The late, great American cookbook author Marion Cunningham famously carried with her a photograph of a table loaded with angel food cakes, all slightly different: some tall, some short, some white and fluffy, some in a Bundt shape. The photo was taken at a meeting of the Baker’s Dozen, a group of pro bakers including Alice Medrich and Carol Field who met regularly to exchange problems and solutions. Each of the cakes was baked by the members from the same recipe. “If all our results were this different,” Cunningham sympathized, “think of the plight of the poor home cook.” This recipe in question is this one, from “cookie baker for the stars,” Tom Roach, adapted with a bit of Cunningham’s gentle advice.

This recipe originally ran alongside Christopher Hirsheimer’s 1999 article, Baking Lessons.

Order the SAVEUR Selects Artisan Series Angel Food Cake Pan here.

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I’ve composed BLTs from the backseat of a VW Bug, salade niçoise in the churning belly of a 25-foot sloop. And though I’ve never quite matched my mother’s feat of coq au vin over a campfire at 12,000 feet, I have made dinner for eight from—literally—a closet.

But I’d rather cook in comfort. So when the time came to have at our Formica-clad Chicago kitchen, I had a folder thick with fantasies at the ready. I longed for a more efficient floor plan that returned the fridge (exiled to the adjacent pantry) to the kitchen. Space for all those books. Work surfaces that worked. Death to the dirt-enamored blue vinyl floor. And a handsome style that would mesh with, but not imitate, the 1915 simplicity of our condo. The problem was fitting it all into 160 square feet, and I spent a lot of time sitting on the doomed blue vinyl, trying to figure out where to squeeze what.

With the help of a patient architect, a skilled contractor, a resourceful husband, and an extremely opinionated mother, I managed to work everything in by taking dead space out. That meant eliminating two doors (for counter space all the way around), raising a window (to let the farmhouse sink slip underneath), and transforming the pantry into a vestibule (which rerouted traffic and snowy boot buildup). We put down new oak floorboards, and ran cabinets floor to ceiling to use room overhead. To keep the upper-level storage within everyday reach, we added a library ladder. This is a city kitchen, so windows have to endure grates. To avoid the incarcerated look, I took two sketches to a local ironsmith, who did a perfect job of translating them to large format. Now a steaming cup of coffee peeks in one window, and buttered toast peers into the other.

The kitchen was finished just in time to cool our daughter Hannah’s first birthday cake on the new limestone countertops. The project took twice as long as we had expected, cost twice as much as we had feared—and it works at least twice as well as we had dreamed it would. There was even a little wedge of space left over, just enough for Hannah’s baby kitchen.

**THE DETAILS
**

A Perfect Fit: The 30″ range is a hybrid between home appliance and restaurant equipment—small enough to fit comfortably into the condo kitchen, but equipped with four professional-caliber gas burners. Another good find: Eskin’s old dorm-room desktop, which they excavated from the garage and sanded down. Now this 43″ x 25″ butcher block serves as countertop just to the left of the stove—a built-in chopping station.

Hard Truths: “After considering mountains of granite,” says Eskin, “I finally had to admit that I don’t really like its high-gloss showiness.” Instead, Eskin found a matte-finish, sand-toned slab of limestone. “It looks great with the tile and white wood,” Eskin tells us, “and it’s even embedded with a few Jurassic-era shrimp.” The sink makes the most of space. Set deep into the work space, only its “apron” front is visible—an accent bridging cabinetry and countertop.

Order on Display: Wood or glass? A mix of cabinets breaks up the usual kitchen monotony—and allows Eskin to hide some things (“lightbulbs, phone books”) and display others (“ceramics, tons of cookbooks”). A wine-rack-cum-cooler (with Hannah-proof lock) holds bottles at cellar temperature. Stretches of countertop make the island solution unnecessary, clearing the way for a breakfast table and chairs.

Form and Function: Eskin chose handmade tiles in a gentle vine pattern to creep along the backsplashes—which wrap all the way around the room for easy cleanup. Says Eskin, “The tile, like nearly everything else, is white, simple. I doubt it will ever induce avocado-green regrets.” A warm yellow color on walls keeps the room from looking too stark. The steaming coffee cup and buttered toast window grates make the most of a first-floor city necessity.

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At Arpege, chef Alain Passard uses fresh bay leaves (available in your grocery’s herb section) to perfume the scallops while they cook—and keeps them in place for presentation (see Grillade de Coquilles St-Jacques au Laurier recipe). Cut center vein out of leaf, dividing leaf into two pieces. In each half-leaf, cut a ¼” notch about ½” from each end. Hook two notched half-leaves together at one end, then cinch them around the scallop like a belt. Hook leaves together at the other end to secure.

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Brunoise (“broon-WAZ”), those perfect little restaurant-worthy diced vegetables, are surprisingly easy to make. All you need is a thin, sharp knife and a logical approach: Think of it as “fileting” to tame your unruly produce—awkward peppers, roly-poly carrots, lumpy apples—into neat, dice-friendly pieces. For the pepper, cut off top and bottom so that you have an even cylinder that stands flat. Next, open the pepper by slicing lengthwise down the cylinder. Now cut your filet: Hold the strip flat on the board, skin side down, slice away the core, ribs, and seeds, then run the knife between the meat of the pepper and the skin to slice off and remove skin. (The same principle applies to other produce. Trim odd shapes down to easy-to-manage blocks, and slice filets from these pieces.) Finally, dice the filet: Slice the piece of pepper into little sticks (en batonnets, as the French say), then line the sticks up and cut them crosswise. Voila! Brunoise!

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Though James Labe, a tea sommelier, could probably fill volumes with his tea expertise, he agreed to boil down his advice for us into the following tips:

**ALWAYS **use good, fresh water—either filtered or spring.

**HOW MUCH **tea to use? Teas vary in strength, so it’s hard to be precise, but for compact teas such as Indian black ones, try 1 heaping teaspoon per 12-ounce pot. For looser-leafed green teas, use 2 heaping teaspoons.

**IDEAL STEEPING **temperature for most black teas is 195°, somewhat below that of boiling water (212°), so before you stir the leaves into the pot, pour in the hot water and let it cool a bit. Many ceramic pots absorb enough heat within the first minute or so to cool the water properly. Fine-quality Japanese green teas are best steeped at even lower temperatures, between 125° and 170°; if you make them with boiling water, they’ll end up tasting like overcooked vegetables. The easiest way to get the right temperature for these teas is to add ½ cup cold water to the pot, then fill it the rest of the way with boiling water.

**HOW LONG **a tea steeps affects its character. Try steeping the same tea in gradations of 2 to 4 minutes; the taste will tell you when you’ve brewed it right.

**TRY TASTING **fine teas when they’ve had time to cool, because they’ll gain nuance and body. Hot tea feels thin in the mouth.

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Before I discovered clarified butter, every piece of sauteed fish I served came with beurre noir. I wanted butter’s rich taste, but as soon as my pan was hot enough, the butter burned. Clarifying butter removes milk proteins and water, resulting in pure butterfat—and a higher smoking point. Melt unsalted butter over low heat. (Don’t stir or boil.) Skim off foam, and decant yellow fat, leaving milky sediment behind.

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Pino Cinquemani began working in his father’s butcher shop in Sicily when he was only 9. In 1991, he took over the Manhattan shop where he had worked for 16 years. Here are a few of his tips:

A. CUTTING THE POCKET For stuffed breast of veal, lay breast flat on board. With one hand on top of meat, make a horizontal slice into center of breast with the tip of your knife. Continue to cut, pulling top half of breast back as you go, making a deep pocket.

B. TRUSSING WITH STRING Pinch stuffed pocket closed. Using a trussing needle threaded with kitchen string, begin at one end and sew up pocket. Tie ends before cooking.

C. TRUSSING WITH SKEWERS Veal pocket (and matambre) may be trussed with metal skewers (the type sold for trussing poultry). Pinch meat together. Thread a skewer down through both layers of meat, then back up again. Repeat with the next skewer until pocket is closed (or matambre is secure).

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Growing up in a Cantonese family in San Francisco, Grace Young ate her parents’ delicious soups, steamed dishes, and stir-fries every day, and took them happily for granted. Only as an adult, with a career as a recipe developer and food stylist, did she realize that her family’s classic dishes might be a vanishing treasure. Her parents were getting older, and most members of her extended family had forgotten the traditional specialties. Something beyond just good eating stood to be lost, too: a culinary philosophy based on the ancient harmonizing principles of yin and yang. So Young wrote The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing to save her family’s culinary heritage—and along the way, through the memories her relatives contributed to these pages, learned about her own history.

In Young’s first section, Mama and Baba (she identifies her parents only through their affectionate nicknames), confident and resourceful, guide their daughter—and us—through a series of lessons in the arts of steaming, stir-frying, and braising. (Young, no novice in the kitchen, has plenty of her own expert advice to add, too.) In ”The Breath of a Wok”, one of the book’s beautifully titled chapters, we learn about wok hay—literally, ”wok breath”—a fleeting taste, crucial to an authentic stir-fry, that only food right out of the wok can have. In ”Shreds of Ginger Like Blades of Grass”, Baba, despite his 84 years, smoothly slices ginger into feathery wisps that meld with the other flavors in a dish instead of dominating them. ”Cooking as a Meditation” describes the ”true art of cooking by instinct” that Mama and Baba practice. Nothing is timed or weighed. ”The most important virtue,” her parents believe, ”is alertness to the senses; knowing when an ingredient has the correct visual cues, smells, sounds, tastes, and texture is more valuable than mastering the intricacies of a complicated recipe.” For that reason, she admits, ”Trying to record a precise recipe by watching my parents cook is as difficult as catching an animal in the wild.” In the end, though, she succeeds: The cookbook itself is her trophy collection.

Beyond the fundamentals, Young includes a section on symbolic feast foods and another on the healing soups that are a vital part of Cantonese home cooking. Both sections make fascinating reading, but frankly, it’ll take me a while to work my way up to recipes like Buddha’s delight, a New Year’s dish that calls for 13 ingredients (among them dried oysters, cloud ears, and ginkgo nuts), or papaya and snow fungus soup, which requires a tricky-sounding double-steaming process. I’ve been happy cooking the simpler recipes. Pepper and salt shrimp are labor-intensive to prepare, but, when stir-fried, turn a brilliant, gratifying orange, with a crunchy edible shell and resilient sweet flesh. I also liked the juicy lemon chicken; Sichuan-style eggplant in garlic sauce; and braised sweet-and-sour spareribs, an easy recipe that yields complex flavor.

Given Young’s emphasis on the yin-yang concepts in cooking—the balancing of opposites—it’s surprising that she offers no menu suggestions. For a dinner party one night, I had to root through the whole book for clues on what to serve with what. The biggest headache, though, is the cruel absence of make-ahead instructions. Every single recipe is an unbroken continuum of cooking that ends with the words ”serve immediately”—which, if you’re making a dinner party’s worth of dishes, would seem to require two stoves and the cloning of the cook.

Young is firm about not giving substitutions. ”If you genuinely desire to cook Chinese dishes, you will need exotic ingredients,” she writes. Most of the chapter ”Shopping Like a Sleuth” is designed to guide you through a big-city Chinatown; if you aren’t near one of these, you’ll have to forego the pleasures of shopping and wait for UPS.

Regardless of your grocery situation, this is a book to be relished on several levels. It’s rich in content, cleanly written, and beautifully designed, with black-and-gold typography and soft, flamelike shapes silk-screened onto the pages. The elegant old black-and-white family photos that introduce each chapter, as well as Alan Richardson’s lush, painterly food photography, add to the delicate respectfulness of a book Young calls ”a modern-day act of filial piety”.

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At the Agriturismo de Carvalho in Manzano, about ten miles east of Udine in the far northeastern Italian region of Friuli, lunch is served in the backyard of a 17th-century villa. From the terrace, we can see the entire property, bordered by small clumps of cypress trees. A huge Tuscan sheepdog, barking frequently at first but increasingly tranquil as the sun heats up the cobblestones, is tied to an ornate well in the center of the villa’s courtyard. Around noon, people start appearing, walking past the dog, up towards the terrace, the women’s high heels wobbling on the stones as their children gallop off to explore the property. The cook, Ennio Furlan, has spent the morning preparing the country food his customers expect: gnocchi made from potatoes and rucola, risotto with porcini mushrooms, roasted guinea fowl, sausages cooked in wine, and a splendid gubane, a panettone-like confection that locals like to drench in grappa—all washed down with tocai, verduzzo, and merlot from the estate.

Dining al fresco is an ancient tradition all over Italy, but dining al frasca is the rule in Friuli. Frasca _means ”branch”, from the tradition of hanging a branch in front of a property that had new wine to sell. The typical frasca was originally a small family farm or wine estate where, at an outdoor table,usually under something deliciously flowering or fruiting or budding, paying guests were served a taste of homemade prosciutto and a piece of bread between glasses of one wine tasting and another. _Frasche _(the plural form of _frasca) of this kind still flourish—in the spring, when the previous year’s white wines are ready, and in late fall, when the same vintage’s reds are opened—but many frasche have evolved into what are called agriturismi. These are very much like frasche, only you get more food. (In either case, the tariff is low: Most frasche and agriturismi charge $20-$25 per person, including copious quantities of wine.) One other difference: By law, frasche can serve only foods produced on the premises; agriturismi rules vary, but most are required to produce at least half of what they serve, with a high percentage of the rest produced in the immediate area.

Both kinds of places are real, working farms (and usually wineries as well, at least on a small scale). Tables—which sometimes have to be cleared of freshly picked plums or porcini mushrooms or whatever other fruit or vegetable is in season when customers arrive—are set with paper napkins, wooden serving boards, and wildflowers. Nature is never far away at these establishments, in fact. Al Plan di Paluz in Tarcento has signs hanging from the trees, identifying their species (in Latin) for the kids. Frasca di Gianni in Cividale del Friuli won’t tell you how they flavor their grappa, except to say that it contains as many as ten different herbs picked in the fields around the farm. Ennio Furlan, at that time chef at the Agriturismo de Carvalho, tells us one afternoon that he was out picking blackberries that morning near the farmhouse ”when a female wild boar saw me. She called for her babies, and four of them came running to her, then they all took off into the woods.”

Bucolic doesn’t seem like a bad word for these places. Zaro in Canebola is a bosky spot, tortuously difficult to get to, up endless ribbons of road winding through thick woods, but once we get there, we snack on homemade cheeses, achingly rich salami, pickled baby zucchini, and scarlet merlot with pink fizz on top, all made on the property, while fat dogs lounge in the sun, farm equipment growls in the distance, and the afternoon light bounces off the leaves of the trees. And at Colonos in Villacaccia di Lestizza, fields of corn encircle the farmhouse like a golden sea, and family-style picnic tables are plunked about like captainless boats. The conversation is loud and lusty. Kids gallop around the animal pens, and mosquitoes buzz as the sun sets. We are content.

Part of the region officially known as Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Friuli borders Austria and Slovenia. The region has been invaded over the centuries by Huns (Attila was stopped at nearby Aquileia), Goths, Visigoths, Longobards (who left a dramatic temple in Cividale, now a chapel), Venetians, Austrians, and the French under Napoleon—who built the star-shaped fortress town of Palmanova. Invaders notwithstanding, though, the Friulians have managed to hold on to a strong sense of ethnic identity. The indigenous people descend from the Carni, who hailed from the Carnic Alps, and they even have their own language, closely related to Italian but with many words incomprehensible to nonlocals.

The region is notoriously poor and has been wracked by earthquakes—in 1976, it suffered a 6.5 on the Richter scale, which killed more than nine hundred people—and it gets very cold and wet in the winter. In warmer weather, though, it is a beautiful, welcoming place—a verdant landscape full of plump grazing cows, endless green fields, thick piney forests, and cool crystalline streams.

The administrative capital of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is Trieste, but the cultural capital is Udine. Over a thousand years old, this former Roman army post sits on a hill overlooking a vast plain that spreads to the Adriatic Sea. A town of almost 100,000, Udine is a prosperous city, all but untouched by tourism, with beautiful Venetian piazzas—it’s about 80 miles northeast of Venice—an impressive cathedral with a Gothic façade, and a flourishing retail-based economy.

Udine has been my jumping-off point for discovering frasche and agriturismi. I join my Udinese friends at one bar or another in the center of town and sip prosecco or one of the good local white wines until we reach a consensus as to where to eat. Once the decision is made, everyone hops into the motor vehicle most appropriate to his tax bracket (I once rode on the back of someone’s Vespa for what seemed like a trip to the Orient on a bumblebee) and roars off into the country—to a place, for instance, like Al Copari in Craoretto.

Al Copari was originally a wine-only frasca but has been serving food since 1915. During World War I, it became a hospital, and it was later used as a school; for many years the farm had the only telephone in the area, which it made available for public use. For 75 years, the woodstove at Al Copari has been cooking the same traditional dishes: gnocchi, risotto, minestrone, roasted guinea hens, frico, frittate. The proprietor, Anna Maria Lesizza, is at once bawdy and ladylike. She pointedly keeps her knees together for a photograph at one point, telling us that the reason she isn’t rich is because ”the higher you raise your legs, the more money you earn!” She bosses around the masons who are repairing her terrace—but then gives them a generous choice of dishes for their meal.

Very little pasta is eaten in Friuli, and green vegetables are limited. The traditional local diet is based on corn, eggs, potatoes, meat, and the local cow’s-milk cheese—simply called latteria, which means ”dairy”. Latteria is eaten at all stages of its life, from very fresh and soft, when its taste is mild enough to please the pickiest child, until it has aged for about six months and grown pungent. Though it is often enjoyed plain, it is also the cheese of choice for frico—an omnipresent frasca specialty. Frico is basically melted cheese, cooked slowly in a pan until it crisps up and coheres, forming a kind of lacy cheese pancake. Everybody makes it slightly differently: Al Copari’s is slick and chewy; Frasca di Gianni, in Cividale del Friuli, interprets it as a dense souffle. My favorite frico was that made by Ennio Furlan at the Agriturismo de Carvalho (he has since left the place). His version combines potatoes and cheese to make a thick pancake that is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside—an extraordinary treat.

Children are always welcome at frasche. ”When I was a young woman,” explains my friend Emanuela Fabbro as we sit at an outdoor table at Colonos—while her two sons, Martino and Leonardo, terrorize the chickens—”I came to the frasche with my friends because they were inexpensive and because our parents couldn’t see what we were up to.” (Leonardo interrupts us at this point, a wicked smile on his face and a clutch of feathers in his fist; Emanuela chooses not to notice.) ”Now we come because the children can roam around without ruining everyone else’s good time.” (Indeed, by the time the adults have settled into their first course, the children have already inhaled a plate of gnocchi and are off running in a hooligan band.) Emanuela looks over to a table of five grandmothers, all in flowered dresses, wearing gold crucifixes and clutching big, boxy handbags, adding, ”And the old people come here to eat the food they are used to and to watch the children play.”

I have enjoyed frasche myself as a twenty-something party animal, smoking harsh Italian cigarettes, drinking smooth local wine, and arguing with my Friulian friends about the EC. I’ve visited frasche with my children and watched them out of the corner of my eye squashing snails while I, well, argued with my Friulian friends about the EC. And I hope to still be eating at frasche when I’m old and my children have launched lives of their own elsewhere, and I can nibble salami with my husband and those long-suffering friends, and share a lifetime’s worth of observations, anecdotes, and experiences, many of which we will have enjoyed together, at a frasca, sitting outside, pulling the soft center out of warm, homemade bread.

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Vicente Monte and Jose Maria Gallardo are dressed for work: tattered boots; hats, one black and flat with a broad, stiff brim, the other floppy, the color of putty; big slouchy pants, called bombachas; and red ponchos with black trim. (Every province in Argentina has its own poncho design, and these link Gallardo and Monte to Salta, in the country’s far northwestern corner.) Their faces are weathered and wrinkled, their eyes deep and dark, their hands calloused. Each carries a long, sharp, elegantly curved knife, a facon, tucked into his belt against the small of his back.

Gallardo and Monte are gauchos—Argentine cowboys—working at the legendary El Bordo de las Lanzas in Salta, a 400-year-old estancia, or ranch, shadowed by the Andes. They are remnants of a bygone era. The original gaucho appeared on the scene some time after Spanish colonization began in the early 16th century. He was mestizo—part Spanish, part Indian—a fiercely independent figure who made his living killing wild steers and selling the hides, tallow, and charque, or sun-dried beef, that the animals yielded. This gaucho thrived until the mid-19th century, when the country was in turmoil, at war with itself as well as with its Indians. The native populations were eventually wiped out, their land divvied up, and the gaucho tamed. He became a farmhand—penned in, more or less, like his wild cattle. He adapted.

Surrounded by ruminating cattle, Monte scouts out a spot for a fire, and Gallardo heads into a patch of trees. After some shuffling and rustling and a few sweeps of his knife, Gallardo returns with an armful of dead wood and two green branches. He arranges the wood and lights a fire. The gaucho is never without matches and salt and, at least in thisterritory, coca (fresh leaves from the cocaine plant, which are chewed like tobacco and have—surprisingly—only a mildly stimulating effect). Gallardo takes his knife to the branches, turning one into a four-foot skewer and the other into a couple of slingshot-shaped supports. The sun drops. The flames burn down. Monte works a wad of coca in his cheek. When the fire is nothing but glowing ash, Monte retrieves his saddlebag and pulls out a plastic bag of salt and three loosely wrapped pieces of beef. Placing one thick steak and two narrow strips of meaty ribs on the burnished leather, he seasons the flesh with salt, threads it all onto the skewer,and perches it on the supports near the heat.

The beef sizzles and sweats, and fat beads up on the surface and drips to the ground. Occasionally the skewer is turned. When Gallardo believes the meat to be sufficiently seared on the outside and properly cooked on the inside, he pulls off a strip and slices between the bones. Then he cuts off chunks of the steak, balances the pieces on the blade of his knife, and passes them around. The meat, juicy and chewy with a crisp, salty crust, is intoxicating, everything a proper steak should be. This is roasted meat in its purest form.

Argentina has an unrestrainedly carnivorous culture, and scenes like this one—open range, South American cowboy, makeshift barbecue—are at the root of the tradition. ”The gaucho,” Charles Darwin noted in the 1830s, ”for months together, touches nothing but beef.” The Argentine diet has since evolved, but Argentines still eat a substantial amount of beef. Annual consumption hovers at around one hundred thirty pounds per capita—more than twice that of the United States. Beef appears on the average Argentine table several times a week, often breaded and fried as milanesa or rolled, stuffed, cooked, and sliced as matambre (literally, ”hunger killer”), but also in the form of puchero, a beef and vegetable stew; carbonada criolla, a stew sweetened with peaches and served in a pumpkin; and locro, a soup thickened with beans and hominy. Beef is also found inside tamales, beneath mashed potatoes in pastel de papa, and with raisins, olives, and eggs in the ubiquitous empanada. Argentines even sometimes drink jugo de carne—meat juice—pressed from a freshly boiled piece of beef. Nobody in the world eats beef like Argentines eat beef; nobody talks about it with quite the same enthusiasm, either. At the mention of the subject, eyes widen, hands pat bellies, moans rise up. It is a passionate subject for a passionate people.

Beef, as all Argentines know, is never better than when straight off the parrilla, or ”grill”, at an asado. Asado _means ”roast meat”—and also the social occasion that centers around the roasting. Asados are the country’s holiday ritual and Sunday feast, and they can range from simple—Gallardo and Monte’s impromptu version—to elaborate, involving slabs of ribs, flanks of beef, and occasionally (for beef isn’t the only meat Argentines eat) whole lambs, kids, and/or pigs, all impaled on iron rods and tilted over a fire. There’s even asado con cuero, an atypical country tradition in which an entire half of an animal is cooked with its hide (_cuero) over embers in a pit, then served in chunks, hide intact, with an incongruous vinaigrette.

In a more representative, less savage (which is not to say less gluttonous) asado, the meal typically begins with chorizos (sausages made of either pork, or pork and beef) and rich morcilla (blood sausage). These are followed by an assortment of achuras, or variety meats (sweetbreads, intestines, kidneys, even udders), and then by steaks—multiple steaks. Everybody eats a little of this, a little of that. All meats are served hot, no small feat for the parrillero—the man (and it is always a man) tending the grill. Essential accompaniments are chimichurri, a pungent steak sauce; bread; lettuce salad; and salsa criolla, which is more like a tomato salad than a relish. Other side dishes can include carrot-raisin salad, marinated vegetables, and beans. Dessert is usually a nonissue—maybe fruit or ice cream.

One would think that with a coastline stretching nearly 2,200 miles, and with large Spanish and Italian populations, Argentina would have cultivated a more varied gastronomic tradition. But as one Argentine restaurateur in New York City warned me, ”There is no Argentine cuisine. It is just beef.” Maybe the Argentines’ appetite for meat has to do with the fact that it is so plentiful and cheap: Ten dollars will buy all the beef you can eat, not to mention fries, salad, soda, and dessert, at Siga la Vaca—that’s ”Follow the Cow”—outside Buenos Aires and one of the country’s hundreds of parrillas, casual restaurants specializing in steaks and barbecue. Or maybe the country’s beef consumption is simply a reflection of the quality of its beef. Federico Zorraquin Jr., CEO of Garovaglio & Zorraquin, the largest meat producer and exporter in Argentina, talks about the factors that make Argentine beef so good: a long-standing tradition of raising and improving British cattle breeds, rejection (in theory, at least) of feedlots and growth hormones, and, above all, the great sweeps of grassland that nourish the Argentine steer—1.7 miles, on average, per animal. Feeding cattle on grass makes it far leaner than its grain-fed American counterpart (which could explain why Argentina’s rate of heart disease is no greater than America’s)—yet even without flavor-enhancing marbling, Argentine beef is surprisingly tender and flavorful when properly cooked. Zorraquin also describes it as gamier. According to more than one Argentine beef-aficionado, it tastes like what American beef used to taste like.

Argentine beef is born of a countryside that a Scottish visitor, Cunninghame Graham, described in 1929 as ”all grass and sky, and sky and grass, and still more sky and grass”. The Quechua Indians called it pampa, or ”flat surface”. By this broad definition, the pampa sprawls from the Andean highlands of Jujuy, in the north, to the Rio Colorado, a major river that spans the midsection of the country. Technically, though, it refers to a smaller area stretching north and west from Buenos Aires, a fertile expanse the size of France. When the colonists arrived, the pampa held nothing but grass, the occasional _ombu _tree, and a few roving packs of Indians. Immense and empty, this land was deceptively treacherous, easier to traverse at night, navigating by the stars, than at high noon. ”A green illimitable sea”, Graham called it, ”…in which the horseman who had lost his trail was swallowed up and never heard of”.

The Spaniards quickly discovered that this land held none of the treasures they’d dreamed about as they sailed across the Atlantic. Soon after their arrival in the 1530s, most abandoned the area for the greener pastures, rich in silver and gold, of Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay. They did, however, leave some cattle and horses behind, and to these animals, the pampa was the promised land. Between the ideal climate, ample rainfall, and all that grass, it was exactly what _they _had dreamed about, if they had dreamed at all.

For hundreds of years the cattle roamed free, and the gaucho roamed with them. Fresh beef was something only he was lucky enough to eat: It wasn’t available to most Argentines until the late 19th century, when great leaps were made in farming technology (barbed wire and the windmill), transportation (the railroad and the steamship), and storage (refrigeration). Ranchers began exporting cattle to Europe. The British, masters of beef, were not impressed by the rangy import. Sensing room for improvement—and money to be made—a few British entrepreneurs traveled to Argentina, taking along their finest breeds, Hereford and Aberdeen Angus. It was then that the industry took off in a big way. Argentine ranchers, or estancieros, swiftly recognized the potential of a fine herd of British cattle, and before long, the expression ”as rich as an Argentine” was common.

The success of the estanciero did not go unnoticed. European opportunists bolted to Argentina, the population ballooned from 1.7 million in 1869 to 7.9 million by 1914, and the economy soared. Magnificent estancias—French chateaux, Spanish palaces, Palladian villas—popped up on that virgin pampa, and Buenos Aires became, with its boulevards, mansions, cafes, and deliciously opulent opera house, ”the Paris of South America”.

Buenos Aires was built on beef money. Perhaps that’s why, even today, in this sensationally cosmopolitan city, beef is still a staple. Whole neighborhoods remain devoted to the local butcher, who, with his formidable battery of saws and knives, still trims hulking carcasses down to family-friendly portions. Ernesto Orellano, owner of a carnicer’a called El Rosarino, is such a man. He started working for the former owner, Eugenio Caridarelli—”one of the best butchers in Belgrano [a neighborhood]”, a misty Orellano recalls—at age 13, delivering meat by bicycle. That was 43 years ago. Orellano has since inherited the shop, and now he upholds the standards set by his predecessor.

Further evidence of the city’s beef-centric culture can be found in its restaurant scene, or more accurately, its parrilla scene. Sure, there are plenty of places for pasta and pizza, and the ethnic dining options have dramatically improved. But in general, eating out in Buenos Aires means eating beef, whether in a rustic joint like Puerto Viejo or at the upscale Cabaña Las Lilas, all varnished wood, ranch paraphernalia, and hungry-man portions cooked on an elephantine grill. This is where people take the guests they want to impress—celebrities, dignitaries, and presidents (Bill Clinton, for one). Las Lilas is owned by Octavio Caraballo, a 20th-century beef baron. Even relaxing as asado host at his ranch, Estancia Las Lilas, near Lincoln, 200 miles from Buenos Aires, he is a magnetic presence, complete with purposeful stride and kingly cigar. Cabaña Las Lilas is only a fraction of his beef empire. Caraballo also owns the country’s fastest-growing brand of beef (the Las Lilas label can be found in markets all over Argentina as well as in Brazil, Chile, and Spain) and one of the largest bull-raising operations in the world. He has five estancias and a total of 120,000 acres. On this ranch alone, he manages 1,200 bulls and 4,500 steers with a team of 29 gauchos, most of whom, he says between puffs of his cigar, are third generation. ”We try to keep them in the family,” he explains.

Alfredo Hirsch, Octavio’s grandfather, began buying land to raise cattle in 1898, and the family became quickly established in the industry. ”We won lots of beauty contests,” Caraballo says—a modest way of disclosing the fact that his family’s cattle was recognized, time and again, at the Exposicion de Ganaderia, Agricultura e Industria International, a prestigious 15-day livestock show. In the late ’60s, the Caraballos began developing a formidable and futuristic breeding business. In other words, they started selling semen, the best that money can buy.

Touring his property—in a restored 19th-century horse-drawn carriage, no less—Caraballo introduces me to one of his prize bulls. ”That’s Hector,” he says. ”His father was a naughty old guy, didn’t follow the rules.” Caraballo predicts that cattle prices will go up in the next five years as overseas demand increases, that the supermarket will replace the beloved neighborhood butcher, and that more ranchers in Argentina will forsake old-fashioned grass feeding and adopt the easier, more efficient American-style system, at least at the end of the cycle. In other words, grain.

So now, at a time when American scientists are touting the benefits of grass-fed beef—besides having 31 percent less fat than America’s grain-fed standard, there is evidence that grass-finished cattle are less likely to be contaminated by the _E. coli _bacteria—the Argentine beef industry appears to be at a crossroads. Although beef eaters around the world are, thanks to traditionalists like Zorraquin, enjoying the taste of beef raised purely on grass, others like Caraballo see some grain feeding as inevitable.

Small ranchers like Miguel Sanchez de Bustamante, meanwhile, are weighing their options. Bustamante, a former engineer, moved five years ago with his wife, Cecilia Sere, from their Buenos Aires apartment to a 2,500-acre patch of pampa practically a stand of eucalyptus trees away from Caraballo’s champion semen operation. La Leocadia, their estancia, has been in Sere’s family for 125 years. She and Bustamante have yet to shed their urban trappings—her sensible, stylish cardigans, his corduroys, the kitchen counter cluttered with gourmet olive oils. He manages 1,000 cattle with the help of his neighbor. No gauchos.

Bustamante has begun to use ”a touch” of grain, mainly because last summer’s incessant rains ruined his pastures, but also because feeding the animal grain accelerates its growth: This means it can be sold faster, and also means it’s fattier—suited for export markets such as Japan that want marbled beef. ”It’s very difficult when you’re selling to an overseas country with years and years of habit,” he says over Sere’s sopa de la abuela, a Castilian soup of poached eggs and parmesan cheese; salpicon, a salad made from leftover asado; salad; and fresh bread. Yet Bustamante asserts that cattle will always graze on the pampa. ”The average Argentine feels beef must be grass-fed,” he says, finishing his alfajor rogel, a meringue cake layered with dulce de leche, a rich, syrupy ”milk sweet” to which Argentines are shamelessly addicted. He thinks that eventually two markets will emerge in Argentina: One for those who like the low-fat meat and honest, grass-fed flavor, and another for the overseas market, which prefers grain-fed beef. He even sees people asking for different types of meat the way they’d ask for styles of wine. ”Customers are the ones who will finally decide. We’re proud of our grass-fed beef, but we have to be practical.” He takes a last swallow of coffee, zips his coat, pulls on a pair of gloves, and heads out the door. His cattle need tending.

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