Think Pink

KHOON niklega,8217;8217; he said. There will be blood. In condescending restaurant service lingo, that8217;s a way of saying, 8216;145...

KHOON niklega,8217;8217; he said. There will be blood. In condescending restaurant service lingo, that8217;s a way of saying, 8216;8216;You don8217;t know what you8217;re doing, so don8217;t do it.8217;8217; And when she was so obtuse as to persist, they still did it their way. They overcooked that wedge of meat to the point where the lady didn8217;t know if what she was staring at was a chunk of croc, lamb or 8217;roo.

Steak agony tales like that are a dime a dozen. Never mind that they8217;re already secretly punishing us by serving a completely different specimen of the bovine family, but to add insult to injury, your average suburban restaurant won8217;t let you have anything short of a well-done steak. Like family tailors who won8217;t cut your blouse deep enough or the nine o8217; clock news on Doordarshan, in India, steak struggles under a sort of restaurant self-censorship. Asking for a rare or medium-rare steak can often feel like an open admission that your family descended from bloodhounds.

Just to go over the matter, there are actually six degrees of grilling to choose from8212;au bleu, when the meat is just seared on either side and is almost raw; rare, when the meat is pink in the middle; then there8217;s medium-rare, medium, medium well-done and well-done. But as you work your way higher through those degrees of cooking, the actual taste of the meat starts dissipating into that ubiquitous territory of Unidentified Fleshy Object.

My first experience was at the Hong Kong sibling of the Morton8217;s of Chicago steakhouse. They do it the way Americans do just about everything8212;big. First a trolley of delicately marbled steaks, including 12 or 14 pounders and the massive double Porterhouse, is introduced with a practised elocution on the methods of cooking. The Cajun ribeye, done medium-rare to balance the heat, is a personal favourite. And yes, everything is always too generous to top off, but a doggy bag is a good investment for a sandwich lunch the next day.

SIDE TRACK
8226; No measuring cups or sauces more suffocating than quicksand. The best accompaniments to a great steak are right on the table:
8226; Undressed The natural juices ahem are its best cohorts. To make the best of it, grill medium-rare and season with just a good shake of sea salt and pepper
8226; Mustard Invest in Colman8217;s for best results; the squeeze-me varieties don8217;t have the strength of this English favourite
8226; Horseradish sauce This will get up your nose a bit, but it8217;s a great rejoinder for a beef joint. It8217;s made with the misshapen horseradish, sugar, mustard powder and cream; try it with grilled fish as well
8226; Tabasco If you miss the sting of a hari mirch, a dot of this red-pecker is your best bet to really spice things up

In our defence, steak isn8217;t naturally a part of the Indian diet, and even if one develops a habitual taste for it, it is hard to get away from the familiar and soothing confines of well-cooked spicy curries. 8216;8216;Eating steak is just not an Indian thing to do,8217;8217; says Jaydeep Mukherjee, executive chef of the Mumbai eatery Indigo Deli. But even if you8217;re not used to the taste, for god8217;s sake, don8217;t have a sizzler8212;the concept makes no sense. An already cooked slab of meat is placed on a hotplate in the kitchen and keeps cooking as the waiter weaves his way through the dining room and tans further as you wait for the choking smoke to scatter and the temperature to fall below burning point. And finally, under an imperturbable high-rise of rice, vegetables and brown sludge sauce, the meat turns into a mass of coagulated protein threads.

In Mumbai, for a good marbled slab of steak, done just the right shade of pink with nothing more than a dash of pepper and salt as seasoning, go downtown to the Indigo Deli. 8216;8216;On a not-too-hot chargrill, we do a minute-and-a-half on either side, depending on the thickness of the meat,8217;8217; says Mukherjee. As simple as it is, it8217;s the best this side of the Ghats.

The thing about a lot of us non-vegetarians is that we like to pretend we are not eating flesh, and that8217;s a big reason why an even slightly pink piece of meat is discomfiting. But restaurants take it one step ahead when they don8217;t manage to do it right. So the next time you8217;re at the butcher8217;s, take a good look at the meat, trace the lace of fat that weaves through the taut flesh, and quietly imagine it8217;s a charred and disfigured lump. Then you8217;ll know why pink8217;s worth fighting for.