The folks at Foodbuzz run a monthly feature called 24×24. Each month, they pick 24 food bloggers to plan a meal on a specific day. In 24 hours, 24 meals are enjoyed around the world, and then blogged.

This month, Foodbuzz picked Saturday, May 29th as the day, and Christey and I were selected as one of the 24 hosts.

The meal we submitted was based on an idea I have been mulling over since Christey and I were at Foodbuzz’s Blogger Festival in San Francisco last year. While there, one of the seminars was co-hosted by Brian Kenny, head rancher at Hearst Ranch. The Hearst family (of publishing fame) own tens of thousands of acres of land and only raise grass-fed, free-range beef.

Almost all beef raised in America is “feedlot” beef — cattle either raised entirely on corn, or finished on corn to fatten them up prior to slaughter. Because of their close contact and lack of exercise, there are concerns about the hormones, antibiotics and health of the cattle, how many of these products are passed through to humans, and how the environment is affected.

On one hand, there’s something to be said for capitalism, that McDonalds can deliver half a person’s daily calories for half an hour of minimum wage. On the other hand, while starvation and malnutrition have been reduced, a wide spectrum of other medical problems are now prevalent, from obesity to cancer.

Most of this is covered in Michael Pollans’ excellent (and now legendary) book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan not only wrestles with the ideas of sustainability, health, and the environment, but also explores economics and “class” issues (yuppyism) of eating sustainable and organic foods.

Hearst is the anti-feedlot. Their cattle is hormone-free, antibiotic-free (they almost never require antibiotics and when one does, it doesn’t get slaughtered with the rest). They have the luxury of roaming around the California countryside, eating grass, pretty much doing what cows evolved to do. They take a bit of a hit in terms of production — cattle is slaughtered after two years instead of 14 months, and they’re a little smaller — but grass-fed beef is much higher in Omega-3 and beta carotene and many other important nutrients.

Putting all the benefits and abstractions aside, my main question was how the taste stacked up. Some describe it as more subtle, while others think it tastes more naturally beefy, as opposed to a more artificial feedlot “punch” of flavor. We were able to sample some Hearst ground beef in Chef Arenstam’s gourmet meatballs and they tasted fantastic, but that’s also an issue I’ve wondered about. Usually, chefs or home cooks proudly advertise that a meal is made with grass-fed beef — the taster knows exactly what he or she is eating. Some taste tests involve a naked bite of steak on a white plate. Most of us don’t eat beef that way at home or in a restaurant.

Which led me to the beef tasting idea for Foodbuzz’s 24×24. Gather a bunch of foodies, and cook beef in traditional ways, accompanied with sauces and side dishes, just like a restaurant or dinner party. Serve a Hearst beef dish and a cut of grain-fed beef from a quality butcher, side-by-side. However, the tasting would be done blind, with only the cook (me) knowing which is which.

In other words, instead of a piece of beef on a toothpick, the diners can compare and contrast beef samples covered with béarnaise sauce, after eating a variety of appetizers. Would there be an obvious difference in taste and texture? For fun, the dinner guests were given ballots to rate taste and texture, as well as offer comments.

The menu would be filet mignon with béarnaise, skirt steak chimichurri, and mini hamburger “sliders” with a demi-glace mushroom sauce, along with appetizers and sides.

Foodbuzz donated $250 to cover the costs of the meal. Brian Kenny of Hearst was also kind enough to comp the skirt steaks, something they usually only sell as part of their cattle-share program.

Beef inside!

Our last post was an entry for The Royal Foodie Joust hosted by Jenn, the Leftover Queen.

For Memorial Day weekend here in the States, there were wonderful sales on steak, so my reboot of this month’s entry is a filet stuffed with rice, roasted tomatoes, herbs, and bacon, with a similar tomato basil aurore sauce (since it was so good from the last post). Oh, and feta. Can’t forget the feta.

Memorial Day Jousting…

One of Christey’s favorite meals is a red-wine reduction steak with a side of mac-n-cheese, served at Jiko restaurant at the African Lodge in Disney. We were just there last month, but Christey had a craving again, so I took a spin at it with a bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin steak with a shallot red wine reduction, and a side of fettuccine tossed in homemade Alfredo.

Make mine medium-rare…

I got my December Saveur magazine in the mail the other day, and the cover trumpeted both filet mignon, and “The Secrets of French Sauces”. Sauces are my favorite culinary field. I thought to myself: “Self: check out the sauces article. Maybe it’ll add some info to that book by Peterson you keep reading.” Lo and behold, the article was written by James Peterson himself.

I urge everyone interested in sauces to check out this issue. He’s a modest fellow — he refers to his highly acclaimed book (and one of my top-3 cooking must-have books) Sauces as “A book I wrote in 1991″. That “book” is an amazing history, from the salty/fish garum sauces of Rome, to the basic mother sauces of French cuisine, to instructions to develop an almost infinite variety of flavor based on those mother sauces, and beyond. In short, Peterson is one of my culinary idols, and I was pleased to see Saveur conned him into writing the centerpiece of the December issue, without once referring to the holiday season.

The thick, rich, very red sauce on the cover is a bordelaise, so named for the Bordeaux region of France, which is probably the most well known red wine producing region in the world. Peterson provides a classic recipe for bordelaise, over filet mignon. I had to make it, of course. Peterson has always been a tinkerer, however, and I’ve jazzed up his recipe by using flat iron instead of fillet, for some extra beefy flavor, with a few bordelaise substitutions as well. I served the steak and sauce over a braised root vegetable foundation, as a nod to the season.

Winter sizzle

When it comes to high cuisine, I’m still a rank amateur. I’m not formally trained, but in my self-teaching, I try to follow and absorb the traditions of classic French techniques, especially when it comes to sauces. I follow Peterson, Larousse Gastronomique, the CIA textbook, McGee, and many others, mainly to learn a classic base. Then, I attempt Keller and Bourdain and Colicchio and Ripert to see how classically trained chefs take a traditional technique or recipe, then put their own spin on it. Many of our posts on FotoCuisine have been French culinary standards, like steak and béarnaise with fried potato and braised beef short ribs. Many have also been my groping attempts to take a traditional technique (classic for a reason — it works), and throw something weird into it to see if it still holds up.

In the last six months or so, I’ve realized I am developing something of a personal style, though I still feel I’m a scrambling amateur most of the time. I like to use a technique from a particular region on the globe, then use an ingredient or a technique from another. It’s sort of a fusion style, except fusion has a history of Asian/Californian/American cuisine, and I’m just as likely to avoid Asian and use New Mexican and New England mixed with African and northern European.

With today’s local farming trend, global cuisine may not necessarily be PC. The carbon footprint of Maine lobster with a New Mexico chile cream sauce is probably a little more decadent than the blue crab bisque I made from crabs I caught in my own backyard. But, if I have any motto in life, it is: “Everything in moderation…especially moderation.”

Maine lobster or Hawaiian yellowfin or Alaskan salmon or Prince Edwards oysters are not weekly dinners here at FotoCuisine HQ, while Florida shrimp or fish or local(ish) chicken are. However, as a once-in-a-while thing, I personally don’t see a problem with shipping in food from the far corner of the globe. I think there is a real need to be conscious about carbon and humane treatment of food (sustainability is also a serious concern, but I’m not going to get into that in this post). However, I feel that there’s also a counter-balance to concerns about the environmental costs of shipping, and that balance is the emotional value that any culture gets by experiencing another culture in any way possible.

One of the bonus spin-offs of globalization is that we can experience ingredients and techniques of cuisines that anyone a century ago would never have experienced in a lifetime, and we can do that from a supermarket, ordering from the Internet, or from a local restaurant. We don’t need to do it every day, but any exposure to another culture, from distant travel to a sauce over the chicken on your plate, can only expand one’s experience in life.

I’m getting way too philosophical for this very peasant dish, though. I like Southwestern American cuisine, and I am from northern European ancestry. Every cooking member of my family has their own version of a stroganoff or goulash, based on their ancestry from regions of Poland, Latvia, Russia, or whatever countries used to exist, but have been redefined by a century of warfare. But, I think there’s a similar concept of technique (though not ingredients) between what is popularly called Tex-Mex here in The States, mixed with a vast melting pot of northern Europe.

So, I made a Tex-Mex goulash, from flatiron steak strips, mushrooms, onions, red jalapenos I grew in my yard, and a lot of regional spices and ingredients. I served it in a nest of fried corn tortilla strips, topped with some scallions.

Here’s how it goes….

Because of the Bocuse d’Or blitz, Christey and I took a day to eat our way around the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. One of the city booths was Buenos Aires, where they served a beef with chimichurri that was probably one of our top-3 dishes in Epcot for this year’s festival.

A couple days ago, we were craving it again, and perusing my magazine collection, I found that Gourmet magazine had a Argentinean-Style Beef with Chimichurri just a couple months ago, in their August issue. It was adapted from the Abingdon Manor restaraunt in Latta, South Carolina, and I’ve adapted it myself to what I was able to buy or grow. While I was buying ingredients, I saw some wonderfully ripe yellow plantain, so I served it over some shredded plantain hashbrowns.

Southern hemisphere after the jump

Okay, so this is really a bit of silliness on my part.

Christey and I were watching TV when a Manwich commercial was on and she said she never liked them. I always did, as a kid and as a starving college freshman (oddly, I was mostly vegetarian for the rest of my college career). I told her I bet I could make her a Manwich she’d like, and she told me to go for it.

For those outside the US, a Manwich is Hunts’ trademark for their version of a sloppy joe, basically spiced tomato sauce and maybe some minced vegetables mixed with browned hamburger and served on a hamburger bun. It’s commonly either a different take for those bored with a hamburger, or a way for a family to stretch a bit of meat a longer way. It’s Americana comfort food, especially family comfort food, in the same sense as Kraft macaroni and cheese, Oscar Meyer hot dogs, or bologna and cheese sandwiches.

So, of course I figured I’d take a comfort food classic and elevate it a bit. But, don’t take me seriously on this, because I certainly didn’t. This was just craziness.

A sandwich is a sandwich, but this manwich is something else…

In Florida, kids start school tomorrow, August 18th. It’s a little earlier than the rest of the country tends to start, but they also got out a little earlier in the Spring, so I guess it all evens out.

So, for the last supper before school starts, our guest chefs Andy (11) and Colin (7) picked the meals they wanted to cook. Colin wanted his favorite meal, soft tacos. Andy wanted his favorite side-dish, cheese fries. And here we go!

Back to school, culinary style

We’ve done a couple steak dishes, a flat iron done mojo style, and a more classic filet mignon with béarnaise and fried matchstick potatoes.

I sorta played with both a little more this time and made a simple grilled flat iron steak, with an herb butter inspired by Thomas Keller’s recipe from his Bouchon cookbook, and classic french fries as described by Anthony Bourdain in his Les Halles cookbook.

sizzle sizzle

Before I get to the food, there’s a lot of buzz in the foodie blogsphere about the experience Melissa at Alosha’s Kitchen had recently concerning recipe copyrights, especially when it comes to adapting, or being inspired by, someone else’s recipe. The whole post is here: http://aloshaskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/07/illegal-or-not.html

It’s an interesting read. Many of us foodies, as well as professional chefs, are constantly inspired by the works of others, from professional chefs to an ancient grandmother in some remote patch of the globe. If we post someone’s recipe or adaptation, with or without changes of our own, does it violate copyright law? After all, not only can I not post an MP3 of a popular song on my blog, I can’t even post an MP3 of me performing a popular song, even if I changed it up a bit.

However, copyright law in the States specifically excludes lists of ingredients from protection, and unless there’s something uniquely personal or unique in the description, the “process” of cooking is usually not covered, either. In fact, an idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery is specifically not copyrightable (though some of these may be covered by patent). The idea is that works of art, such as music, is the work itself — the song is the product. A recipe, on the other hand, creates something else — a generic recipe isn’t the product, the dish the recipe creates is the product. A slightly legalese description, with good examples, can be found here: http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/copyright/copyright-realworld/recipe-copyrighting.html

If reposting recipes is relatively legal, there does seem to be a balance in that there seems to be a communal culinary etiquette which generously tries to attribute the original concept or inspiration (and comes down pretty hard on those cooks who don’t). Personally, I try to link back to the original recipe, or at least name the city and restaurant that inspired me, if not the name of the chef. To me, the only recourse Melissa’s nemesis would have is to ask her to remove the attribution, lest it “pollute” the reputation of their “perfected” recipe. Instead, many of us in the foodie blogosphere are now considering our current and future subscriptions.

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Okay, on to more palatable subjects: Cuban Steak. One of Christey’s favorite Disney meals is the steak mojo at Bongos (Gloria Estefan’s place) in Downtown Disney. I was looking up mojo recipes when I happened upon an recipe from Bon Appétit magazine. I was intrigued by a recipe that takes two days (yes, two days) to make a steak. So, here is my adaptation of Chef Rodriguez’s riff on vaca frita, which can be found right here at Epicurious.

carne delicioso