Mis-steak-en

A couple of weeks ago a friend mentioned she was cooking a piece of brisket for dinner. I’d never cooked brisket, although I knew it was a cut that required long, slow, cooking, and had seen a recipe that I fancied trying so I dug it out and went shopping. Traditionally, such meats are the cheaper variety but this is no longer so. Have you seen the price of lamb shanks? And don’t even get me started on lamb shoulder. I shopped in Sheffield’s meat market when they would be practically given away because no one wanted them. Then along came Mr Ottolenghi and suddenly they’re all the rage. Lamb leg, less fat, stripped of bone and butterflied out for easy cooking on the barbeque is cheaper now. Anyway, I digress.

I chucked it in the oven on a cold day, which made the kitchen nice and warm and the whole house smell fragrant (although I could have done without waking up to the same smell, so long does it linger when all doors and windows are closed against the weather). Come serving time I lifted it onto a plate and carved a couple of thick slabs off. A few strands had broken free and lay amongst the splashes of gravy. As I made to snaffle them a strand of memory broke from my brain and I paused: I’d just cooked braised steak.

I’m not being unfair to Mum in saying that she wasn’t an adventurous cook. Besides that it wasn’t in her DNA, Dad was strictly a meat and two veg man and nothing fancy in the gravy department thank you very much. He wouldn’t touch a rich, wine-infused sauce and the only seasonings he tolerated were salt and pepper. The one exception was a curry, which he asked Mum to make having enjoyed one on his national service, but this was a very English curry and he wouldn’t have a bar of anything that had a hint of Indian spices about it. This curry became a family favourite, a standard as the Monday meal after Sunday’s roast chicken, and was the most exotic thing Mum cooked.

Not being adventurous didn’t mean Mum was a bad cook. True, she was of the generation that boiled the shit out of sprouts and any other veg that dared cross her hob, but she raised four children (including two now six-foot-plus men) with healthy appetites and she never served anything we couldn’t eat. Now my memory has been pricked, her braised steak was a standout. Yes, I’m aware that braising is a cooking term but, growing up, the only time I ever heard it was in reference to thick slices of the cheapest beef cooked together with onions for a couple of hours. The result was meat that you couldn’t cut because it broke as soon as it saw a flash of Sheffield’s finest steel. Mum would scoop pieces from their melted-onion gravy bath with a spoon to prevent break up as much as possible, ladling the gravy generously over meat and the mashed turnip and potato that was always served alongside. I was an adult before I learned that what we called turnip was actually swede.

Mine was slightly different, much richer than Mum’s and redolent with smoked paprika. It was also cooked in large pieces, which would have been one only I had to cut it into three to fit the pot. But as I spooned onions (suitably melted) and gravy over baked (jacket – another story) potatoes I was already disappointed that it wasn’t mashed swede and potato I was smothering. That notwithstanding, it was a lovely meal.

I don’t cook like Mum often. If I haven’t had a spiced meal in a few days my palette feels it’s missing something and craves a curry or a dish rich in Middle Eastern flavours (and we ate this way before the aforementioned Mr Ottolenghi made it so popular). I’m not sure where this strand of DNA comes from and often wonder if Mum would have liked to cook, and eat, differently. Too late to ask. When I do cook like Mum – even without realising it – the result swings me back a few decades. On this occasion we felt we were eating a special meal, a nice bottle of wine alongside it. And I couldn’t help but keep muttering: This is braised steak. I can even see the casserole dish she used, a wide glass one, probably Pyrex, that I don’t remember seeing when we cleared the house last year. Probably it went to my sister years ago – she is the one with a family and so needed the larger dishes that Mum no longer used after we’d all left home.

When Mum cooked braised steak it was a cheap meal that went a long way and needed little preparation, perfect for a busy mum with hungry, growing kids and a hard-working husband to feed. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of a fraud to be enjoying a very nice glass (or three) of wine alongside it. Not that it stopped me. I’m certain we’ll have it again, and not only because there are two portions of it nestled in the freezer. And next time it will be served with suitable mash.