What I Cooked Last Night

The title company had closed for the day. I closed for the day too, and drove over to La Cienaga to Rudy's Bar-B-Q, gave my name to the master of ceremonies, and waited for the big moment on a bar stool with a whiskey sour in front of me and Marek Weber's waltz music in my ears. After a while I got in past the velvet rope and ate one of Rudy's "world-famous" Salisbury steaks, which is hamburger on a slab of burnt wood, ringed with browned-over mashed potato, supported by fried onion rings and one of those mixed up salads which men will eat with complete docility in restaurants, although they would probably start yelling if their wives tried to feed them one at home. After that I drove home. As I opened the front door the phone started to ring. No. 1 here.

Eye fillet with garlic butter. Slice two inches off a 250 gram stick of butter. Allow it to soften but not melt. (Not difficult in this climate: at the time of writing it was 32 degrees outside (we’ve gone from Fahrenheit to Celsius in two posts) with black clouds and storms approaching the city). Assist the softening process if necessary by cutting into smaller cubes. Chop a sprig of parsley as finely as you can including the fine stalk. One way to do this is by placing it in a glass and chopping it with scissors. This works surprisingly well. Peel four cloves of garlic and chop them as finely as possible. Combine the butter, parsley and garlic: best done with a fork, in a cup. Add salt and cracked pepper to taste. (Vary the relativities in this mixture depending on your preferred garlic Beaufort Scale.) Transfer to a piece of aluminium foil, roll up and shape into a cylinder. Refrigerate. Meanwhile peel, chop and boil four large potatoes; trim twenty green beans. If you are n...

It's a monster. It rests patiently and silently all the long winter in a corner of the windowless shed at the bottom of the garden under a corrugated cement-sheeting roof and a layer of dust. Then spring arrives and it comes out and I dust it off by hosing it down, like an elephant at the zoo. It is made from cast iron and it weighs either a ton or a tonne, the French version. Who knows? It's heavy. But it is humble. My barbecue has none of those things that copywriters call 'features'. It has no side burners, no cabinet, no window, no quartz ignition, no batteries, no warming rack and no rotisserie, motorised or not. It has no wok feature, no built-in lighting, no flame-tamer and no fancy name like Tuscany or Renaissance GrillPro . I couldn't bring myself to cook on a barbecue called Tuscany . It would just be too ridiculously pretentious, like wearing an apron and a chef's hat while you grill for your guests. If they must give barbecues names, why don't...

Or something like that. The sun had left the building earlier and the cool air stole in so we sat closer to the brick wall that was still warm. I moved the old cast-iron barbecue closer to the table so that it provided a second front of warmth. I spread out the glowing coals over the iron and put the grate back on and got the steaks ready to grill. Apart from the coolness in the air at night, these golden autumn days are perfect and warm and they slide by slowly. February is always a busy month for no reason that I can think of, and its ferocious weather makes it a monster; so that tamed, softer March is always a great change. But we keep sitting outside in the evenings as if summer were still with us and we pretend it will never go. Before we know it we will be sitting inside in front of the gas heater again with nothing on the television and a shelf full of books to be read through winter, which we hope will be short and mild, and with rain. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I re...

I'll do two this month, because I missed July. The first is this small can of peppercorns. It lurks innocently in the spice section of most supermarkets, where it sells for around three dollars. These peppercorns have a sustained heat. Not like the fiery blast a very hot chili pepper assaults you with, but more of a sustained slow burn. They don't overpower your cooking but you still feel the heat hours later. Pepper steak. Or steak au poivre if you like to affect Frenchisms at the table. I have posted this recipe once or twice in the almost six years I have been writing this online diary, but 'search' is being recalcitrant today and won't find it for me. Take two steaks, some cream, a can of Moulin peppercorns and a bottle of cognac or brandy. Heat your heavy duty cast iron frypan. Oil the steaks, throw them in and sear them. Ask everyone how they like their steak first and stagger the cooking accordingly. This is tricky. Why can't everyone eat s...