now we’re cooking with fire

Leaf­ing through the Wel­ling­ton on a Plate cata­log some months ago, one event in par­tic­u­lar seemed to stand out for me. This was Cook­ing Over Fire, The Argen­tine Way, to be held at El Mata­dor, the new “Café, Asad­or Grill & Bar” up Cuba Street.

Asad­or is the Argen­tine nation­al dish, a way of slow-cook­ing whole anim­als over an open fire. This is sup­posed to res­ult in a beau­ti­fully tender and juicy meat, with hints of smoke.

The idea with the event was to show us how to setup and start barbe­quing a lamb in the morn­ing, and then come back and eat it in the even­ing. This soun­ded totally out­stand­ing: FIRE, plus MEAT!, so I decided to make a day of it and bail from work.

This turned out to be a great choice.

Remem­ber the old München­er Bur­ger just up from Logan Brown? No, me not so much either. It looked so dark and unin­vit­ing and I had­n’t ever been in there in 20 years of liv­ing in Wel­ling­ton. That’s where El Mata­dor now is; the interi­or has been gut­ted and exten­ded, a false ceil­ing removed to make the place a bit air­i­er and the walls stripped back to the old white with blue trim tile­work left from when the place was a butchery back in the 1970s.

There, along with 10 or so oth­ers, we met loc­al res­taur­anteur Mike Mars­land (who used to own Ern­esto, and is broth­er of Havana first com­rade Geoff) and his asad­or chef Con­or.

Mike was full of inter­est­ing stor­ies about the work, invest­ment, and yes, reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance required to get a res­taur­ant set up. The food trade soun­ded like an aston­ish­ingly hard and risky busi­ness to me.

Then he talked about the concept for El Mata­dor. While the grill and the asad­or are cent­ral to the exper­i­ence, the idea is to show a little more of Argen­tine food, not just the meat dishes for which the coun­try is justly fam­ous. Even so, there’s a lot of meat on the menu.

And if we loved the food, Mike reckoned there was a couple of good books to get hold of if we wanted to try and rep­lic­ate the exper­i­ence at home. There’s this one:

… and the second was Al Brown’s Stoked.

This even­ing, the centrepiece of our meal would be a whole split lamb car­cass cooked on an asad­or. Mike warned us that we should have only a very small lunch, and that there was the dis­tinct pos­sib­il­ity of there being leftovers to take home. This soun­ded very good indeed.

Mean­while, Con­or rubbed salt over the lamb, and then showed us how to attach the lamb to the frame that will be sus­pen­ded over the fire.

Appar­ently Mike and Con­or spent the bet­ter part of a year in Mike’s back garden per­fect­ing their asad­or tech­nique. While this may not always have been the best exper­i­ence for Mike’s neigh­bours, appar­ently loc­al Argen­tine expats favour­ably rate the res­ults, so they must be doing it pretty well.

By now Con­or had got the fire going nicely and he hung the lamb halves over the fire – not so close as to have the flame touch them, but close enough that when the fire burnt down the hot coals would provide a good steady slow heat:

And that was almost it for the morn­ing ses­sion. After cof­fee and a cake we reluct­antly left them at 11am. The rest of the day could­n’t go fast enough… but at last even­ing rolled around.

At the res­taur­ant, the lamb was now fully cooked. Con­or took it off the fire:

While it res­ted (covered), he grilled us up some quick starters: black pud­ding, kid­neys, and sweet­breads. I steered away from the kid­neys (I’ve nev­er liked the taste, even before Con­or told us what he thought they tasted like); but the sweet­breads and the black pud­ding were deli­cious, espe­cially smothered in fresh chimichurri salsa:

These dis­ap­peared pretty quickly while we watched Con­or bone the meat. This did­n’t look like too tricky a job, as mostly it was ready to fall off the bone in great juicy hand­fuls. He sliced the fil­let and some of the lar­ger leg pieces… and with that din­ner was ready.

Asad­or is typ­ic­ally eaten with salad. I could describe the salads, which were all pretty good, but to be hon­est I’ve for­got­ten them. I was there for the meat, which was utterly deli­cious: moist, lightly smoked, and cooked to per­fec­tion.

At this point I stopped tak­ing pho­tos. There were more import­ant mat­ters at hand.

On the tables were sev­er­al bottles of a respect­able Argen­tine Mal­bec, the tra­di­tion­al vari­ety to con­sume with asad­or. But nicer still was the oth­er wine there: Tiwaiwaka Lucinda 2007 from Mar­tin­bor­ough, a har­mo­ni­ous and savoury Cab Sauv / Mer­lot / Franc blend. It was just as well sup­plies of this wine ran out fairly quickly, as I had to work the next day.

In addi­tion to the food and the wine was pos­sibly the most unex­pec­ted pleas­ure of the day – some great talk over beau­ti­ful food with a bunch of inter­est­ing strangers.

Time sped by. Every­one had second help­ings. Next, Con­or’s dessert, a lovely almond flan served with dulce de leche and a homemade icecream. That dis­patched, every­one talked some more.

Unfor­tu­nately, we could­n’t stay.

But later at home: wood smoke scent­ing our clothes; full bel­lies; a pile of smoky bones from Con­or for stock; and the happy feel­ing of a day well spent. Yeah, I think we’ll be back.