Steak with Blue Cheese

A Kind of Truth



The farm I grew up on was named Direenfinhilid. This is a Gaelic word and means "pretty little oak wood." My parents named it this because they built the house in a spot on the property surrounded primarily by second growth oaks, red and white, most of which were 80 to 100 years old.

In the woods on the hillside below and behind the house there were a collection of half a dozen ditches about eight feet long, two feet deep, with the earth from the ditches pitched on the downhill side. My parents told us these earthworks were there to collect rainwater for making moonshine, and it is only at this moment, writing this down, that I've thought to question that explanation. There was certainly no physical evidence — no shards of steel or copper, no rotten grain sacks, no broken bottles — other than the ditches themselves to support that explanation. I can’t think of another reason for these earthworks, but this is a case where the objective truth is irrelevant. I grew up thinking those ditches we used as forts when playing War or Cowboys-and-Indians, or as leaping off points for swinging on the heavy vines that hung from the forest canopy when friends visited, were a connection to my East Tennessee past.

I grew up eating beef that was fed on grass — and leaves and acorns and bark and whatever else those fool animals wanted to munch on

In no small part, this tale formed my view of the world.

Truth is what forms us. Or more accurately, we are formed by what we take as truth. Some truths, like Santa Claus are explicitly unveiled as myths as we grow up, others like the moonshiner ditches or God we simply avoid thinking about too closely. We deliberately, and sometimes unconsciously, hold on to these tales because they have become woven into our being in some way and continuing to believe causes no harm to us.

A few days ago I bought a steak. Not something I do very often. Good steak is expensive and cheap steak isn't worth buying. For my most-remembered years at Direenfinhilid we raised a few head of cattle, just enough to keep the place classified as a farm and minimize the taxes my folks had to pay. (Although, I think my father would have gone full-time in a heartbeat if he'd had an excuse — he adored that chunk of ground with a passion I don’t begin to understand. He had faith in its innate goodness.)

This means I grew up eating beef that was fed on grass — and leaves and acorns and bark and whatever else those fool animals wanted to munch on (and cows are fool animals). Whenever we had beef, we knew the name of the animal that was feeding us. One year it was Maytag, the next Brown Cow, the next some other beast. As a callow boy I wasn't aware of the deep connection knowing the animal's name made, but it did.

My brief flirtation with vegetarianism was indeed brief, you can’t form any sort of a personal connection with a particular ear of corn or tomato. Rather than being off-putting, knowing the name of a cow — and I'm sure a pig or chicken — carries a kind of mythology with it. According to our white mythology (and perhaps in fact), the native Americans knew this and thanked the spirits of the animals they ate. This is a good thing. Eating becomes a conscious and conscientious act.

A few days ago I came home from the farmers' market with a ribeye steak from a grass-fed cow. I don’t know that the cow had a name. I didn't ask. It didn’t matter. I knew from knowing the rancher and my adolescence it was cared for. I suspected the steak would be tough. I knew it would be packed with flavor.

Poor meat needs a sauce to make up for its lack of flavor. Good meat should be left alone. Great meat can stand up against a sauce and create an extraordinary gestalt. I made a pan sauce for this ribeye.

The steak weighed about six ounces and was only half an inch thick. That meant it needed to go into a hot (cast iron) skillet for a 40 second sear on each side in olive oil, which with salt an pepper was the only flavor added directly to it. When the steak came out (to rest under foil) I cooled the skillet to medium off the heat then added minced shallot until it began to brown. Then red wine (an Australian Shiraz) reduced by two thirds along with fresh thyme. Lastly, I tossed a couple of ounces of blue cheese (Rosenborg, which is decent in a sauce and doesn't melt immediately — Point Reyes Blue would have been better) swirled it around, and poured it on the steak.

The steak was as tough as I'd expected, aging would have helped a lot, but you can't age individual steaks — too much wastage. Nevertheless, it was full of beefiness. The rich astringency of the wine combined with the lush, musty creaminess and salt of the cheese set off the beef perfectly. Fresh local tomatoes on the side. Ah...

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