Sauce #58 | Remote Parenting

Steak & Chimichurri and a Burnt Basque Cheesecake with Fig Caramel

I spent a good portion of Sunday morning searching for the TV remote.

Standard procedure is to hide it before we go to bed, which, in theory at least, acts as a deterrent to the children. They’re less likely to get out of bed early if they know there’s no telly to watch.

I employ a rudimentary mnemonic that involves me doing something odd when I hide it - make a strange sound, sing a little ditty, do a little dance - which means I’ll remember where I’ve hidden it, no matter how good the evening has been.

No such recollection came to me when the kids asked for the remote at 7.01am on Sunday.

Which was odd, given we hadn’t had what you might call a big night.

For the purposes of context, and nothing more, I had won a golf competition on Saturday. Some consider the Galphay Mashie to be the major (9-hole) tournament in the Nidderdale area. I was just pleased to be there, and pleased to be a good twenty years younger than the next youngest competitor, duly taking advantage of my relative youth and clinching the W. But I only had a couple of beers with the gang afterwards before returning home for an early dinner with the kids and an early bed after an episode of Poker Face (entertaining, if not groundbreaking - strong recommend for nights when you don’t want to engage brain. We watch it most nights.)

So it was vexing that I recalled nothing of the remote’s hiding place. I searched every drawer and every cupboard, checked the bookcases and bathroom cabinets, the kids becoming increasingly irate all the while. Thom eventually found it under a cushion on the sofa. It’s always in the last place you sat.

These remote-related shenanigans put an unwelcome dent in lunch prep time. I was keen to go full send this week, having not cooked a proper Sunday lunch for a few weeks. I’ve mentioned the shepherd before. She has a little beef action on the side. It’s been almost exactly a year since the last consignment of her very good cow, and here was the next animal, well hung and ready to eat.

I petitioned Sam, as I often do, for inspiration. We used to do a podcast together, arguing on a weekly basis - often across an increasingly remorseful guest - about food. Now we scratch that itch via voice notes. “You’ll probably do some lame salsa verde with it,” he said. “Try this sauce.” I glanced at the sauce. Sounded nice. Ignored him. “I was thinking a burnt nettle chimichurri might be good, in a 2015 kind of way,” I replied. Sam used to burn everything. It was the done thing back then.

“Nettles are foul. Urine. And chimichurri is over.” Constructive.

So I looked at Instagram and found a reel on the Swaledale account in which George Ryle speaks gently and clearly and so brilliantly uninstagrammily about how you might go about cooking a steak on a barbecue. This isn’t quite the moment to vent about how truly unwatchable most social media cooking content is but I will say I wish they were all more like George’s stuff on Swaledale. Just very likeable, clear, and unshowy.

When the time came I followed his technique more or less to the word, though had enough char by the end of cooking that there was no need to finish the rib off directly in the coals, as he does.

While the barbecue got to where it needed to be (half a bag of charcoal, plus a few slender cherry logs for smoke) I did, pace Sam, make a chimichurri using fermented wild garlic stems, though I passed on the burnt nettles. Then I made a Basque cheesecake with fig liqueur caramel, because that’s what I’d served at the Clock Barn on Friday and it was so very good that I made it again. The secret ingredient is the dash of sherry vinegar in the caramel, right at the end, to give it that edge.

We ate in the garden, played a possibly over-enthusiastic game of football, dispatched a not inconsiderable amount of wine, then somehow had a bedtime negroni in front of Poker Face. I’ve no idea where I left the remote.