Backyard Asado

Quinn Rose LEvine

For those that knew me between 2011-2013

you were probably in my narrow east village “back yard” being passed a cutting board piled high with steak fresh off the grill accompanied by a big plastic container of chimichurri. You would have happily picked up a piece with your fingers, because there would be no plates or silverware offered.

Once the weather slightly resembled spring time, Simon and I were like, “FUCK YES!” It’s BBQ season. We would hop into our car and drive out to Corona Queens to an Argentine butcher and buy an obscene amount of entrana (skirt steak), morcilla (blood sausage), and mollejas (sweetbreads) and invite every single one of our friends and last night’s cab driver to our BBQ.

I have to rewind for a second.

This backyard extravaganza all started with Juan Pablo, an Argentine friend who introduced me to his butcher, only after a year of asking and begging for his source. JP and his girlfriend Maia would host asados on their patio in Harlem. The main difference, was JP cooked on a traditional Argentine grill that he would stand over all day, poking at the embers with a long cast iron pole, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his face smudged with charcoal. To top off that sexy image, he picked this all up on his fucking motorcycle. We would eat with our fingers, grabbing the delicate morsels of tender steak that crunched on the outside, the butcher left the silver skin on to crisp up on the grill. I had never tasted anything like this in my life. Next came the morcilla, by far my favorite. Again, JP would crisp up the outside leaving the inside tender and juicy. We sandwiched the blood sausage between baguette and dipped it into the blood that dripped out of the resting steak on his cutting board.

I have to say, my grilling didn’t come close to his. I tried. Number one; I cooked on gas. Every time I would pick up my 20 pounds of steak and other goodies from the Argentine butcher, they would offer me their charcoal. I would decline and they would always scoff at me. “Carbon es mejor!”. Look, I know. It is. No doubt about it. But I am a lazy American and want things fast. It is also super intimidating, but that is a whole other story. Number two: I wasn’t Juan Pablo. JP eventually moved from his apartment and stopped doing asados. The torch was passed on to me. The gringa. We threw many asados, with JP in attendance. But it just was never the same. And to top it all off, he is now vegan. I will never get to experience one of his asados ever again.