Francis Mallmann likes to play with fire.

Really big fires, like one that requires 20 logs to build. (More on that in a minute.)

Mallmann is a famous Argentine chef — he hosts a popular show on the El Gourmet channel, is an award-winning cookbook author and owns three popular restaurants — who dropped his French culinary training in favor of outdoor grilling.

I caught up with him at Central Market last week where he was promoting his cookbook Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way as part of the store’s “Passport to Argentina” event. Outside of a pitched tent in the parking lot, fires were smoldering and whole lambs were roasting in the sun. Inside the store the elegant silver-haired Mallmann explained his love of the flame.

“Yes, I’d mainly done French cooking,” he says. “But around the time I turned 40 I wanted to get back to my roots. Outdoor life was very important and our home was heated with logs. There is such a huge language of fire in Argentina. And we must get our children to spend more time outside.”

Mallmann has spent a lot of time outside, building fires and cooking everything from meat to fruits and veggies over open flame. So, as a fellow meat lover, I asked him just what is the secret to a perfect steak?

The chef prefers the cover of a great rib eye. “And you need a good cast iron pan,” he says. “The thickness of the steak determines the strength of your fire. Very thin, use a high flame and just flip-flop it. For a thicker steak you use a lower flame and leave it for seven minutes, then turn it once.”

Mallman also prefers to season a good steak with only sea salt on one side. As for wood, he uses hardwoods like mesquite, hickory and oak. “But the best,” he says with a smile, “is apple wood, it has the most incredible flavor.”

His cookbook is not only full of great grilling recipes and fire tips but also amusing anecdotes and asides. Like the one where he describes his stacked ratatouille as very similar to the one in the animated film of the same name. “I’m not accusing Monsieur Rémy of stealing any of my recipes,” he writes of the rodent cook. “I think it’s just a case of two chefs thinking along the same lines.”

“Everything you can cook over an open fire,” Mallmann explains. “Peaches and plums. And potatoes. Potatoes are the king of everything. She is so humble as a root vegetable yet she lives in the houses of kings and the most poor.” How can a foodie not love a chef who waxes so elegantly over a tuber?

And here’s a recipe I’m going to try. After baking his beloved potatoes over an open flame, Mallmann mashes them with butter, lemon juice, roasted almonds and fresh arugula.

Mallmann is so in love with fire cooking that he has little need for our beloved Tex-Mex, instead telling me that he wants to take the road trip described in a book he found called Follow the Smoke: 14,783 Miles of Great Texas Barbecue. Yes, that would be the one written by Houston’s own John DeMers (shout out to John!).

OK, now, back to that fire that requires 20 logs. No, it’s not a mini A&M Bonfire, it’s for a recipe from Mallmann’s cookbook called Una Vaca Entera. Yep, that’s right, a whole cow. How can you not love a recipe where the first ingredient is “one medium cow, about 1,400 pounds, butterflied, skin removed”?

“It’s a tradition in Argentina for holidays,” Mallmann says. “But it’s not a delicacy. I wouldn’t cook a whole cow for my birthday. You need a lot of help to do it and you have to cook it overnight.”

Well, yes. Cooking a whole cow does take time and it’s probably not as tasty as a well-grilled rib eye. But for pure grandeur it’s hard to beat that barbecue scene in Giant where they do it.

“They do?” Mallmann asks. “Giant, I’ll have to remember to see that.”