Last update - 00:00 12/09/2007
My Private Chef/ Beefed up
By Miri Hanoch and Eyal Shani
"Where are you guys?" I ask him on the phone so we can all meet somewhere and come home together. "At the butcher," he replies.
"Where?"
"Besari."
"Okay, I'm coming."
The little one greets me joyfully and pulls me by the hand. "Mommy, Mommy, come and see. There's a chicken here!" She shows me the chicken section in the refrigerator, where chickens, whole or in parts, are lying.
"Yes, sweetie," I swallow.
"And look, look!" she drags me after her. "Here's a picture of a lamb."
"Yes, right," I say, reading with horror: "Fresh and tender lamb."
The chef appreciates coolers. "It diminishes the mobility of the bacteria in the world," is the opening line he always uses when lugging an enormous cooler.
"What did you bring me?" the little one asks, running to him.
"A cooler," he answers with pride, aiming to overcome her disappointment. But the chef can't stand seeing that look on her face, and suddenly his curls stand upright and he says, "You know what?"
"What?" she asks, her dejection still obvious.
"This cooler has a baby." He opens up the big one and it immediately gives birth to another cooler about a fifth of the size. And it doesn't end there. He also takes out the son - a giant thermos, and says, "Actually, I brought you a canteen, too." Thank god.
"No, no, no!" I yelled when I came home to find purple rivers of blood and grape juice on the floor. What did I do to deserve this? Is this what I get for showing such extraordinary patience every day of the year? There's no justice. Monday is cleaning day, the house had been given a good washing in the morning, including the dark places that I usually forgo because they cry, "Please, not me. Not today."
The refrigerator, for instance, which creates a lot of mess inside itself, is one of these regular amnesty-seekers. When I opened the door, a mound of lettuce that was once organic collapses on me, and next to it a container with some elderly quinoa, whose job it was to satisfy anyone who was hungry - to be there so they could take a little and season it with soy sauce and add a few pieces of sauteed tofu or red cabbage, so I wouldn't always be hearing that annoying protest: "There's nothing to eat!"
On cleaning day I can no longer ignore expiration dates: The pastrami I bought for sandwiches has to go; the goat cheese has also concluded its service and the eggs that froze to death when the little one "fixed" the refrigerator, will have to be tossed. And in the vegetable drawer, well, it's too embarrassing to talk about.
So after I had evicted all the old-timers who had overstayed their welcome, and scrubbed the shelves, the chef shows up with his thermos-canteen filled with what looks like a bunch of rotten grapes, which he explains is actually "marvelous fermented grape juice from the Tal Farm," to which he set off right when the traffic jams leaving the city began. It's all in the timing.
"Why is it good? Who is it good for? Who can even get sparkling grape jice, where do you buy it, in the supermarket? On the 'wine route'? Who's going to travel to a winery in the middle of all the holidays just to get some sparkling grape juice?" I channeled my anger for the sake of the readers of this column.
"Are you finished?" The chef tried to cut off my spiel, but apparently the vapors from the wine yeasts that had spread through the house acted like a strong drug, because I couldn't stop the torrent. The strong smell and the purple color, the sight of the fridge - gleaming in the morning and purple by evening - all of it seemed like a dream in which I got caught in a hurricane of sparkling grape juice. A nightmare, in other words.
The little one, who had awakened in the middle of the photo session, picked up the turtle and said to the chef in horror: "Ick! What did you put in my canteen?"
"Sweetie, it's not icky, it's sparkling grape juice."
"Why are you so crazy about this? Can't you do the same thing with wine?" I was trying to sound empathetic, really.
"You could, but it's not really the same thing, and this is going to be one of the most delicious things in the world," he whispered back.
When I came out of the shower, he was sitting on the floor of the kitchen, sticking a digital thermometer in the purple hunk of meat in the oven. "Until when?" I asked metaphorically. "Until it reaches 55 degrees Celsius," he answered literally.
Evening: At last, the light in the kitchen is switched off and he comes to bed, smelling strongly of wine. "I want to move with you to Greenland. With the seals, and the little one will fish for halibut, and the big girls will go sledding. What do you say? Shall we run away?"
"After the holidays."
The chef said: It's basically roast beef, of entrecote or rump roast, but you've never tasted a more delectable roasted meat, and it's all thanks to a brilliant stroke of luck, the source of most of the world's great discoveries.
It all began in the trunk of the car, in which the rump roast lay - without a cooler. The place - Tal Farm near Karmei Yosef. Dovi, the owner, grower of grapes and winemaker, serves me one glass and then another. The wine sticks to the soul, the sun beats down.
"Come to the cellar, I have a three-day old Cabernet Sauvignon." A chilly, dim cellar, with two blue plastic vats in which the juice of grapes picked a few days ago is fermenting. The harvest season has begun.
Evening, and no parking space. I park on the sidewalk, lock the four doors with one remote, go to lie down, and wake a few hours later in a fright. The rump roast, dear God, and my car must have been towed. I run downstairs. The car is resting peacefully in the early morning light, and the rump roast and grape juice are sending up purple bubbles in the black bucket.
There goes the meat, I think, as I take it out of the bucket and sadly wipe it with paper towels. The rump roast is purple and emits a powerful scent of grapes and a nutty sweetness. What do I have to lose at this point? I set the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and insert the meat thermometer. In 45 minutes, the thermometer shows 55 degrees Celsius - medium rare.
The knife slices through the outer layer, darkened by wine and roasting; an aroma of just-harvested grapes wafts up from the meat, and the knife glides through it as if it were butter. Nervously, I put a first, thin slice, dripping with blood and wine, into my mouth: Maybe the whole thing went bad during the night in the car. No. I've been eating meat for 48 years, with red wine for 30 of them, and it was all leading up to this moment.
For 8-12 people
2 kilos sweet black grapes, with seeds
1/2 gram wine yeasts (available at stores that specialize in products and equipment for home winemaking, such as Hakol Mehutz Meyayin in Tel Aviv. The Biodalia company produces and markets wine yeasts throughout the country. Phone: 04-9090909, e-mail: info@biodalia.com)
Get rid of any grapes whose peels have already split and which have begun to ferment from the natural yeasts found on the peel. Pluck the grapes from the stems, rinse lightly, place in a food processor and process at low speed. Stop when all the grapes have turned into juice filled with peels. Transfer to a container - plastic, glass, ceramic or stainless steel, any of these will work just fine, as long as its volume is twice that of the grape juice. Add the wine yeasts and stir with a clean wooden spoon. Cover with a clean cloth diaper or kitchen towel and sealed with a thick rubber band. Place the container in a cool place.
The first day, remove the cloth every eight hours and stir the liquid well, along with the "hat" of grape peels that is hardening above it. Do the same on the second day, which is when the fermenting begins. When it gets stronger, stir the juice with its hat every five hours. On the third day, the meat will join the juice.
The fermenting grape juice
A piece of entrecote or rump roast weighing 2 to 2 1/2 kilos
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, heating from both top and bottom, with the rack in the center and an empty pan underneath (to catch the drippings). Remove the meat from the bowl and pat it dry with paper towels. Reserve the liquid.
Next, prepare:
4 tbsp honey
A handful of coarsely ground black peppercorns
A handful of sea salt
Needles from two stalks of fresh rosemary
1/2 cup olive oil
Take the meat out of the oven and place on a work surface. Let the meat rest for 15 minutes. Slice with a sharp knife into thin slices that are dripping with wine-scented juices. At room temperature, the slices just melt in your mouth.
The grape juice that fermented with the meat, including the peels
1 cup fine red wine vinegar
20 coarsely ground black peppercorns
1/4 bay leaf
Pour the juice with its peels into a large, heavy pot. Add the rest of the ingredients and reduce the liquid over a high flame, stirring, until you obtain a thick, darker sauce. Strain and chill. The end result is as least as marvelous as a genuine aged balsamic vinegar.
Thin slices of roast beef
Sea salt
Coarsely ground black peppercorns
The grape juice sauce
Olive oil
Arugula leaves
Basil flowers (if you have them growing on the balcony)
Wrap whatever is left of the meat in wax paper and put in the refrigerator, where it will continue to improve for another five days - when it will resemble corned beef.