderness, and fatty, well-marbled texture. Wagyu beef can be prepared as steak, sukiyaki, shabu shabu, sashimi, teppanyaki and more. The beef is also eaten raw by people in Japan as in the form of sushi.

The Wagyu cattle that produce this highly-prized meat were introduced into Japan in the second century as work animals, used in rice cultivation. As beef consumption became more prominent in society, farmers began hiring workers to massage the animals' backsides to improve meat quality. The mountainous topography of the islands of Japan resulted in small regions of isolated breeding, yielding herds that developed and maintained qualities in their meat that differ significantly from all other breeds of cattle. Herd isolation and distinctive feeding techniques, which resulted from the limited land availability, have led to distinguishing features that make the meat both superior in marbling and in the ratios of unsaturated versus saturated fats.

Japan has tracked genetic lines of Wagyu cattle for more than 30 years and have developed a grading system that's precise where eating quality is concerned; that system includes evaluation for meat color, fat color, marbling scores from 1-12, and meat texture. In the United States, all fed beef is graded by the USDA into 3 categories... Select, Choice, and Prime. Prime is ~5-6 on a the Japanese marbling scale.

Day 62: White Truffle Oil

I put white truffle truffle oil on just about anything. One of my favourite things is to put it on eggs, but I put it into pastas, into ground beef - I once put it into my cereal and regretted that day for the next 2 hours. It's a great substitute for truffles during the off season (although they are in season now, so no excuses), and also if you don't have the money to spend on truffles on your eggs.

The bottle in the foreground has the ingredient "white truffle flavour" in the ingredient list, and the shorter bottle in the background actually has white truffle oil slices inside of it. Yum. The flavoured oil actually had a stronger truffle flavour to it, I thought. The other one was weaker. They both cost around the same (~$17) although I did get the bottle with sliced truffles inside of it from Homesense on discount, and from what I gather, oil with sliced truffles usually costs a bit more.

I actually especially love putting it onto fresh field mushrooms.

Chef Gordon Ramsay has described white truffle oil as "one of the most pungent, ridiculous ingredients ever known to chef." But fortunately, I feel a lot of tv chefs like to make comments that sounds good, but really make no sense. For instance, like how everyone cooks with extra virgin olive oil, and claims that it tastes better, even in its cooked form! So while Ramsay may have the money to buy real truffles, I doubt many of his customers do, and so I would think they would benefit from this compromise.

On Truffle Oil: Truffle oil is a modern culinary ingredient, used to impart the flavor and aroma of truffles to a dish. Most truffle oils are not made from actual truffles, but are a synthetic product that combines a thioether (2,4-dithiapentane), one of numerous organic aromas or odorants found in real truffles, with an olive oil or grapeseed oil base. As with pure olive oils, these range from clear to cloudy, and yellow to green. A few more expensive oils are alleged to be made from truffles or the by-products of truffle harvesting and production, though the flavor of truffles is difficult to capture in an oil.

Truffle oil is commonly used to make "truffle fries," which feature french fries cooked in truffle oil, parmesan cheese, pepper, and sometimes other ingredients. Some pasta dishes and whipped dishes such as mashed potatoes or deviled eggs incorporate truffle oil.

Truffle oil, available in all seasons and steady in price, is popular with chefs (and diners) because it is significantly less expensive than actual truffles, while possessing some of the same flavors and aroma. The emergence and growth of truffle oil has led to an increase in the availability of foods claiming to be made with or flavored with truffles, in an era when the price of truffles has pushed them out of reach for most diners. "Their one-dimensional flavor is also changing common understanding of how a truffle should taste," Daniel Patterson complained in a New York Times article.

Day 61: Soft-shelled clams

World famous Maritime clams. Do you love clams? I do. I love them manila clams, razor clams, savoury clams, cherry clams. All of them very different. All of them taste best when they're in season. All of them need to be prepared well well. And these soft-shelled clams are beautiful fried.

I usually like the smaller ones because they are softer in texture and sweeter in flavour. These ones, pictured, are from the Hilton Garden Inn hotel right outside the Halifax International Airport, and it's a regular stop over the last few years when we go back to Nova Scotia - and I go straight for the clams. I don't know what it is about it there, but they do clams SO well. Maybe they source the small ones? Maybe they have a secret recipe? But it comes out tasting so sweet, and the batter is perfect... not too bready, not too salty, not too hard. Rather it's all still super nice and moist when you eat them. Nothing worse than perfectly good seafood that gets overly salted, then frozen for years, then mummified in bread crumbs, then refrozen, then deep fried and sold to you at an overpriced family restaurant for $20 a plate (including a leaf of kale, just to make it authentic!)

On Soft-shelled clams

Soft-shell clams, scientific name Mya arenaria, popularly called "steamers", "softshells", "longnecks", "piss clams", "Ipswich clams", or "Essex clams" are a species of edible saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Myidae.

These clams live buried in the mud on tidal mudflats. They are well-known as a food item on the coast of New England in the Western Atlantic Ocean, however the range extends much farther north to Canada and south to the Southern states. They are also found in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, for example in the UK, as well as in the North Sea's Wadden Sea (where they are the dominant large clam).

Soft-shell clams are edible and can be enjoyed in a variety of dishes. Before cooking, it is generally recommended that clams be stored in saltwater for a few days to facilitate the expulsion of sand from their digestive tracts. Some recommend that cornmeal be added to the water to give the clams something to filter from it.

Soft-shell clams can be eaten steamed, fried, or in clam chowder. "Steamers" (steamed soft-shell clams) are an integral part of the New England clam bake, where they are served steamed whole in the shell, then pulled from the shell at the table and dipped, first in the clam broth in which they were cooked, to rinse away sand, and then in melted butter.