{"id":22472,"date":"2019-05-07T00:31:09","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T00:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=22472"},"modified":"2019-05-07T00:31:09","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T00:31:09","slug":"grilled-merlot-steak-ramp-butter-roasted-fingerlings-rabe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=22472","title":{"rendered":"grilled merlot steak, ramp butter; roasted fingerlings; rabe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ve definitely never cooked a merlot steak, and now after engaging it one on one, I can’t remember whether I had even heard<\/em> of it before last Saturday. We’d just left an art fair that afternoon, when I realized that while we would be guests at a dinner that evening, we hadn’t yet decided what we’d have for dinner on Sunday. We were near one of our favorite neighborhood butchers, so we walked a few blocks further downtown to our neighborhood whole-animal butcher shop.<\/p>\n

Fro some time now my preferred steak has been the culotte, or what Brazilians call the picanha<\/em><\/a>, but it’s not always easy to find, and while Hudson & Charles<\/a>\u00a0(located, naturally, on Hudson, near Charles, in the West Village) did have one, its particular size and shape wouldn’t really have worked for us that night, so I asked the butcher what he might recommend in its place.<\/p>\n

He suggested a ‘merlot’ (video from the Meathook,\u00a0 another local whole-animal shop)<\/a>, an under-appreciated tender beef steak from the side of the heel inside a larger muscle group called the campanella. I had spotted the word, ‘merlot’ on a label below a steak inside the glass-front cooler just before I asked the question. Its size was perfect, his description made it sound like a winner, and that’s what it turned out to be.<\/p>\n

So, 2 days later I found myself in the kitchen with around one pound of an unfamiliar merlot steak, armed with nothing more than salt, pepper, a couple tablespoons of butter, a few ramp leaves, and some lemon zest.<\/p>\n

It was terrific, as were the Greenmarket vegetables that joined it.<\/p>\n