KL’s MakanHouse serves Melaka Portuguese and Kelantanese soul food

MakanHouse is possibly one of the most unassuming treasure troves you’ll find in KL – a repository of family recipes and a holding place for the cuisines of two cultures, Melaka Portuguese and Kelantanese. This small restaurant is so much more than it might seem at first glance.

August 29, 2017 Eating Out, Food

By SUZANNE LAZAROO

Its rustic brick walls cradle much-loved antiques from the private collection of owners, husband-and-wife team Mark Felix and Samihah Mat Taib (known to all as Ming) – from the floral-painted Peranakan metal trays to the weathered wooden cupboard that houses the ulam for the lunchtime buffet, to the old doors that have found new life as shelves – there’s history everywhere you look, and so much charm.

At the same time, MakanHouse is a testament to the couple’s creative, can-do approach, breathing new life into old things – they did all the renovations themselves, installing the hanging rope swing that pulls up to one table, turning an old bathtub into a modish chair and rattan bubu fish traps into lighting fixtures, and combining old sewing tables and large floor tiles into distinctive tables.

A drummer for almost 35 years – including with 80s icons, country band Southern Reign and now with Bongga Bongga and Babuyramos – Felix, 50, grew up in Melaka’s Portuguese Settlement.

Parents Flora and Patrick Felix weren’t only good cooks at home – they spent 20 years spreading the culinary culture of the Melaka Portuguese community as guest chefs at various restaurants and hotels.

Flora (left) is always at MakanHouse to provide taste tests and advice for Patrick Felix (standing) and Samihah Mat Taib or Ming.

“I have nine siblings, and they all cook except the youngest two,” said Felix. “In fact, my brother Clarence is the executive chef at the City Bayview Hotel Malacca. And at MakanHouse, my mother is here pretty much every day, running the quality control line!”

Ming, 41, has a similar story, of a childhood immersed in a love of food. “My mother has always sold nasi dagang back home in Kelantan, every Ramadan,” she said. Along with her sisters, the cooking became a family affair; Ming has spent almost 20 years in the F&B industry, but on the management side.

“I always thought Melaka Portuguese cooking is very labour-intensive – but then I saw the Kelantanese dishes like nasi kerabu and nasi dagang, and they are even more so!” said Felix. “Basically, we want to preserve as many of the old recipes as possible, some are in danger of disappearing.”

The couple has created a menu that celebrates their individual culinary heritages, and distills a wealth of family recipes and culinary history into a menu with wide appeal – which is why the list of mains is titled “Banda Hilir to Kota Bharu”. The cuisines are complementary too, with the Melaka Portuguese dishes being more redolent of spices, while herbs shine brighter in the Kelantanese dishes.

At MakanHouse, you’ll find either Ming or Felix cooking, assisted by another chef during the day – because that’s when the couple does their daily marketing.

“We don’t work with suppliers. I wanted the freedom to choose only the best, only what’s fresh, and that means I have to go and buy it myself,” said Mark. “It costs us in terms of time, but it’s not that much more expensive than going through a supplier.”

If that means sitting next to a gunny sack of buah keluak (mangrove nuts) at the market, sorting them one by one to find the right size and heft – so be it. Keluak curry is one of the most labour-intensive dishes in the Melaka Portuguese culinary repertoire – you need to soak the buah keluak for several days in ash-filled water, to render them edible. “We soak ours for three days, so that the keluak is fully-hydrated and moist,” said Felix.

The menu at MakanHouse showcases long, slow cooking with a confident and experienced hand, in addition to the careful curation of ingredients; rempahs and sambals are made from scratch.

The bountiful lunch spread available daily at MakanHouse.

Breakfast sees brown paper-wrapped offerings like nasi lemak (RM5), nasi dagang gulai ikan (RM12), and nasi kerabu with spice-fried chicken (RM15). A small lunch buffet combines dishes from both the Kelantanese and Melaka Portuguese repertoires – this is where you can also sample some dishes not on the ala carte menu, like the asam-tinged ambilla curry made with large hunks of salted fish, and the ayam masak lemak which is so richly flavoured, well-balanced and fragrant that you may well end up spooning every last bit of gravy from your plate.

It may be served in a set-up reminiscent of a chap fan (mixed rice) shop, but the dishes on the line showcase the same hallmarks of laborious prep and good ingredients as those on the ala carte menu.

Commando chips, made with the restaurant’s own chilli paste rather than 
commercial cili boh – yes, it makes a huge difference

From that menu, look out for the Commando Chips (RM10), which is rather filling for an appetiser, but worth the extra time at the gym later. It’s an ubiquitous dish, especially at small neighbourhood bars – but try MakanHouse’s version of the fried potato-ikan bilis-peanuts-sambal concoction, and you’ll see why a sambal made from scratch makes all the difference. “We don’t use things like cili boh here, we make our own chilli paste,” said Felix.

The unusual salted fish ambilla curry.

Those well-soaked buah keluak find themselves in an intense, thick curry (RM18) with a hint of tang; this sourness balances the earthy, somewhat bitter taste of the black pulp within the hard shell (an opening thoughtfully etched into each hard shell, so you can just scoop it out).

It’s an acquired taste for the uninitiated – but once you’ve acquired it, you’ll seek it out. The curry’s availability depends on whether the restaurant can get the mangrove nuts, so call ahead if you’re coming just for this.

A dulang (tray) of rice satisfaction awaits the hungry (you’ll need at least three people to finish it) – for just RM25, you get a platter of rice tinged blue with bunga telang, served with fish-and-kerisik-stuffed solok lada and spiced, fried chicken, a mound of finely-marbled nasi dagang with gulai ikan tongkol and white rice, with another piece of fried chicken. Ringing these are condiments ranging from salted egg halves to crunchy keropok ikan to the intense, fermented flavours of budu, to two different kinds of sambal nyiur (coconut sambal).

For diners who appreciate a little taste of everything, the dulang of nasi kerabu, 
nasi dagang and nasi berlauk showcases some of Kelantan’s best culinary offerings.

Laced with mustard seeds and vinegar, debal curry is a mainstay of Melaka Portuguese cuisine.

“Both are made with coconut, but the one with the nasi kerabu also has flaked fish, shallots and lemongrass, while the one with the nasi dagang is made with coriander seeds and shallots,” said Ming.

Debal curry (RM15) is a hallmark of Melaka Portuguese cuisine, and the version at MakanHouse is cooked with chicken. Its spices are as complex, layered and front-and-centre as you could wish, but the curry is not overly spicy.

The prawn and pineapple curry (RM22) is another good order – not as thick in terms of consistency, but with a good hit of flavour from the sweet, fresh pineapples, and made with fresh, bouncy prawns. The upside of a less-thick curry is that you can pretend it’s a soup, and indulge in a bit of slurping …

Portuguese baked fish – juicy, perfectly cooked, and really flavourful.

The baked fish here is a stellar example of the dish – always fresh, just-cooked so it retains a moist, juicy appeal, slathered in one of the house-made rempahs that bring to mind home and hearth.

Choose from a list including cencaru and slices of salmon, but the siakap (RM26) is a personal pick, because of its juicy, ample flesh and central bone. You can have the fish with “Portuguese sauce”, sambal, sambal petai or air asam.

Also on the menu, a dish which is less about the two main lineages traced, and more about a family favourite – salted egg sotong (RM18), swathed in a creamy, notably garlicky sauce studded with curry leaves.

“We’ve also got some Western dishes like pasta and a burger, for people who don’t want to eat spiced curries,” said Felix. Even here though, the familiy recipes get a look-in, with one of the pastas doused in debal curry.

The cendol is served with a charming little cup of ice, that slowly melts into the sweet treat.

To finish the meal, you can opt for a very good sago gula Melaka (RM7), its coconut milk bath tinged with a hint of salt to balance the sticky palm sugar syrup, or cendol, the glutinous green strands laced with durian (RM7) or not (RM5). Or, head to the small cake counter to check if Felix’s sister, Phyllis has baked her buttery sugee cake.

After all, MakanHouse is a family affair, in every sense of the phrase.

MakanHouse

5 Jalan Bangsar
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2201 7997
Open Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am to 10pm and Mondays, 10am to 4pm

7.5 /10

The Good

• You can taste the wholesome, thoughtful appeal of home cooking in each dish, and everything is well-balanced.
• Hard-to-find dishes like keluak curry are available here.
• The freshness of the produce is apparent, especially the seafood.

The Bad

• Everything is made fresh, so you may have to wait a little longer for your food.

http://www.star2.com/food/eating-out/2017/08/29/restaurant-review-makanhouse/

The Chris Isaak Hour - Glen Campbell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhtExv5v_Fg



Also:-

• Country's 'Rhinestone Cowboy' Glen Campbell dies a...
• Glen Campbell - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
• Glen Campbell In Concert In Sioux Falls
• Glen Campbell - The Man and his Music
• Glen Campbell - "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"
• Glen Campbell - Amazing Grace (Live)
• Interview with Alice Cooper on late musician Glen ...
• Glen Campbell - Gentle on My Mind (terrific guitar...
• BBC Obituary: Glen Campbell (1936 - 2017)
• Country star Glen Campbell dies at 81
• The Chris Isaak Hour - Glen Campbell

Diabetes, the killer of hearts

When it comes to diabetes, they also risk developing complications such as heart and kidney diseases.

Again, a well-known fact that has been trumpeted over and over again.

August 27, 2017 

By Star2.com

Those with diabetes have a two to four times higher risk of suffering from heart diseases such as heart failure, heart attack or peripheral vascular disease. Photo: 123rf.com

But to the frustration of doctors such as National Heart Institute (better known by its Malay acronym IJN) chief clinical officer and senior consultant cardiologist Datuk Dr Aizai Azan Abdul Rahim, Malaysians are still slow to waking up to the ugly truth of such diseases and taking charge of their health.

Ideally, he says, prevention is better than cure.

“But people still don’t care. At IJN, we see the aftermath of diabetes.

“About 60% of diabetics will die from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), while about 40% die from end stage kidney disease,” he says.

He adds that diabetics have a two to four times higher risk of suffering from heart diseases such as heart failure, heart attack or peripheral vascular disease, compared to a non-diabetic, while the risk of suffering a stroke is twice as much.

“If possible, we don’t want to see all of this developing.

“All the risk factors are going up, so CVD is still the number one cause of death in Malaysia. The cause of death of one in four Malaysians is CVD (including stroke).”

According to Dr Aizai, about 60 of diabetics will die from CVDs while about 40 die from end stage kidney disease. Photo: Handout

The National Health and Morbidity Survey 2015 painted a bleak picture of the health of Malaysians, with 3.5 million having diabetes.

Of concern is that 53% of diabetics above the age of 18 did not even know they had the disease.

It also revealed that 9.6 million people aged above 18 had high cholesterol levels, with two out of five of them not aware of their condition.

When it came to obesity, 3.3 million Malaysians were obese and 5.6 million were overweight.

It was the same when it came to children, where an estimated one million of those aged below 18 were obese.

There was a slight improvement in hypertension numbers, where 30.3% or 6.1 million people aged 18 and above had the medical condition, compared to 32.7% in 2011.

Again, 17.2% with hypertension were not aware of their condition.

Clinical practice guidelines set in 2015 had further tightened the targets for the control of type 2 diabetes, including bringing HBA1c to less or equivalent to 6.5%, triglycerides to less or equal to 1.7mmol/L, and LDL cholesterol to less or equal to 2.6mmol/L.

However, if the diabetic patient has overt cardiovascular disease, their target for LDL cholesterol is less or equal to 1.8 mmol/L.

One’s blood pressure was recommended to be 135/75mmHg, while exercise of moderate intensity was recommended to be 150 minutes weekly.

Dr Aizai says because of the lower HBA1c criteria, about 80% of Malaysian diabetics do not have their blood glucose levels under control.

For IJN patients who have diabetes, he says they are more compliant when it comes to taking their medication.

It is, however, a challenge to get them to comply to lifestyle changes such as regular exercise and a healthy diet.

“Less than half are fully compliant,” he says.

“They don’t want to stop smoking. They still don’t want to exercise and still want to eat at the mamak. It is difficult to achieve compliance because you have to put in your own effort.”

He adds that IJN also has visiting endocrinologists from Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Diabetic patients who do not have their own endocrinologists and have poor control over their disease can be referred to them.

Dieticians are also on hand to provide the necessary advice.

Dr Aizai says that the best is for a patient to be given holistic treatment, where the doctor looks at other possible side effects of diabetes including eye disease, kidney problems and peripheral artery disease (PAD), aside from treating the heart problem.

PAD is a disease where plaque builds up in the arteries.

This plaque can harden and narrow arteries over time, limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your organs and other parts of your body.

It normally affects the arteries in the legs.

Dr Aizai adds that a test can be done to see if blood pressure is equal in one’s arms and legs. The test is called Ankle Brachial Index (ABI).

A difference in pressure indicates that there is possibility of a narrowing or blockage.

“The next step is to take an ultrasound of the lower limbs or go for a CT angiogram to determine the location and severity of the blockage,” he says.

“If the blockage is significant, then we can do balloon angioplasty, stenting or leg bypass surgery. It is part of treatment.”

Referrals are given when it comes to kidney and eye diseases as IJN does not have specialists on hand to treat these complications.

“Diabetes is a metabolic condition. It affects multiple organs. Normally, a problem in one organ, like the heart, is just the tip of the iceberg,” he adds.

“It’s the terrible twins. The ones which are closely linked to diabetes are hypertension and high cholesterol.”

Dealing with complications

Dr Aizai says that diabetics tend to develop coronary artery disease at a younger age.

They also tend to have diffuse narrowing or blockages in more than one artery, resulting in multiple stents having to be placed.

“Most people with diabetes who get a heart attack also don’t exhibit the normal clinical symptoms,” he says, adding that this is because diabetics have already experienced nerve damage, “numbing” them to the pain.

“They will probably say they feel extremely tired or experience shortness of breath.

“As a result, many present themselves late as they don’t realise they have a heart problem.

“I always tell patients to check their blood sugar because they may think feeling weak is a sign of hyper- or hypoglycaemia. So, if your levels are normal, then there is another reason.”

Although treatment for diabetics with a heart condition is the same as non-diabetics, he says that diabetic patients are at risk of developing complications, leading to a longer stay at the hospital.

Because they also tend to stay longer in order to normalise their blood glucose levels, which will usually spike due to the stress of surgery, they will also have an increased risk of contracting hospital-based infections.

“They are also more prone to developing a second heart attack,” he says.

Diabetes, Dr Aizai says, promotes atherosclerosis, which is the build-up of plaque in the arteries.

Other conditions that work against a diabetic include being more prone to developing blood clots, the inability to produce enough nitric oxide to dilate and expand blood vessels for more oxygen supply, and inflammation that damages the blood vessels.

He adds that the danger of diabetes is that the disease has probably manifested itself in a person for some time before a diagnosis.

“It is never a ‘fresh’ case. It is probably five to 10 years before it is clinically detectable,” he says, adding that early screening is important.

“Once you are diabetic, you are already considered to have a coronary artery disease risk.

“The survival curve is equivalent to someone who does not have diabetes, but already has experienced a heart attack.”

---

Datuk Dr Aizai Azan Abdul Rahim is IJN Chief Clinical Officer and Senior Consultant Cardiologist. This article is brought to you by IJN.

http://www.star2.com/health/wellness/2017/08/27/diabetes-the-killer-of-hearts/

A tender moment – Part 2

The first thing to note is that although ageing does tenderise meat, not all tenderised beef necessarily tastes that great, especially if tenderisation is achieved by quick ageing tricks (or by pounding or mincing the meat as noted earlier).

August 27, 2017 

By CHRIS CHAN

Aged beef given a quick turn in the pan. Photos: Chris Chan

Read Part 1

After several experiments at home, I can confirm that the best tasting beef actually requires more than just tenderising – the flavours which make beef stand out can be absent if tenderisation is stimulated too quickly.

Also, the breed of cattle also has a very significant taste impact. So although the texture can be smooth and soft, without the correct balance of flavour compounds, beef which is tenderised quickly does not necessarily make a sensational dish, and may need help from a good gravy, for example.

Proteolysis, or why enzymes matter

The best beef for eating is undeniably dry-aged beef – that is, beef hung on a hook in a cool room for several weeks to dry. Alternatively, slabs of meat are cut and placed on racks in special coolers – sometimes the racks are made of salt to help extract moisture while dry-ageing.

This loss of moisture apparently concentrates flavours and the long wait while drying allows more time for the natural enzymes in beef to tenderise the meat by breaking down the muscle fibres gently.

Only the best beef is dry-aged as an even distribution of fat in the meat is required to prevent toughening – over 30% of the original weight of the meat is commonly lost during the drying process.

To promote tenderness, some producers also dust the beef with the spores of a psychrophilic (cold-loving) fungus called thamnidium elegans – the fungus adds further enzymes to the meat, which can further improve flavour.

Prepared external proteases.

The side effect of the fungal and other bacterial action during dry-ageing is that the surface of the meat can turn green. Before sale, this unsightly greenish layer needs to be trimmed off, thereby increasing further the cost of such dry-aged beef.

Beef naturally contains endogenous (internally-present) enzymes which act as proteases to promote proteolysis – two particular families of enzymatic proteases are important for ageing, called calpains (including calpastatins) and cathepsins.

Both enzyme families are fascinating in their own right – apart from tenderising meat, they are also crucial for the survival of mammals!

The way they work is pretty complex (involving calcium activated subsystems, pH levels, temperatures, et cetera) but in summary, one can assume that certain members of the calpain family of enzymes degrade the proteins on the Z-lines of myofilaments (this unlinks the chained-up sarcomeres) while members of the cathepsin family degrade actin-myosin linkages and myosin itself in the thick myofilaments within the sarcomeres.

Adding to the complexity is research which has found that calpastatins within the calpain family can significantly impair proteolysis – it is feasible that enzymatic tenderisation cannot begin until other members of the calpain family can fragment the structure of calpastatins beforehand and this might also explain why certain cuts of meat can never tenderise adequately via proteolysis (due to innate high calpastatin content).

So in theory, if it is possible to stimulate proteolysis via the enzymatic activity of cathepsins and calpains (but not calpastatins), the end result should be tender beef.

This was quite an easy experiment to do at home – all one needs to know are the optimal temperatures for the endogenous protease enzymes. And some quick research established that the optimal temperature range for calpains is around 39-40°C and 49-50°C for cathepsins.

Kiwi tenderised the beef, but gave it a weird flavour – a rich sauce rescued it.

At this point, I should stress that you should not try the following experiments at home, especially if you are living in Asia. You probably do not know this but most consumer beef in Asia actually comes from India, which is the world’s largest exporter of beef, beating Brazil, Australia and the United States in 2015 – in fact, beef is India’s largest agricultural export item in 2016, ahead of basmati rice, followed by spices and other kinds of rice.

India’s beef is derived mainly from the water buffalo, a wholly different breed of ungulate than European bovine stock – and therefore the following results may not apply.

Also, you should never cook raw meat at such low temperatures unless you have sufficient culinary expertise – there are just too many risks with bacterial and fungal contamination, even if you are careful.

Experiment 1: Accelerating proteolysis in fresh meat

The first proteolysis test was done using a simple sous vide (warm water bath) device – and a thick piece of rib-eye steak fresh from the local butcher was selected.

Note that the optimal proteolytic temperatures are also applicable for pathogenic bacteria, and therefore the surfaces of the meat were seared at high temperatures to kill off any surface germs and fungi before sealing in the sous vide bag. This searing was done as quickly as possible to kill the bacteria on the outside without cooking the meat.

The sous vide bag of beef was then immersed in water pre-heated to 39°C and left at that temperature for 60 minutes – this promotes proteolysis via calpains (and as it was rib-eye, there was not much calpastatin content in the meat). Then the temperature was raised to 49°C and then left for another hour to stimulate the action of cathepsins.

Finally, the temperature was raised to 54°C and the meat left to cook to medium rare for another 90 minutes. At the end, the meat was seasoned with more salt and pepper and seared quickly again in hot butter till a thin brown crust developed all around the steak.

Beef aged for seven days.

This is not just to improve taste but also to kill off any surface bacteria missed during the start of the experiment.

The resulting meat was indeed very tender – but to be quite honest, it still lacked the flavour of really good aged beef and I had to whip up some accompanying girolle gravy to compensate for the lack of flavour depth, so it still eventually ended up as a tasty experiment for the family.

The obvious conclusion reached is that highly-accelerated proteolysis is not the solution to achieve the flavour of good aged beef although it can accomplish the target of tenderness.

As an aside, the official scale used to measure the tenderness of meat is the Warner-Braztler shear force method – as I do not have the equipment, objective results of this test are not available.

However, for comparison purposes, I had also cut a slice off from the original steak and fried it as a control texture sample. Everyone agreed that the untreated meat was significantly tougher in the mouth – so accelerated proteolysis via enzymatic processes does have a significant impact on texture, at least subjectively.

Since we may now have established a way to achieve tenderness in beef, flavour is now the major consideration, and so the next stop might appear to be lipolysis – the breakdown of fats (rather than proteins) via other endogenous enzymes (such as lipases) plus bacterial action. And perhaps also oxidation as well – both lipolysis by bacterial action and oxidation require time to take effect.

However, the optimal temperature of lipases appears to be between 37°C and 50°C, so the earlier sous vide experiment with protease stimulation would have also stimulated lipolysis via endogenous enzymes.

Therefore the difference in taste between quick proteolysis/lipolysis and proper ageing might appear to be mainly due to additional bacterial action and/or oxidation.

Regarding these factors, I was not very keen on promoting unknown bacterial growth in meats in an uncontrolled environment such as a refrigerator which is opened and closed many times a day (thereby exposing internal contents to external bacteria and fungi) – so this issue became a little problematic.

Also, lipolysis was already promoted in the first experiment and it had not helped the flavour much.

Experiments 2 & 3: External enzymatic proteases

At this point, my chemist daughter came to the rescue – her last birthday present to me was a comprehensive multi-part tome called Modernist Cuisine, which I love reading, and in there was a suggestion of how to age beef within a few days by the judicious use of fish sauce.

This provided an alternative route to lipolysis – as the introduction of external enzymes may be significant in the development of flavour (as seen by the use of thamnidium elegans mould during commercial beef ageing). And fortunately, I had brought over some fish sauce from London several months ago.

Fish sauce is particularly interesting because proteases are very widely used in the making of fish products – for example, fish is often commercially descaled these days using enzymes and fish meal is also derived from enzymes acting on waste fish products.

Fish sauce-tenderised meat, after three days; darker fish sauce works better.

There is an interesting history about how fish sauce came about – and it seems that it was probably by accident when someone observed a fish caught in a rock pool … which had started digesting itself over time.

The first fish sauce in Europe was probably garum, which was allegedly derived from a fish called garos by the Greeks; garum was used as a cooking ingredient probably before the 7th century BC. The Romans loved using garum in their food as it was affordable and easily transportable, despite the rather strong odour.

Garum and other fish sauces were traditionally made by fermenting fish proteins in salty water using endogenous fish enzymes such as trypsin, chymotrypsin and cathepsins – a slow process which can take around three years.

As such, modern fish sauces are now made by applying exogenous (external) enzymes such as bromelain, ficin, papain or other commercially-produced enzyme concoctions such as Protamex, Protex 51FP and Neutrase – these enzymes can fully hydrolyse (ferment in water) fish sauce within a few short weeks.

It is therefore an interesting, very plausible idea to use these same enzymes to speed up ageing in beef. As another parallel side experiment, I decided to also tenderise and age beef using a more conventional proteolytic enzyme – and I have chosen actinidin from the kiwi fruit, mainly because there are no papayas (papain) or pineapples (bromelain) easily available here in rural France.

The experiments for producing aged beef at home then continued. Even though it was suggested in the Modernist Cuisine to use 3g of fish sauce to each 100g of rib-eye beef, an earlier experiment proved that this was too much with Limousin beef.

So I used 2ml of fish sauce plus 1ml of water for each 100g of beef, coating the mixture evenly over the meat and sealing it in a food bag. I also found that it works best with darker fish sauces (for unknown reasons).

Another bag was prepared using a blitzed-up peeled kiwi fruit, glazing another rib-eye steak with the kiwi paste before sealing it in another food bag. Both bags were left in the fridge for at least three days to allow the enzymes to work in a cool environment and also introduce an element of slow lipolytic ageing (hopefully).

The initial results were genuinely interesting – after extracting the fish sauce-treated meat from its bag, the steak was patted dry on kitchen paper, and seasoned with salt and pepper. The surfaces were then quickly seared over a hot pan to kill off any surface bacteria and the steak placed in a glass dish to cook slowly in an oven set at 100°C – the meat was monitored until the internal temperature reached 54°C.

This gave a chance for a final burst of proteolysis from both the internal and external enzymes. Another little fry in hot butter afterwards (just to add in some more Maillard reaction flavours) completed the experiment. There is no doubt that the fish sauce-treated steak was tenderised very nicely, despite only three days of treatment and it also tasted significantly better than the fresh meat cooked purely using endogenous enzymes via the sous vide method earlier.

However, due to having an extremely sensitive nose, I was also aware of an indistinct and very faint fishy odour – this was not noticed at all by anyone else, so it is probably just me.

Regardless, it was still definitely an improvement.

Next was the steak treated with kiwi fruit actinidin – which was washed, dried and then cooked exactly the same way as for the fish sauce-treated meat. The result was also very tender beef but it was unfortunately infused with a rather weird flavour, probably from other compounds in the kiwi fruit. So this method would appear to work only if the intent is to cook tender beef in strong-flavoured sauces – by itself, the meat tasted too weird for me.

Experiment 4: Home dry-ageing

Notwithstanding my earlier comment about the risks of bacterial growth while attempting to dry age beef in a home refrigerator, curiosity meant that I could not resist one last experiment to see if internal bacterial activity and oxidation were significant in the development of aged beef flavour.

So I sprinkled lots of salt on all sides of a rib-eye steak and left it exposed on a tray in the refrigerator for a week – the salt was meant to curtail bacterial activity on the surfaces of the meat so bacterial action would be confined only to the inside of the meat.

After seven days, the meat was taken out and prepared in exactly the same way as the first sous vide test – except that this beef was left to dry-age by itself for a week beforehand.

The tenderness of the extra dry-aged meat from this final test was again significantly improved although the meat flavour was only marginally better than the first experiment with fresh beef – apart from the fattiest parts of the steak, which seemed to have more improvement in taste.

A hunk of fresh rib eye.

But overall, my subjective view is that it was not worth the effort (or the risk) to dry-age meat in such a way in the refrigerator – so if you have been thinking of specially making room to age beef in your fridge, then perhaps you now do not need to bother.

Summary of speed-ageing results (subjective observations)

All the experiments confirm that both endogenous and exogenous enzyme proteases do undoubtedly tenderise beef and the actions of the enzymes can also be significantly speeded up. However, accelerated meat flavour improvement appears to be a more complex matter and it may even be impossible with the meat of certain breeds of cattle due to genetics.

Overall, my subjective opinion is that the best result (with Limousin beef) was derived from using exogenous proteases from fish sauce to age the meat faster (while introducing new meaty flavours via external enzymes) – my daughter also said it compared well to aged beef from good London steak houses.

All the other experiments also worked well in terms of tenderising beef, although the use of kiwi fruit actinidin was the least successful due to the unwanted flavours introduced by other kiwi fruit compounds.

Regardless, all the experiments ended up with tender, enjoyable steaks – and they were considerably improved on the dinner plate by some homemade French forest mushroom gravy. If you need the recipe for the gravy, please let me know.

http://www.star2.com/food/food-news/2017/08/27/tender-moment-part-2/

A tender moment – Part 1

One somewhat odd disadvantage of living in rural France is, quite honestly, the extreme freshness of much of the produce. 

August 13, 2017 

By CHRIS CHAN

A piece of raw ribeye steak. Photo: VisualHunt/YourBestDigs

Wherever possible, we like to get our food from local markets and organic stalls (or we sometimes pick the fruits directly from trees and bushes during the seasons) – this means great greens and fruits, though the downside is that we have to eat the stuff quickly before they go off due to the (mostly) untreated nature of the produce.

Not having a huge freezer means we cannot order a side of beef or lamb from a farmer – so this means weekly trips by car to get meats from the butcher in the next village.

Sometimes, I prefer walking the distance of 5.5km each way there and back with a chiller bag in the rucksack – the scenery is lovely and the 11km walk is often exhilarating (though one has to watch out for snakes in summer) while anticipating the taste of homemade pates, sausages, rillettes de porc and other stuff on arrival home.

The bummer is that the butcher gets his meat fresh from local farms and this means his beef is not really that aged.

Eating fresh beef is generally not terribly enjoyable as the muscle structure of beef tends to be tough, even for steak cuts like tenderloin, and therefore beef generally needs ageing to soften it – the ageing process also develops the delicious flavours of meat.

Most of the local beef here in my rural part of France is aged for only a couple of weeks or less before sale – and this explains why dishes based on local beef are often stews cooked for hours to soften the muscle tissues. This is quite regrettable as I usually dislike such overcooked meat.

A meat ageing cellar. Beef generally needs ageing to soften it – the ageing process also develops
the delicious flavours of meat. Photo: VisualHunt/Dottorpeni

There is of course very good aged beef available in France, but for me this involves a 50km trip to a big, sprawling town – and although I like beef, I do not enjoy doing a 100km round trip to pay three or four times the price for a piece of meat.

Also, I am not such an ardent, picky gourmet that making such a trip makes sense, especially if there is some scientific way to make fresh local beef taste better.

The breed matters

Having lived in London for many years, my preferred steaks there are rib-eyes and they tend to come from Angus cattle bred mostly in Scotland – they are succulent, flavourful with a good balance of fat and meat.

Travelling around Europe meant tasting awesome breeds like Chianina, Simmental and Charolais – all stunningly delicious meats, though the best beef in Europe might be the massive rib-eyes called chuletón from the Rubia Gallega cattle in the Basque region of Spain.

And then of course, there is the ubiquitous wagyu beef (derived from various breeds), originally from Kobe, Japan and now also other countries – very fine meat but perhaps a little too precious for me.

What defines good beef? Apart from breed, there is a very strong link between how long meat has been aged after slaughter and the taste. Photo: VisualHunt/BrownGuacamole

Clearly, the genetics of the various breeds matter very much and therefore good tasting beef is not only just about ageing.

So to clarify the situation, the aim of this investigation is to examine ways to maximise the best texture and flavour from any breed in the shortest possible time.

In this case, the breed available at my local butcher is Limousin supplied from farms close to the region – a good enough breed but perhaps not the finest in the world for dining. Better results may well be achieved if I had access to Chianina or Angus – but I do not.

A little aside about consumption

Although it might sound like a trifling first world problem quibbling about the taste of beef, in reality the simple life here is reasonably pleasant – and I am just curious about the biochemistry of how to make steaks better.

However, even here it can be seen that the global culture of consumerism seems very much based on keeping people profoundly but vaguely discontented.

The unstated insidious intent appears to be keeping people distractedly dissatisfied – wearing down our scepticism and resistance until we finally buy the glitzy products or unnecessary artifices marketed on TV, newspapers, magazines, the internet, et cetera.

Then we find that such goods are pointless (perhaps even somewhat unhealthy), can never fulfil our expectations – and then we feel even more disenchanted and need to buy something else to compensate.

Living in a remote area does help to quantify things as it is simple to use distance as a measure of marginal utility or desirability – thus far, it has never been worth travelling 50km to eat fried chicken or a burger, though I might eat fried chicken once every few months if there is a shop less than 100m from home.

The irony of course is that I would probably never want to live in such a place – but we are just talking abstract quantification here.

The same unsatisfactory situation is also true with nutrition – the constant bombardment of “health news” keeps people confused, anxious and desirous of “better nutrition” solutions, notwithstanding the probability that over 85% of such “news” is actually sponsored in one way or another by various factions of the food industry.

I suppose the idea is to keep people muddled enough to keep ingesting bad food while simultaneously persuading them to buy expensive “healthier” options. Either way people just end up consuming more – and that seems to be the only thing that matters.

Firstly, what is meat?

Returning to the subject, the desire for good meat got me looking into what defines good beef – and apart from breed, there is a very strong link between how long meat has been aged after slaughter and the price (and therefore by implication the taste).

So it makes sense to find out what happens when beef is left to age after slaughter and also to investigate if there are any scientific tricks to get the same tasty aged effect using the limited resources available in a rural setting. This soon got very fascinating indeed.

We need to start with understanding what meat really is – we all know it is muscle tissue of some kind and it would be useful to know about the types of muscles and how they work.

image: http://www1.star2.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/str2_curious130817_jg_5.jpg

Basic structure of skeletal muscle.

Muscle cells are known as myocytes – they range from several millimetres to over 10cm in length and between 10 to 100 micrometres in width. There are three kinds of muscles: smooth muscle, cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle – and each have very different functions.

Smooth muscle is usually managed autonomously; that is, without any conscious effort, and examples are the stomach and intestines. Cardiac muscle is another specialised muscle found in the myocardium of the heart – and it fortunately also functions autonomously as otherwise mammals would have to continuously think about making their hearts beat, even while sleeping.

The only muscles over which mammals can exert control are the skeletal muscles – which are the muscles mammals use to walk, run, chew, swim, climb trees, et cetera. They are also usually the animal muscle (meat) that humans generally prefer to eat so this is what we will focus on.

Muscles in almost all vertebrates are formed of myofibrils and sarcomeres. Myofibrils are strands of muscle fibres made up of alternate thin and thick filaments called myofilaments which are repeated as patterns of muscle tissue along the whole length of the muscle fibre.

The thin myofilaments are mostly made up of a protein called actin bound into little columns by another protein called nebulin. Integral to the thin filaments are also the proteins tropomyosin and a complex group of three proteins known as troponin – more on this a little later.

The thick myofilaments consist mainly of a protein called myosin which in turn is interlaced with another protein titin.

As mentioned, thin and thick strands of myofilaments overlap and alternate with each other along a single myofibril. Groups of myofibrils in turn are organised so that they all have their thin and thick sections of myofilaments aligned in the same direction – this gives rise to the pattern of light and dark bands seen in muscle tissue under a microscope.

Each sub-section between two dark bands (known as Z lines) is known as a sarcomere. There is also the M line, which is a ring of myomesin proteins encircling the middle sections of thick myofilaments.

Large groupings of myofibrils (with their thin and thick myofilaments) become known as muscle tissue or meat.

Skeletal muscles work due to changes in intracellular levels of calcium in the tissues – in short, muscles contract when the levels of calcium increase and muscles relax when the calcium levels drop.

How muscles contract starts with calcium binding to various proteins in the troponin group (troponin C, troponin T and troponin I) in the thin myofilaments – this then triggers three almost simultaneous reactions.

The first calcium reaction affects troponin C which then activates and changes the configuration of troponin I, making it ready to bind with actin.

The next reaction binds troponin T to tropomyosin, forming an interlocking troponin-tropomyosin structure – the tropomyosin protein is also bound to the myosin in the thick myofilament.

The last reaction finally binds the troponin I protein from the first reaction to actin in the thin myofilament which then connects with the troponin-tropomyosin structure.

The net effect is myosin proteins are induced to slide along actin proteins, and therefore the entire sarcomere contracts in size – this happens in the A zone and I band regions in the diagram (right).

The H zone is the anchor part of the sarcomere where there are only thick myofilaments – the myosin proteins in the H zone are mostly covered by actin during contraction.

Note both thin and thick myofilaments do not change in size – the sarcomere is shortened because of the lateral movement of the thick myofilaments through the thin myofilaments and the overall range of muscle contraction is multiplied by the number of sarcomeres in the strands of muscle tissue.

The contraction span of any sarcomere is the difference of the A bands and I bands narrowing from their original lengths. The titin protein attached to the thick myofilament is very stretchable, appears to provide additional elasticity to the sarcomere and probably also act as a guidance mechanism for the myosin – as an aside, titin in the largest protein in the human body consisting of 244 folded proteins.

The simple way

So we now know about muscle proteins and how they are organised in the meat we eat. One very simple suggestion to soften such meat therefore would be to use a meat hammer to disrupt the integrity of the sarcomeres as shattering the organised (and tough) protein configurations can only make meat more tender.

And this is exactly why cooks pound meat with jagged-edge mallets. For example, pieces of pork or veal to make schnitzels and chicken breast meat to make chicken steaks.

Grinding and mincing meat would also be another simple way to soften meat; for example, ground pork for meatballs or sausage fillings.

Therefore, at least two simple solutions exist (pounding and mincing) to tenderise meat very quickly. However, disrupting the configuration of meat proteins in such a violent manner also changes the texture emphatically so although I do often pound pieces of meat at home, this can be unsatisfactory after a while as the resulting meat often tastes a little rough.

Also, this pounding technique does not work for all cuts of meat, especially the finer beef cuts which can dry out and roughen during cooking when pounded beforehand.

However, this technique does work to some extent on tough cuts like rectus abdominus (flank), longissimus dorsi (chuck), superficial pectoral (brisket), et cetera – as long as the meat is cut initially into thin (around 1cm) slices. Pound hard and sensibly, as you need to disrupt the tough sarcomere structures significantly (but not to the point of destruction and mushiness) – and cook quickly.

Regardless, my opinion is that if time and conditions permit, many people would probably, and at least occasionally, prefer to eat properly aged beef steak. Please note that there are interesting techniques to considerably accelerate the ageing of meat – more on this later.

The ageing of beef

Traditionally, beef is aged by hanging the carcass in a cold room or resting the meat on a slab of salt in a chiller for between 28 to up to 459 days – yes, you can get served beef that has been aged over a year and a quarter in the United States, though in Europe the most extreme beef is usually only aged half a year or so.

Such severely aged beef is always from grain-fed cattle as it needs the extra fat marbling in the flesh to prevent drying out prematurely – and this is why commercial beef is usually aged in vacuum-sealed bags to retain the moisture (and minimise weight loss) of lesser quality meat.

A 120-day dry aged ribeye before trimming. Photo: The VisualHunt/TheMeatCase

120-day dry aged ribeye after trimming. Photo: VisualHunt/TheMeatCase

Personally, I draw the aged beef line at around 55 to perhaps 70 days as beef older than this tends to freak out my taste buds in much the same way as well-hung game birds make me slightly nauseous – there is no need to dwell on the peculiar aspects of eating flesh that is significantly on the road to putrefaction, despite enthusiasts predicating about its “sensation overload”, “flavour complexity”, “chemical astringency”, et cetera.

Beef ages due to enzymatic activity on muscle fibres followed by the bacterial breakdown of proteins and fats. The main chemical processes involved are proteolysis, lipolysis, and oxidation.

Proteins are basically structures made up of amino acids and proteolysis is the decomposition of the elastic rope-like muscle fibre proteins into more basic amino acids and polypeptides (amino acids held together by peptide bonds).

Left alone, proteins take a long time to break down and therefore proteolysis needs to be catalysed by several enzymes (known as proteases) within the flesh itself – there will be much more about these interesting enzymes later.

Lipolysis is the term used to define the breaking down of fats into glycerol and free fatty acids and is initiated by other enzymes such as lipases within the meat – lipolysis is then further promoted by bacterial action.

The compounds formed by ageing eventually react with oxygen in air in a process called oxidation – this can add further taste complexities and aromas, though oxidation can degrade meaty flavour compounds such as 2-Methyl-3-Furanthiol (MFT) and also form carbonyls (eg. ketones, carboxylic acid) which tend to be rather icky-tasting molecules. As an aside, MFT is also produced commercially and used to enhance the meaty flavour of processed foods.

---

Part 2 reviews the science behind how to tenderise beef by ageing beef faster and also describes the results of a few experiments with beef at home.

http://www.star2.com/food/food-news/2017/08/13/tender-moment-part-1/