Steak of The Stonemason – Bife De Albañil

So today, we are doing the Steak of the Stonemason, a recipe I really like. Sort of an elegant stonemason. I’m gonna get a knife to cut it. So here, I have two sharpening tools. This one is sort of to sharpen it a bit more. So basically, you do it towards you. Here, in this part of the sharpener, you have this iron to protect you. And this one, it’s to sort of finish it up. So you just go from the bottom to the top from both sides. Well, it’s like 45 degrees, a bit less, 30 degrees. So it’s not like that. It’s sort of really slipping. So you don’t hurt the blade, eh? And it doesn’t need much. This is not to sharp a knife that is dead. This is to resharp that last little bit of light you need in the knife to cut, okay? I’m gonna take this part that is not very tender. It’s a bit chewy. This is Tenderloin. And this tiny bit here. And we’re gonna cut a slice about this big. I’m gonna keep this one for my next recipe. This is the center. This is the tournedo part. But instead of cutting tournedos like this, I’m gonna cut it very carefully. I’m gonna open it like a leaf. You see? So what I need is like a piece of paper width, really. Great. So that’s ready. Now, I’m gonna cut my sweet potatoes with a mandoline, skin on. I think we have enough. So I’m gonna go into the caldero here. We’re using sunflower oil. Stir them until they’re nicely cooked, eh? A little bit of paper to get the oil out. That one is too burnt. Goes back to the fire. I’m gonna cut now a bit of the pancetta. For that, I have a perfect knife, which is this very, very long one. I have a very large pancetta. Look! As long as my knife. What I like about this knife is that you cut in one go. You don’t do this, like if you were sawing. You start there and then you don’t hurt the meat. You see, it’s perfectly cut. So first I make it all one go. And then in the second go, start here. Oh, and I’m finished Ha! Off we go. Put this to cook slowly here. Well, I didn’t throw the piece of pancetta that fell in the floor. Why? I’m not in a restaurant. I’m not in a hotel. I’m not serving public. I’m just cooking for myself. And every time I throw something to the floor, I eat it. There’s a saying in Argentina, that a clean pig never gets fat, you know, I’m not very fat, but I can say that I’m doing well. That’s because I eat everything that falls on the floor, but never in a restaurant. Put a little olive oil in the plancha for my steak. I’m gonna cook it right here. Olive oil when I need something more sturdy, and butter when I need elegance. Salt to my steak, only on one side, some sea salt. Here we go. And start cutting my avocado. I always oil things as they cook. So it glides under the meat and it gets a nicer crust. I like that, because if not, it can sort of stick as well. And since I want to turn it fast, I oil it. In a plancha, never on a grill. So I’m gonna cut the tomato sort of like in julienne. So this is ready. I have here all the ingredients I need. Okay. So I’m gonna use one of these guys, so delicious. Then I’m gonna use a bit of the tomatoes, then some avocados. Now I’m gonna mix a bit, my cream. So it’s sort of hard. Now a bit of the potatoes, sweet potatoes. You want them crunchy, like that. Bit of chili flakes, so it’s peppery. I’m gonna go there and get a knife. I want to use one of these. Okay, use this one. And now I’m gonna roll it. It’s a bit of a mess, and some of it goes out. It’s good. And that’s the way it goes to the table. So this recipe, quite funny story, is this famous chef, Wolfgang Puck in America, and Germán Martitegui, the Argentine chef, worked with him in the 80s. And Germán brought it to my kitchen. Then once Wolfgang came to my restaurant in Miami, and he said, “What should I eat?” And I said, “Well, I’m gonna do something for you.” And I did this for him, without saying anything. And I put it on the table for him. He looked at it, he looked at me, and he ate it. And we never talked about it. So did he remember it? I think he did. Why did I have it? I think he didn’t understand. So I think that this is a recipe that is from Wolfgang Puck. We serve it like this, with some fries on the side, and why not a bit more of cream because the cream is very important. It brings wetness to the potatoes. They’re crunchy, you see. You just go like this and you eat a bit of the cream. It’s delicious. And you use this knife to eat it, because when you open it, it will collapse.