Late this past Friday we had invited a visitor from far outside New York, who was only going to be here for another week, to join us for dinner the next evening. I calculated that I had enough vegetables, and fruit, for 3, but the next day I would have to go down the street …

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‘Heil sei dem Tag!’  It was the Fourth of July. We had a nonpareil steak, ripe tomatoes, the first okra of summer, and a sturdy and particularly American red wine. While the opera was German, the music sings of liberty and justice, and the plot is particularly apposite in jailhouse America. For what it’s worth, …

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It’s possible my memory is blurred, but until I can be persuaded otherwise, I’m going to say this was the best steak I’d ever had. The cut itself (called ‘culotte’ here, ‘coulotte’ in France, ‘picanha’ in Brazil) has become my favorite, certainly for its flavor but also for the kind of chewiness I enjoy in good beef; ‘melt in your …

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The Culotte. We’ve been enjoying this cut for many years [the history]; it’s become one of my favorite beef steaks. I stopped in at Dixon’s in the Chelsea Market a week or so back, looking for two small steaks I might grill on top of the range to accompany a good vegetable. I was very happy …

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I came across this cut of beef late in 2009, when we were checking out The Meat Hook, in Brooklyn, not long after it had first opened.  The meat was beautiful, the deep red of the lean flesh contrasting with the almost pure white of the thick layer of fat, each piece curved into a loop and impaled on …

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