Save The Filets, Save A Marriage

No blog posts for the past three weeks, but I have a really good excuse punctuated by a really, REALLY good excuse just yesterday. I have been spending the past few weeks getting my seedlings going for my summer garden. This has sapped a lot of my mental focus because it is my first year doing tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants from seeds. I’ve had to spend quite a bit of time researching this and creating favorable seedling conditions.  I had heard too many stories about how difficult it can be to start from seed with these particular types of vegetables, and I’d invested too much money in the seeds, heirloom ones which I ordered from a catalog. I really didn’t want to fail. So far things are going well. It’s a lot of work since I often have to sit with my wine at the end of the day and watch my seedlings and brim with pride for a while. Kyle thinks I’m nuts. Here they are:

Heirloom tomato seedlings, various...ahem...varieties. :)

As for yesterday, we were scheduled to pick up a half cow in Cordova, Nebraska. I took the entire day off work for this task as well as the task of breaking the cow down into its various parts to store in our chest freezer. At the meat locker, we chatted for a bit with Al, the owner. His wife said by 2 o’clock today I’d be wondering what I’d gotten myself into. “We’ve already done a hog,” I said. “This is a lot different than a hog,” she replied. They wished me a Happy Easter anyway. Was that laughter I heard as we walked out? The word “suckers”?

Hauling it out...

 

... loading it in.

Make no mistake: This was a boatload of work. And I mean really hard work. Dangerous, too. When we got home, we dropped the largest chunk of meat, the hindquarter, on the floor trying to get it from the car to the table. Hundreds of pounds of meat, and it knocked my husband over on the way down. To boot, after wielding a knife for 7+ hours, I think I now have carpel tunnel. The folks who do this every day are TOUGH.

I worked on the easiest-looking piece first, basically the middle section. From here we got some very meaty ribs, which became short ribs. We also were able to get some fun steaks called flintstone chops, I think because they are very prehistoric looking, essentially a filet attached to a very long, meaty rib. I could imagine they’d make a very awesome presentation. Since this was one of the first cuts we got, we put a couple in the crock pot to eat for dinner. They turned out awesome.  I have not bought any meat at the grocery store since beginning “The Odyssey.” We have bought the occasional beef steaks at small town butcher shops outside of Lincoln, but have otherwise abstained. I was really looking forward to having beef in the house again.

We used a book called Whole Beast Butchery by Ryan Farr, a gifted butcher with an upscale butchery out in San Francisco. This is a very good book with excellent pictures. But you really need to see people doing this stuff in order to remember it. I mean it’s really a lesson in anatomy, which is why it can get complicated so quickly. I augmented my knowledge beforehand with a couple YouTube videos, so ultimately I was able to glean enough information to feel I could make a decent go of it. For instance, I now know that you can have the filets and the New York strip steaks but you can’t do that AND have a T-bone. (The filet and New York strip together make up the T-bone.) Also, a porterhouse is the same as the T-bone except it has more filet. Because I don’t have a band saw, I did not do the T-bone.  These were some of the last cuts we did of the day, and I was just too damn tired to saw them apart by hand.  In fact, I was so tired by the end, I almost forgot to extract the filets! But thanks to Kyle, we do not have to spend the rest of our lives regretting how we threw away some very expensive meat. Tip #312 on making a happy marriage: Don’t leave the filet behind.

A bunch of rib meat and flintstone chops piled high.

The hanger steak is such a weird thing. Kind of like its name suggests, it’s basically just hanging in the cavity of the animal (it is the diaphragm muscle) and you have to cut away a bunch fat and exterior that has dried as a result of the aging process. But after you’re done, you have this cylinder of meat that is a little redder than the other muscles and whose grain comes together in an odd V-shape. I have never seen hanger steak in a meat department, and I found out why: because the butchers often keep it for themselves. I’m pretty excited to try this cut.

Skirt steak, folded in half.

Another strange cut is the skirt and flank steaks. These are flat pieces of steak and I really don't know how to cook them. I think they can be seasoned, rolled, tied, and roasted. There is a lot of this kind of meat in the cow so we'll get good at cooking this.  

Lastly, I stumbled onto the brisket by accident. You’re supposed to leave a layer of fat on it for cooking, but by the time I realized what I had, it was too late, and so we have a brisket we’ll have to cook a little more carefully.

The hindquarter, almost completely de-meated.

By the end, as with the hog, I just started hacking away at it, not really caring what cut I was looking at, just wanting it to be over so I could crawl into bed after working in a cold garage all day and soothe my aching muscles. And the fatigue! Man alive. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so beat the next day. I could probably sleep for two days after that marathon. And it's hard to know for sure, but I think this stash will probably last us up to six months. 

Eating Odd Bits at my House: It's Voluntary

This is my daughter sampling our odd bits dish from this weekend. I just want you to know that she did not do it under any duress or forcing from me whatsoever. In fact, it’s not like I whip up an odd bits dish for dinner and then tell the family they have to empty their plates a la Mommy Dearest and the scene with the bloody steak. I always give anyone in the house the option to eat whatever (conventional!) leftovers we have and make clear that they are under no obligation to try “the weird stuff.”

Yum!

But guess what: They always choose to try it, which is gratifying. They trust me, but it means I do feel some pressure to make it look and taste the very best I can. One really bad experience could mean they won’t try anything of mine again for a very long time. So I really am doing my best to not screw things up.

This week’s dish was roasted bone marrow. I was going to wait until our half cow comes at the end of this month to try this dish, but we happened to go by a butcher shop during a short road trip, and couldn’t resist stopping in. It was a place called Den’s Country Meats in Table Rock, Nebraska. A tiny little place in the middle of nowhere, at the intersection of grassland and gravel.

Den's Country Meats in Table Rock,  Nebraska

They kept most of their meats in refrigerators set to just above freezing. This extends the shelf life of the meat while making it possible for people to buy meat to cook that night, i.e. no thawing.

In the back I could hear the butchers processing meat, so I thought it would be a good time to request a special order for a dish I’d had on my mind for the past couple weeks. I asked the girl at the counter for some bone disks for the marrow, and she didn’t understand and went to get one of the butchers. I explained again what I wanted, and he responded, “For your dog?” These are not the kind of requests they typically get, I take it. Anyway, eventually I walked out of there with five chunks of bone for $1. (Heckuva deal, heckuva deal.)  

You’ll recall from the previous post that after this, we wound up going to a restaurant that night that had bone marrow crostini on the menu. We ordered that, but I was a little disappointed because it was impossible to see or taste the bone marrow.

So at home, I set about the task of preparing the bone marrow, essentially roasting it at 450° for about 20 minutes. The recipe, from by cookbook Odd Bits, says you’re looking for the marrow to be “loose and giving, but not melted away.”

While that’s roasting, you prepare a small “salad” to go on top.  This consists of some minced onion, flat-leaf parsley (finely chopped – I used cilantro because that’s what I had), a handful of capers (I chopped up some calamata olives instead), and then dressed with a vinaigrette made from the juice of one lemon, an equal amount of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.

The marrow is very fatty. When it’s roasted, there’s the combination of liquidy fat mixed with the marrow flesh. The marrow in the center is pink but brown at the ends.  It doesn’t look all that great. It’s globular and gelatinous-looking when you scoop it out, and spreading it on the toast is a little awkward, but there is no beefy flavor. It simply tastes like the richest butter ever. Topped with a bit of the “salad” it really is a treat. And you can't beat the presentation.

Slices of toasted baguette,  roasted bone marrow, and the "salad" topping.  

Fine, Adventurous Dining in Lawrence, Kansas

Staying in Lawrence for one night to see a show recently, we had dinner beforehand at a place called Pachamama's, which opened in Lawrence in 1996. I really just expected a nice meal after a long day of driving. But what we got was a very classy joint and some unexpected treats.

We took one look at the adventurous appetizer menu and decided to order just one entree and use appetizers to fill out the rest of our meal, along with a bottle of wine. The two most exciting items we ordered were kibbeh and roasted marrow crostini.

Kibbeh is a Middle Eastern dish made with raw ground meat (usually lamb or goat) and spices, and then served with pieces of grilled flat bread such as pita. I had only just recently learned about this dish and was very excited to try it. I pretty much figured, because freshness is so important to preparing and eating any kind of raw meat, that I'd have to wait until I ordered my first whole lamb to make/try it. So I was excited that I wouldn't have to wait.

It actually does not look all that appetizing at first blush. But then you try it and you understand why people love it so much. The texture is velvety with a slightly salty taste and a strong component of onions/scallions on the nose. Cumin, allspice, mint, and olive oil also add to a very complex flavor combination that is mysterious and exceedingly pleasing. Ours was also served with a yogurt sauce, another delicious layer to the dish. Can't wait to try that again!

Kibbeh on the left, roasted marrow crostini in the middle, and crispy cotechino chop salad on the right.

Seeing the marrow on the menu also seemed serendipitous. We had stopped by a butcher shop on the way to Lawrence and I was able to order freshly cut bone discs for the purpose of making roasted marrow when I get home (more in another post). Seeing it on the menu mere hours after our butcher-store detour seemed to be a sign from the culinary gods. I had to have it.

The roasted marrow was served on slices of toasted baguette with slices of avocado and radish, then drizzled with a honey truffle sauce. The result was really wonderful. Creamy, crunchy, and fresh. However, if there's one reason I'm looking forward to making this at home it's because I never got a sense of the main ingredient. There was a lot going on in this appetizer that made it hard to taste the actual marrow. Making it myself will give me a chance to taste it on its own before adding a bunch of fancy extras.

The least adventurous of the three appetizers was the cotechina. This is a pork shoulder hash that has been formed into squares, coated with panko crumbs, and fried. It is served along side the "salad" which consisted of lentils, guacamole, and brussels sprouts in layers. An interesting combination of ingredients that did seem to work. I wish I had not been so full with the other items we were eating to give it a more thorough tasting.

A blissful, well-fed Kyle :)