Backstory: Argentina - red meat and no apologies

A food critic for a prestigious American newspaper reported recently about how much he enjoyed a rare steak in a Buenos Aires restaurant.

A rare steak? I've been in and out of this country for 40 years; lived in Buenos Aires for three. I've never had a bloody steak.

Argentines, probably the most food-minded people outside France and Italy, dislike undercooked meat. It's a cultural thing. If its changing, which I doubt, it must have to do with the invasion.

For years Argentina was off the map for tourists from outside the region, left alone to cultivate its oddities. People of the north cared little what went on down at the bottom of the world where the tango was born, the politics were impenetrable, and the water swirls down the drain counterclockwise.

Nowadays tourists arrive in squadrons, pouring out of airplanes, swarming off cruise ships like ravenous bees, hungry for the fruit of the Pampas: Argentine beef. The government tourist office reports that the number of visitors to Buenos Aires in the first two weeks of January amounted to double those who came last year during the same period; most were from the United States, Canada, and Europe; 2.3 million are expected in the first three months of the year.

It's to be expected some of the locals would bend tradition to meet tourists' tastes - by serving raw meat. But the tourists are missing the point.

Beef in Argentina is different from that of most other countries. For one thing, the cattle feed on the grass of the Pampas, which is to say their last days are spent in a field, not a feedlot; for another, the cuts are different. But most important, the meat is cooked and consumed fresh. Argentines find the thought of aged beef unpleasant. Here the time between the slaughter of an animal and the moment it appears on the table is much shorter than in the northern countries, where it can extend to weeks, even months.

Fernando Fascino, the best butcher in this little Pampas-bound town, says he gets his meat at local cattle fairs and from a man who raises beef on the island across the Arroyo Ubajai, an energetic stream near here. That means a few hours after the animal is dispatched, it is hanging in Don Fascino's shop. Not long after, it is being served in homes throughout town.

Don Fascino doesn't sell his meat wrapped in plastic, resting on a bed of Styrofoam. He cuts it for the customer from the carcass hanging on a hook behind his counter.

As to the cuts, an American butcher - or one trained in, say, France - might have difficulty locating or recognizing the cuadril (on the back, forward of the rump), the matambre (above the ribs), the peceto (on the rump), and the costilleta (the ribs). The latter is the most popular cut, preferred even to the lomo (filet mignon).

In America, the costilleta are called short ribs, meat for stews. They are cut along the line of the bone. Here, the cut is made across the ribs. The costilleta are the climax of the asado, the word Argentines use to describe the cookout which is in high season now, in the Argentine summer.

This desire for fresh meat is the practical reason Argentines require that it be thoroughly and slowly cooked. Fresh meat is full of integument, which makes it tiresome to chew. Aging meat allows time for the dissolution of this; it makes the meat more tender, soft enough at times "to cut with a fork." Aficionados north of the equator find this desirable. But putting it in terms unpleasant, yet quite real, aged beef is decayed beef. Argentines avoid it.

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