The slight, smartly attired scribe sitting across the table does not meet expectations.
Having recently completed an around-the-world culinary adventure in search of the perfect steak, one would expect to find a rather large individual decked out in stretchy pants in the throes of epic meat sweats squeezing his hefty keister into the slim-fit café chair at the Starbucks at Yonge and Roxborough for the interview promoting his new book, Steak.
Toronto writer Mark Schatzker, a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail and other publications, looks as if he could up and run a marathon.
After completing a story on steaks for online magazine Slate, where Schatzker ordered and evaluated a number of varieties from online sources, he found out rather quickly there was more to it than marbling.
“I knew there was a bigger story, and it involved everything from flavour science to Nazi Germany to the evolution of humans as meat eaters,” says Schatzker. Four years later, Steak chronicles his beef-based adventures: from eating mutton in Mongolia to facing an ungodly wall of stench in the ranchlands of Texas, combining a travel and culinary narrative in one tidy package. But why him?
“I think I have fairly sensitive taste buds,” says Schatzker, “but I think that I am also curious, and I have a desire to understand.”
After securing a fortuitous travel piece for Condé Nast that involved travelling the world for 80 days without taking a plane, Schatzker had the opportunity he needed to go on a steak-sampling marathon for the ages, including stopovers in the carnivore capitols of Texas, France, Scotland, Italy, Japan and Argentina.
But, where the book gets really interesting is when Schatzker returns home, purchases three Canadienne cows, and raises them on a farm near Singhampton, Ont., with the help of Michael Stadtländer, local food luminary and one of the country’s top chefs. The story of the first and best of his trio of cows, Fleurance, is worth the cover price, alone, including the cans of Creemore he brought for the cows on their last morning.
“I found the experience of owning and raising a heifer, slaughtering it and eating it very satisfying in ways I didn’t anticipate at all,” says Schatzker, who marks his ability to feed his three young children food that he raised himself as a monumental achievement.
“And her hide is on my family room floor and the kids sit on her.” As for the elusive, perfect steak, Schatzker has learned to lower his expectations. “I’ve given up the idea of perfection,” says Schatzker. “But I’m always looking for a good steak.”Steak hits shelves on May 8.
