3 days ago
A Truly Showstopping Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Good morning. My pal Peter Kaminsky has written roughly one million cookbooks over the past couple of decades. One of them, 'Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way,' written with the chef Francis Mallmann, is among the best books on cooking over live fire you're ever likely to find. For those who thrill to exploration of what Mallmann calls 'the uncertain edge of burnt,' it's a revelation.
Peter calls such cooking 'Maillardian,' a tribute to the early 20th-century chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described the chemical reaction created as the sugars and amino acids on the surface of food combine in the presence of high heat. That chemical reaction creates all sorts of fascinating, delicious results. (Try this grilled pork and peaches situation and you'll see.)
But not all live-fire cooking is about the Maillard reaction, as you'll discover if you follow Peter's lead, and make his new recipe for lomo al trapo (above), a spectacular Colombian preparation of beef tenderloin.
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It's simple stuff, in the way that jumping off a high cliff into deep water is simple stuff. It's not so much difficult as scary. You crust the beef with mustard, herbs and a ton of kosher salt, then wrap it in a clean, wine-soaked dish towel, tie everything off and … lay the package directly on a bed of glowing coals.
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