6 Thursday February 3 2022 | the timesthe table
(another Lawson suggestion; thank
you, Domestic Goddess).
“A hollandaise or béarnaise is
adding butter to a rich cut,” says
Richard Turner, who co-owns the
butcher Turner & George and helped
to set up the Hawksmoor steak
restaurants. “They are more suited to
a sirloin. For a fattier cut, if I am at
home I serve it with just balsamic
vinegar at the table. Nothing more.
It cuts through the fat, it’s lovely.”
Fred Smith, the head of beef at the
steak restaurant chain Flat Iron, says
most customers choose béarnaise.
“I love béarnaise sauce. It’s basically
hollandaise with tarragon. With
bavette, which has a strong flavour,
I quite like a bordelaise sauce — red
wine and shallot gravy.”The cuts: what are the options?
If you don’t have a pan big enough for
a tomahawk, what cut should you go
for? “Avoid fillet,” Turner says. “It’s
one of the most popular cuts out there,
which means many butchers have to
bulk up the amount of fillet they buy
from lesser farms.” It’s not only
expensive but many point out it’s
relatively tasteless because it is so lean.
If in doubt, look for fat, Hannan
says. “You won’t have real quality in
your steak, unless you have fat. It’s the
most important thing. You want that
fat to melt and to cook the steak in
that fat.”
If you completely remove the bone
from Lawson’s tomahawk you are left
with a ribeye. “Ribeye is the safest bet,”oven and discover it’s already gone
past the Lawson-rare stage.
Maybe I seared for too long? I whip
it out and let it rest and hope it’s
not ruined. Meanwhile, I examine
Lawson’s Instagram post in more
detail and notice that her steak is quite
a bit thicker than mine, which explains
why it needed more time.Resting is non-negotiable
“The longer you rest it the better,” says
Gordon Ker, the owner of Blacklock,
who is opening the fourth branch of
his steak restaurant on Valentine’s
Day. “Twenty minutes is great, though
in a restaurant guests start to complain
about where their steak is if you do it
for that long. So we rest for ten.”
After mine had rested for 20
minutes, I sliced my tomahawk off
the bone – because there’s no way you
can serve such a huge chunk of meat
uncarved. I can see that it’s definitely
not vermillion-rare, indeed it’s gone
past lovely medium-rare pink and
started to flirt with medium. But the
resting, and the high level of fat, has
conspired to produce an absolutely
delicious bit of meat, even if it isn’t as
spectacular as the one Lawson posted.The sauce
Lawson’s “green sauce” was wonderful
with this fatty steak: parsley, chives,
lemon zest and juice, anchovies, chilli
and olive oil whizzed up in a food
processor. It cuts through the richness
perfectly and works as a great sauce
for the accompanying new potatoesI
f you thought Nigella Lawson
caused a stir with her
pronunciation of “microwave”,
you should see the rumpus that
ensued after she cooked a steak.
This week she posted a picture
to her 2.7 million Instagram
followers of a plate of sliced
tomahawk steak with “green sauce”.
The platter of meat looked deliciously
rare to me, but to some of her
followers she might as well have sat
astride a still-warm slaughtered cow
with a knife and fork. “It’s RAW!” one
shouted. Another said: “I’ve seen
cows sicker than that get well.”
It just proved that when it comes
to steak no one can agree on what
constitutes perfection. Rare or
medium? Fillet or sirloin? Hollandaise
or béarnaise?
These divisions will only increase
as we approach February 14, the day
when steak is eaten more than almost
any other. “On a normal Monday we’d
only be 50 per cent full, on Valentine’s
Day we will be full to the rafters — so
twice as busy as normal,” says Martin
Williams, who owns the Gaucho chain
of steak restaurants and is opening a
new branch in Glasgow on Valentine’s
Day. Butchers also say customers buy
more steak on Valentine’s, to woo their
other halves with a bit of prime meat.
“It’s a special treat, isn’t it?” says Ian
Warren, of Philip Warren & Sons
butchers in Launceston, Cornwall,
which supplies chefs such as Paul
Ainsworth, the chef-patron of the
Michelin-starred Number 6
restaurant in Padstow.
So what makes the best steak? Is
it the Nigella way or another method?
I consulted the experts...What is a tomahawk?
It is a steak with a massive, cartoonish
bone sticking out of it. “It’s exactly
the same as côte de boeuf, but with a
longer bone,” Warren says. “I just don’t
see the point of them, how on earth do
you fit it on a plate?” he asks, laughing.
“But I suppose they are theatrical.”
On seeing Lawson’s picture, I rushed
out to the butcher to buy one for the
first time, because I am pathetically
suggestible. But I discovered on
returning home that there was no
pan in my kitchen that could possibly
fit the 34cm-long (yes, I measured)
piece of meat. The bone poked out
of my griddle like a canoe strapped
to the roof of a mini.
Warren points out that he sells a
tomahawk steak for £27.95 a kilo,
exactly the same price as a côte de
boeuf, but with the latter you get at
least 10 per cent more meat for each
kilo, because it has less bone. “We’re
not rip-off merchants, it’s just thetomahawk takes more butchery.”
In future, I shall be buying côte
de boeuf. Far less faff; better value.How Nigella cooks hers
Lawson recommends searing your
tomahawk “on all sides in an iron
skillet” — which is what I did —
then putting it into a 220C oven
for 15 minutes, before resting it for
plenty of time.
Peter Hannan, the Northern Irish
butcher who supplied Lawson’s
tomahawk and is a long-term dining
companion of hers, likes this method
but warned me that 220C is very high
for finishing off a steak in an oven. “I
know Nigella uses a hotter oven than
I do — I’ve often discussed this with
her and we agree to disagree,” he says,
laughing. He suggests 180C.
His warning is useful, because after
three minutes at 220C I nervously
check my steak sizzling away in theHow to cook steak: are you on
The celebrity cook
polarised opinion
with her recipe for
a rare tomahawk.
Harry Wallop tried
making it at home
REX FEATURES; NIGELLA LAWSON/INSTAGRAMNigella
uses a
hotter
oven than
I do... We
agree to
disagree
Nigella Lawson’s tomahawk steakthe times | Thursday February 3 2022 7the table
Here are the six recipes you
need to know By Tony Turnbull
You need to start
with dishes that
replicate the draw
of a takeaway
team Nigella?
perfect cuisson, or cooking
temperature, is to take it out of the
fridge about half an hour before
you cook it.”
The other is dry meat. Smith says:
“At home, I pat dry the surface with
kitchen paper. You don’t want the
water on the surface to start steaming
the meat.”
“We cook over coal and wood,”
Ker at Blacklock says, “but to recreate
it at home use a griddle pan, get it as
hot as you possibly can, put the steak
on and open the windows. The griddle
marks it like bars.”
But Hannan says you really
shouldn’t go too hot in a standard
frying pan. He recommends the
equivalent of seven out of ten on your
hob. He is a fan of searing the meat in
the pan, then putting the pan in the
oven at about 180C — the method
Lawson recommends, although she
goes for a hotter oven.
Hannan has a very useful rule of
thumb for how long you should cook
your steak using this method. “For a
600g steak: six minutes untouched
searing in a pan; let it caramelise, flip
it over and give it six minutes on the
other side, then six minutes in the
oven and rest for six minutes. Once it
gets to 800g, it’s eight, eight, eight.
Over a kilo, it’s ten, ten, ten.”How rare can you go?
Smith estimates that at Flat Iron 75
per cent of customers go for medium
rare, 10 per cent ask for medium and
the remaining 15 per cent is split
between well done and blue. He points
out there’s no hygiene risk with blue.
“Bacteria exists on the surface of the
beef. As long as you sear the surface,
you’re good to go.”
“The more fat is in the cut, the
longer I’d suggest cooking it,” Ker says.
“With fat you need time for it to break
down to create delicious texture and
flavour.” That means rare for fillet,
medium rare for sirloin, and medium
for a fattier ribeye or tomahawk. “If
you’re like my mum, who insists on
it being well done, I’d always say go
for a ribeye,” he says.
If you have a meat probe (decent
ones cost no more than £10), for rare
you want it to reach about 50C. That
might mean taking it out at 48C,
because the temperature will carry
on rising during resting. For medium
rare, take it out when it hits 52C; for
medium it’s 58C.
“I recommend cutting into it if you
don’t have a thermometer,” Ker says.
“Just nick it right in the middle and
if it’s not ready, put it back in.”No buts, it’s got to be butter
If you’re going to cook it in the pan
(rather than finishing it off in the
oven) you can help the tenderness
by adding a large knob of salted
butter towards the end and rapidly,
continuously basting the melted butter
over the steak. “You want to brown the
steak first before you put the butter
in,” Smith says. “With a big steak I
might add half a block of butter, so
125g.” Really? “Yes! You want as much
butter as you’re willing to feel
comfortable with. If you put in too
little, it increases the chance of the
butter burning.”he says. “It has lots of intermuscular
fat, which dissolves during the
cooking, which gives a greater
sensation of tenderness.”
Smith is a fan of a lesser (and
cheaper) cut: bavette. “It’s a classic
steak frites cut. It has a slightly thicker
grain, it’s got more texture than a fillet.
A good bit of marbled bavette on the
butcher’s counter — I’d jump at that.”Does dry-ageing matter?
Dry-ageing, when the meat is left
to hang before being butchered, has
become fashionable. And it makes a
big difference. “It takes two years to
rear an animal,” Hannan says. “To
ruin it at the end by not giving it
enough time to mature is an awful
thing to do. You might as well put it
through a mincer as to not age it.”
Hannan, who supplies Angela
Hartnett’s restaurants as well as
Fortnum & Mason, ages his beef in a
chamber lined with Himalayan salt,
which helps to dry out the meat
slightly. But the duration, rather than
the conditions, is more important.
Smith at Flat Iron says: “There is
an enzyme that exists in beef that
naturally breaks down the protein
strands. So an element of tenderness is
achieved just through time.” He adds,
however, that “when you go beyond 21
days it doesn’t get much more tender”.The golden rules
There are a number of methods, but
a few essential rules. Turner explains
one of them: “The trick to getting abedrocks of cooking, which is how to
caramelise onions. An even chop, a
gentle heat and much more time
than most recipe books say is the
way to go. If it included a side
module on cooking the perfect rice,
so much the better. I’d probably
enrol too, I invariably overcook mine.
Next up, I’d go Italian with a
tomato sauce and a meat ragu sauce
— on their own with pasta, as part of
a lasagne or as a springboard to
other dishes; add spice and poached
eggs to the tomato for a brunchy
shakshuka; add a layer of mashed
potato for cottage or shepherd’s pie.
They also teach the valuable lesson
that sometimes half an hour
bubbling away to concentrate the
flavour is worth more than a store
cupboard full of exotic ingredients.
Macaroni cheese is another
standby dish, and the first my
children learnt to make. Again, it’s
the versatility that wins through.A
s part of its levelling-up
white paper the
government has
announced plans to tackle
obesity, with a push to
teach children about healthy eating.
The aim is that every child should
leave school knowing how to make
six dishes.
It sounds about the right number
— a meal a day with one night off
every week — and indeed a 2018
survey by the recipe box company
HelloFresh found that this was how
many recipes adults knew on
average. Which sounds great, until
you learn that bangers and mash and
beans on toast were on the list. Not
exactly pushing the culinary
boundaries, is it?
So if not sausages or toast (or
baked potatoes, boiled eggs or any
of the other can’t-really-be-bothered-
to-cook options), the question is:
which six recipes will best
prepare a new generation of
health(ier) eaters?
Pragmatically, you need to
start with dishes that in part
replicate the draw of a
takeaway or ready meal.
That’s why I’d kick off with
chicken breast in
breadcrumbs. You don’t need
to call it by its proper name
of chicken schnitzel, of
course (what is this? A
spelling test?) — maybe the
non-KFC KFC would be
nearer the mark. Not super
healthy, but at least it’s not
deep-fried. Dredgingprotein in flour, beaten eggs and
breadcrumbs is a classic cooking
technique, and making your own fish
fingers is then only a step away.
Along the same lines, I’d suggest
that a basic curry should be the
subject of the second class. Endlessly
variable, with lots of vegetarian
options, it teaches one of theOnce you’ve perfected the art of
making a perfectly smooth white
sauce you’ll find yourself turning to it
again and again, in anything from
fish pie to moussaka.
Let’s end with the fastest food there
is: an omelette. Yes, everyone thinks
they can make one, but there’s a
reason that Michel Roux sets it as a
task when he’s interviewing new
chefs. As with all simple dishes,
there’s nowhere to hide: technique is
everything. As an aside, Roux’s
father and uncle, Albert and Michel,
could never agree whether the
perfect omelette should be presented
uncoloured or gently bronzed — so
an exam where there’s no right or
wrong answer. I think all students
could get behind that one.1 Chicken schnitzel
2 A basic curry
3 An Italian tomato sauce
4 A ragu
5 Macaroni cheese
6 An omelette
The Times food editor’s
recommended dishes