It’s a shame about the beef, really. I had such high hopes for it.
Once a year, my friend Craig and I make espetada. For those of you unfamiliar with espetada, it consists of a small mountain of beef chunks marinated in Madeira and garlic, then grilled on bay branches, hopefully to perfection. In our version, which is a very close but somewhat inexact copy of the original, tomatoes and small onions are grilled alongside the beef, and then the tomatoes are smashed over a platter of thickly sliced crusty bread. The meat is then un-impaled and placed atop the tomato-smeared bread and dotted with soft, sweet butter, which mingles with the beef juices and further soaks the bread. It is a glorious thing when done correctly. You will not be surprised to learn that this dish hails from the small Atlantic island of Madeira. You will also not be surprised to understand that this is something we only make once a year because everyone we know seems to be taking statins these days.
The making of this dish serves several purposes:
It satisfies my red meat craving for several weeks following (over)consumption.
It is an excellent excuse to gather friends together for a social feeding frenzy.
It allows Craig to express his 1/2 Portuguese-ness, his father Marty having been born on the Azorean island of Pico (which is roughly 750 miles northwest of Madeira as the manx shearwater flies but we won’t split hairs. Or feathers.)
It affords me the opportunity to write a great post about espetada, which I seem to forget about every year because I am generally too distracted chatting away with friends and by Craig’s wife Shannon playing the great hostess and plying all of us with booze.
But this year. “THIS YEAR”, I thought, we will make the espetada and I will remember to take beautiful photos of it and I will write about it for my Substack and it will be perfect.
This time, there will be more than enough bread to fill the platter. This time, we’ll grill enough tomatoes so that every square centimeter of bread is soaked in their sweet, smoky juice. This time, we will not overcook the beef. It seemed easy enough. Craig and I sat at the kitchen counter the night before, mincing garlic and cutting beef into generous cubes and then rubbing the cubes with garlic and salt (no, we forgot the salt because we were chatting. And tired.). We then poured over the Madeira wine, added a few bay leaves, covered it, and left all those Luso-European flavors to mingle overnight in the outside fridge. The one with the combination lock on it because everyone knows raccoons are terrible with numbers.
In the morning, Craig would do some light provisioning. I asked him to make sure we had plenty of tomatoes (eight large ones) and to buy a big, non-sourdough loaf of crusty bread. There was nothing else to do in terms of prepping the dish until later in the afternoon, so my godson Joe and I drove up to San Francisco to take in the Tudor exhibition at the Legion of Honor where I could show off my knowledge of 16th Century English history and fashion and he could show off his proficiency in Latin, which seemed to be inscribed somewhere on nearly every painting. It was a mutually satisfying outing.
We returned to Redwood City to find Shannon in the kitchen making quick pickles with some small radishes and cucumbers that had been lurking at the bottom of her CSA box. My middle godchild Leo was in the tv room watching quick snippets of his favorite things like Kiki’s Delivery Service and YouTube videos of people waiting in line for rides at Disneyland with his aide Max and all was calm for the moment.
A little later, Craig, Max, and I scrambled down the steep ravine behind the house to cut appropriately-sized branches off a California bay tree, which would ultimately serve as skewers for the beef, gently infusing their fragrance into the heart of the meat. When we returned to the summit and the back terrace, Craig handed me a terrifyingly sharp hunting knife and I knew what that meant. So I pulled a chair into the shade and started whittling the branches smooth like some cargo-shorted Appalachian Grandpappy.
Once the branches were cut down to size, it was necessary to soak them in water for a couple of hours to prevent them from catching fire when placed over a hot grill. I took them into the downstairs guest bathroom to macerate in a few inches of cold water. Leo’s Dora the Explorer doll was resting in the tub, so I left her there, floating face up like a wide-eyed drowned Ophelia, which I felt lent a certain degree of solemnity to the endeavor.
A few of Joe’s friends came over to swim in the pool and each one in turn asked why Ms. Explorer was floating in a tub with tree branches in it. I explained that we grownups were having a party later and that I was making punch. I doubt very much that they believed me, but they asked no further questions.
It was a small party, just Craig and Shannon, Max and me, plus our friends Jen and Shawn and Anastasia, who is godmother to my godchildren and I therefore think of as my godwife, even though no such rôle exists. Anastasia was the very first person I spoke to in college and we later traveled to Hungary and Czechoslovakia together. Being an on-again, off-again vegetarian, I was pleased she chose to attend a beef-centric dinner.
Everything was going marvelously as we sat in the early evening warmth outside. A light breeze cooled us yet mussed no one’s hair, one could hear the splish-splash of teenagers in the pool on one side of us and the uproarious laughter of Leo in the tv room on the other. Shannon periodically emerged from the house with very delicious alcoholic beverages. Craig had fired up the grill. I was catching up with friends while mentally planning the presentation of the night’s dinner in my head to be admired and properly photographed before allowing anyone to touch the platter piled high with buttery, tomato-y beef.
After what was possibly the second Cherry Smash and a glass or two of champagne, I sensed that the dinner hour was drawing near. Craig and I had planned to cook up the generous amount of leftover Madeira/garlic marinade, strain it, and reduce it into a sauce to further enhance dish, so I thought I would get on that while he manned the grill. But the marinade was nowhere to be found. Shannon had dumped it and washed the Pyrex dish that had only minutes ago been its home. When I questioned her why she would do such a thing without asking if we still needed it, she simply replied, “Well someone taught me to ‘clean as you go’.” lifting an accusatory eyebrow in my direction.
“Fair enough,” I thought. Not a big deal, but it would have been lovely.
The meat was getting close to done. I had the platter all ready. I asked Shannon to bring the bread loaf for me to slice. “This is the wrong loaf,” I said, “Craig bought me a loaf of crusty French bread. This is sourdough.”
“Well it’s the only loaf we’ve got.” was her answer.
I went back outside to ask Craig about the bread. He didn’t think we needed another loaf so he decided not to buy one. I looked down at the grill. Both the meat and the tomatoes were ready, but there were only four tomatoes on the grill. “Should be enough,” Craig figured.
“No, it’s definitely not.” I added, annoyed. I ran into the kitchen to grab the remaining tomatoes and throw them on the grill. I sliced up the sourdough leaving the crusts aside for Leo, because that was the only part of the dinner he would be interested in eating, but there was not enough bread to cover the platter, so I put the ends of the loaf on the platter. Like a dick.
Returning outside with the platter of bread, I went to transfer the four ready tomatoes onto the bread. The next 60 seconds were a blur. Leo came outside and needed Craig’s attention, so they went to sit down on the couch swing, abandoning the meat. Joe and his friends invaded the party, possibly looking for food. As I was transferring the tomatoes to the bread, Anastasia asked “Can you take off a couple of pieces for me before the meat goes on it?” at which point I proceeded to drop the largest, most succulent tomato on the ground.
DON’T THESE PEOPLE KNOW THEY ARE RUINING MY SUBSTACK PHOTOS WITH THEIR SELFISHNESS?
I cannot remember whether or not I yelled “Fuck!” but I do know that I let out a loud growl of frustration and stormed into the house.
Whereupon I sat down and immediately realized that I was being a little shit. Jennifer appeared at my side soon after, sat down next to me, took my hand, and gently asked, “Are you okay?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I responded, oddly giddy. “Sorry I’m laughing. It’s just that I know I’m being an asshole. I have no reason to and I feel kind of ridiculous.”
I regained my composure, went back outside and apologized for my behavior. I think Shannon (who has known me since I was four) merely shrugged her shoulders. No one really seemed to care one bit.
Fortunately at some point during my outburst, Craig had removed the meat from the grill. Shannon handed me a glass of pomegranate wine that Anastasia had brought from a recent trip to Eastern Europe.
I understood what had happened almost immediately, which is what made me feel all the more ridiculous.
At home, I live alone and am therefore in near-complete control of my environment. All is calm and quiet. Chaos upsets my applecart, to use a vaguely food-related term. When I was a young cook, I worked in a small but busy restaurant kitchen where the stress was too much for me and the pay too little so I next found myself working as a food stylist assistant where the pace was more agreeable. I would cook maybe four dishes during the span of and entire work day, where it was my job to fret and fiddle with a recipe only to hand it over to my stylist, Heidi, who would fret and fiddle it to ultimate perfection. That is the environment I have created in my own living space. It is fixed and orderly and I am in command.
When I spend time at Craig and Shannon’s house—which is often—nothing is within my control. Their household is often in a sort of benign upheaval, which can feel like chaos to someone like me. Maybe not chaos exactly, but it can be extremely unpredictable. Raising three (shall we say unique?) children has made them more flexible over the years. Living alone for most of the 21st Century has made me more rigid and resistant to change. I get to go to this place where I am welcomed as part of the family by people who have know me for decades, seen me at my worst but love me anyway and sometimes, I actually go there for the upheaval, because it loosens me up and gives me a bit of my own humanity back.
The people who live there know that overcooked beef served over the wrong sort of bread with not enough tomatoes smashed on it is not the end of the world. It’s not even all that important.
I knew all of this the moment I marched into the house in a huff and felt like a dolt. It’s why Shannon merely shrugged her shoulders and took another sip of pomegranate wine. We’ve all been through worse. No one died. And maybe I’ll get those perfect photos of espetada next year. Or not, because who really gives a Flying Wallenda?
We managed to find some alternative bread for Leo, which made him happy. The rest of use sat down for dinner. The meat was a bit dry it’s true. And under-salted, but that was easy to fix. Shannon remembered the jar of quick pickles she’d made earlier in the day and brought them to the table. I put a spoonful onto the beef— the sweet-hot brine oozing into the charred cracks. “Couldn’t hurt,” I thought.
It was absolutely delicious.
Not perfect, mind you, but nothing ever really is.
Espetada
The recipe is deliberately vague because it is very forgiving— a quality I still struggle to achieve on a regular basis. The amounts of ingredients are honestly up to you, the maker. Just remember that this dish should be flavorful so, to partially quote Greta Garbo in Anna Christie, “Don’t be stingy, baby.”
Serves: As many meat eaters as you’ve got handy, but for these amounts, we’ll just say “about 4 adult humans”.
Ingredients:
For the beef:
• 3 to 4 lbs of beef sirloin (we use Tri-Tip) cut into roughly 2-inch cubes
• 6 or 7 cloves of garlic, finely chopped and ground into a paste
• About 1 ½ cups of Madeira wine
• ½ cup of olive oil (don’t waste your precious extra-virgin)
• A few dried bay leaves
• Plenty of kosher salt
• Great lashings of freshly ground black pepper
• 3 or 4 Bay Laurel branches ½ to¾” in diameter and long enough to extend past the grill a few inches because you’ll need a handle. If you don’t have any such tree at your disposal, just skewer the meat as you usually might. I won’t tell.
For the rest:
• 6 to 8 good sized red tomatoes
• A few young spring onions. Lacking those, a white onion or two cut into halves should do.
• A large loaf of crusty French bread. Or two. One can simply never have enough.
• A generous amount of soft sweet butter. Or salted, it absolutely does not matter— if you’re watching your sodium intake, you should not be eating this dish.
Preparation:
In a large, shallow baking dish, rub the cubed beef with garlic paste and crushed black pepper. Add the Madeira and olive oil to marinate. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.
At least two hours prior to grilling, soak bay branches in cold water.
Cut a slit into each cube of meat and skewer onto branches. Cubes are allowed to touch each other. Leave about 6" on the ends of each branch meat-free, for purposes of handling the skewers when grilling time comes.
Once you have been liberated from the use of sharp knives, pour yourself some of the Madeira, as Craig suggests, just to keep in spirit. Drink.
Rub espetada generously with salt, but do not fully encrust. Cut bread into thick slices and line a large serving platter with them. Fire up your grill.
If you are grilling vegetable skewers as an accompaniment, grill them first, then un-skewer and cover to keep warm. (We just throw the tomatoes and onions on the grill next to the meat as its cooking and then (ideally) set them aside and keep them warm rather than having a minor meltdown and dropping them on the ground to splatter on your white Converse low-tops.
Place your skewers 4 to 6 inches on your grill’s grate directly over the hot wood charcoal fire. Brush the meat with marinade as the mood strikes you. Cook until medium or whatever your preference. This is not, I should tell you, a rare-meat dish. But please don’t burn it to a crisp. Unless you’re into that.
When the meat is nearly ready, place the grilled tomatoes on top of the awaiting platter of sliced bread and gently(ish) smash to let the juice soak into it. If you have grilled onions, chop them roughly and sprinkle over the massacred tomatoes. Now you are ready to un-skewer the beef directly onto the awaiting platter, covering as much surface area as possible. Dot the still-hot meat with softened butter to let it drip down the meat and soak into the bread. Let rest for about 5 minutes.
Devour.
Another lovely piece, former Tudor baby.
This struck an especially deep chord with me: "I actually *go there* for the upheaval, because it loosens me up and gives me a bit of my own humanity back."
Mike I loved it! Laughed out loud when you dropped the tomato.