Rahm Fama - Meat and Potatoes: Simple Recipes that Sizzle and Sear

CONTENTS

This book was inspired by my desire to share what Ive learned as a rancher, chef, dad, and host of my TV show, Meat & Potatoes. I have combed the country for the choicest cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and poultry. Along with fellow chefs, foodies, and chowhounds, Ive obsessed over local fare from New York to San Francisco, Chicago to Austin, and cities and towns in between. Ive devoted my career to meathow its raised and processed, where to find the best, how to prepare it, and how to create beautiful accompaniments for full, satisfying plates.

I grew up on my moms cattle ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, near my extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Living on a ranch, I worked all the time. It was just expected. My favorite chore was to help the ranch hands move steers through the grassy foothills under the big and bright western sky. Some nights Id join in their dinners of steaks and chiles grilled over an open fire.

Here Im mixing up the ingredients on my moms feed-truck. When I wasnt cooking for people, I was serving up meals for the cattle.

Every morning, my grandmother rose early to make tortillas that shed cook on a big cast-iron skillet that she kept right on the stove all the time. In fact, she cooked just about everything on that skillet, which seemed ever ready to sear pork for chili or beef for carnitas. My grandmothers tortillas were thick and chewy, more like naan bread than thin, flat tortillas, and they lasted us through the day. For big family meals, Id often help my grandmother make pozole, which is a classic Southwestern stew made of hominy (traditional dried corn thats been reconstituted into plump, soft kernels) and pork; tamales with fresh masa (corn flour) wrapped and steamed in corn husks; and carne adovada with red chiles and pork. On nights when I came home late, my grandfather would rise to meet me. Hed make a fresh pot of coffee and wed warm up the leftover tortillas in the big cast-iron skillet and slather them with peanut butter and jelly for a snack. Then wed sit back to chat well into the wee hours. Early in the morning, Id wake to the sound of my grandmother making black beans or chili con carne using an old pressure cooker. This big deep stew pot had a lid with a metal temperature gauge that rattled on top as the contents bubbled away and finished cooking.

We also raised sheep for my grandfather and when I turned nine years old, I was considered grown up enough to help him with the slaughter. On birthdays and holidays my grandparents would gather all the relatives and their friends to roast lamb in the huge brick fire pit near the adobe home that my grandfather, a mason, built himself. As we basted the lamb with a chili sauce, its juices would spit and hiss on the coals. My grandparents and mom used every part of the animals we raised, from the snout to the hooves, and whatever was left, wed craft into a tasty soup. We wasted nothing.

My grandmother also made our beef jerky from scratch. Shed marinate a beef roast and rub it with dried chile pepper, freeze it, then have Johnnys Market Butcher, which was not far from her house, slice it into strips so thin they were nearly transparent enough to read a newspaper through them. Using a wooden clothespin, shed clip each strip to the clothesline running down the hall from the kitchen to my bedroom. Every night when I went to bed, Id take a good bite out of each slice as it was drying. One year, I ate at least half the batch before it was dry and finished.

My favorite time of year was October, when the New Mexico chile peppers were trucked in from the farms in the Hatch Canyon area, 250 miles south of Santa Fe and near the Mexican border. These peppers, irrigated with the nutrient-rich red clay of the Rio Grande, are distinctly dense and spicy. The local grocery stores set out enormous roasters that filled Santa Fe with sweet-spicy smoke. Wed lug home burlap sacks of fresh peppers to roast in our fire pit. My grandmother blackened them over the flames, I was the peeler, and my mother fit them into zip-lock plastic bags. Inevitably, Id rub my eyes or scratch my arm, and Id sting and burn for hours.

By the time I was in high school, Southwestern cuisine had captured the nations attention.

Santa Fe has always been a great food town, where outside every caf and diner theres a smoker fashioned out of an old oil drum for barbecue pork and beef. Ancho chiles hang to dry on shop walls and hot sauce, not ketchup, is served with fries. By the time I was in high school, Southwestern cuisine had captured the nations attention. Most of my friends families worked in the rapidly growing restaurant industry and they all loved to cook at home, too. In their kitchens I was introduced to fresh foods Id never tasted beforeasparagus, artichokes, snap peas, baby greens, lots of fresh herbs. These brought a new dimension to the familiar dinners of beans and rice, pork and beef seared in the skillet, and the tortillas and tamales I ate at home. Whenever I was invited for dinner at a friends house, Id hang out in the kitchen, ask questions, and help cook.

My first real job in high school was at Mark Millers Coyote Caf, where I bussed tables and cleaned floors. The casual and friendly restaurant served regional specialties made from scratch, such as chicken mole, tomatillo salsa, quesadillas, refried beans, and tamales, all made with local ingredients. This professional kitchen fascinated me. The mix of sizzling steaks and roasting peppers, the cooks laughter and jokes, and the fast pace of the place drew me inside. What really amazed me was how each cook managed his station and produced a plate to serve so quickly. I probably made a pest out of myself, but eventually the chef promoted me to prep cook. I took on as many shifts as I couldso many that I focused on learning to cook instead of studying for my classes. I hauled crates of potatoes (and peeled hundreds of them all morning). I filleted fish, and I removed silverskin from beef. Pretty soon I moved up to saut cook and learned to turn out perfectly fried potatoes and polenta in minutes, right in sync with the grill guy.