No Recipe Required

Dinner tonight was a bowl full of a lightly seasoned,  highly savory beef stew. In addition to the meat, it contained carrots, potatoes, and garlic from last year's harvest along with black peppercorns, and water. My husband Jim put the meat in a crockpot at about 2:30 p.m. By 8:30, its heady aroma filled the house, breaking through the hot humid air that has blanketed the Adirondack foothills where we live. I went out into the garden and filled a colander with leaves from a baby romaine plant, spinach, basil, arugula, sage flowers, pepper cress, and the first of our season's peas. To that mix, I added a dash of sweet onion, a small tomato, a chopped garlic scape, and a baby carrot. I tossed the mix with a small amount of balsamic vinegar mixed with a teaspoon of honey and some lemon juice. On a last minute impulse, I tossed in some freshly picked kale that I had wilted in olive oil.

The meal seemed perfect for a summer's night. It satisfied our appetites but didn't overwhelm us. In some ways, what was most amazing was the bill: $3.50 for the cut of beef we used, 35 cents for the tomato, and about 50 cents for the onion. Everything else was either a kitchen staple that we usually have on hand or came directly from the garden. And to top it off, we pretty much made up this meal as we went along. No recipe was required.

The idea of cooking without recipes, cookbooks or any other how-to guide on hand might seem incomprehensible to those of us who grew up with middle school home economics classes, and the wisdom of such cooking connoisseurs as Betty Crocker and Julia Child regarded as household essentials. The complexity of cooking craze is further fed these days by the proliferation of cooking shows and competitions like the Iron Chef that privilege multi-course meals built around "difficult" ingredients. Yet, it seems, simple is what creates gourmet. And by gourmet I mean spectacular meals that don't require a six-figure income (or even perhaps a five-figured one) to afford. They are meals that are great because they make the basic whole food ingredients the centerpiece. Rather than adorn the foods with trimmings, they dress them down so the eater receives the full experience of their flavor.

The cut of meat we cooked tonight was a shank, a cut that comes from a muscly part of a steer or heifer's leg. It tends to be a tougher, leaner cut of meat because of its muscle mass so appreciating its culinary contribution requires a long, slow cook, usually at a low heat. I never knew much about shanks until last winter when I happened to divulge to Kristof, of the Longlesson Farm in New York, that as much as I loved the high-end cuts of beef that he was featuring on his list of goods for sale at the farmers market, I was on a budget. His eyes glittered as he reached into his stockpile of available meats and cupped his hand confidingly around his mouth as if letting me in on a secret.

"For the budget," he said, "this is the best bang for the buck." From his cooler, he pulled out a shank -- a piece of meat that appeared to be quite thick and also appeared to contain a sizable chunk of bone.

"Four dollars a pound," he said. "You cannot beat that."

I knew it to be true on the basis of the price. While there might be cheaper beef at the grocery store, the meat from the grass-fed, locally pastured cows that the farmers who sell at venues like the Saratoga Farmers Market is better for its quality of flavor, nutritional value, impact on the planet, and nurturing of the animal before slaughter. The added care that independent farmers give their cattle can reflect a higher price. But four dollars a pound is hard to beat.

Kristof told me to put the shank in a crockpot or a large pot, cover it with six or seven cups of water, add some black pepper, and just let it cook slowly for eight to ten hours. At the very end, he told me I could add potatoes, carrots, or any other vegetables. He added that the leftover broth from cooking the shank would make an excellent base for a soup.

I took the shank home, and cooked it as Kristof instructed. The slow cooking allowed for a slow release of flavor that mingled pleasantly with the sharpness of the black pepper that Kristof had recommended as well as the fresh cloves of garlic that I also decided to add in. I reserved the broth, and made a hearty onion soup two days later. And even after that, enough broth remained for a second soup.

Needless to say, we were hooked. We cooked several shanks through the winter, and last weekend, as we faced our common scenario of scraping the bottom of our bank account in the few days prior to pay day, we contemplated menu options. Even though it was summer, we opted for a shank. We savored the meal, and as usual I reserved the broth. I am now considering possible ways to use the broth to create another meal. Pho perhaps? Or perhaps an early summer greens soup.