Eat Local Arnold's Meat

For those interested in eating local meats, Arnold Farms will be at the forthcoming winter markets (details some other time). I've copied below, their latest e-mail. If you want ordering info or price sheets you can contact them at arnoldfarm@juno.com or contact me.

[Passed along as a courtesy]

Hi, Folks:

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas season. I’m sure you are looking forward to a bright New Year. All of us have many things to be thankful for and to build upon as we move ahead. 2009 will be a positive beginning to the rest of our lives!!

Arnold’s Farm January deliveries will be coordinated again around the Harvest of Hope Indoor Winter Farmer’s Markets. I’ve attached an updated market schedule. I plan to participate in those listed and encourage you to check out the ones nearby. There have been up to 15 other vendors attending. A café or brunch is often offered featuring products from some of the vendors with our sandwich ham and breakfast links frequently used. Strong attendance at most markets have made the atmosphere quite festive. Not only do these markets give vendors an outlet for their products and an opportunity for potential customers to check them out, but 10% of each vendor’s gross sales goes to the Harvest of Hope Fund to benefit farmers who may be experiencing tough times. Maybe crops were damaged by flooding this past year or an accident affected a farmer’s ability to get work done when needed. Up to $1000.00 per farm can be requested from the fund to help defray expenses they may be struggling with. This truly is a win, win, win situation for all participating!

Our January delivery schedule will be as follows:

*** CHICAGO AND NORTH. Saturday, January 10th: St. Benedict Parish, 2210 W. Irving Park Rd., Chicago, (just east of Western). 9:00 am – 1:00 pm. This will be the downtown stop for January. Anyone ordering from Chicago and the northwest side are welcome to meet me here. Stops after the market would be Rogers Park, 2:15 pm; Des Plaines, 3:30; Arlington Heights, 4:30; Round Lake Beach, 6:00.

*** NORTH. Sunday, January 11th: North Shore Unitarian Church, 2100 Half Day Rd (Rt. 22), Deerfield. 10:00 am – 1:30 pm. If this date, time, and place work better to meet me, please consider it.

*** WEST & SOUTH. Wednesday, January 14: Stops for this day would be Elgin, 8:15; Bartlett, 9:00am; North Aurora, 10:00; Downer’s Grove, 11:00; Villa Park, 12:00; Lockport, 2:00 pm.

*** OAK PARK / RIVER FOREST. Sunday, January 18th: Grace Lutheran Church, 7300 W. Division, River Forest. 9:30 am - 1:30 pm.

Sides of beef and pork can be ordered for these deliveries. Due to the holiday season, weather, and the lateness of this newsletter, I have already processed animals to the specifications we use for our “Individual Cuts” and “Packages” lists. If these cutting specs work for you, and you are still interested in sides delivered this month, let me know. I will work with you on getting the items you need from what I have on hand, and you will save money per lb. of meat over buying packages or individual cuts. If you are thinking of sides for March delivery or any for the Farmer’s Markets in February, let me know so I can reserve processing for you.

SAVE!! All grass fed beef is still 5% off September prices!! This includes sides, 25# packages, and all cuts in stock!! Check out the “January Specials” attachment for all grass fed beef roasts at an even greater discount as well as turkey, all grain fed beef roasts, and pork items. A few limited quantity items are also listed there, first ordered, first served.

We have plenty of whole and whole cut chickens! Average weights are 4.5# - 5.0# with some as small as 3.5#. Cost: $2.75/#. Add $0.75 per bird for cut-up. I also have some “wingless birds” available at $0.10/# off. (These are chickens that may have had wings damaged in processing. USDA inspection requires any damaged area be removed at the next joint, leaving these birds with a wing(s) missing but otherwise in perfect condition.)

Upcoming regular Delivery Months are January, March and May.

Please have your order e-mailed or called in by Wednesday, January 7th. If you do not receive a confirmation on your order within 3 days, please e-mail again or call 815-858-2407. For those who have not placed an order recently or are thinking of ordering for the first time, do not hesitate to contact me by email or phone with product questions, where the closest stop to you may be, or to set up a stop in your area ($600.00 of orders minimum required to generate a stop to an area not already serviced). A delivery fee of $0.30/# is added to all orders.

Thank you for supporting a local food system and sustainable farming!

Respectfully,
Tom Arnold

Vital Roadtrips - 2009 - Part I

To Bloomington

The more I wear a hole in my Priceline account, the happier I make my wife. She never tires of the road. We returned last night from various parts in Kentucky and Indiana (and almost Tennessee), and I know her wanderlust already brews. So, before recounting our experiences finding a water driven mill and eating amongst the chains, outposts, and hotels of Kentucky, let me start working on our next trips. Over the next few weeks (I swear), I will lay out some prospective road trips for 2009. Highest on my list right now, is Bloomington, IN.

We visit the lands around us, especially for the food. It allows us to sample and obtain regional dishes and specialities unavailable in Chicago. I mean how many places remark, like the Mammoth Cave Hotel, "we're out of chicken, it''ll take 45 minutes for more." We can meet our products, such as at the various distilleries in Kentucky. On the other hand, away from Chicago, we find communities much more advanced on the locavore path, e.g., Madison, WI. But we pick up dried beans in Michigan and bourbon ball candy in Frankfort, KY. Local is always where we find it. Bloomington seems like it will met our needs (extremely).

Farmers and artisans working for consumers fill Southern Indiana. Just look at this guide (pdf). At least two chefs have gained notoriety using this bounty. Daniel Orr though brought fame with him to Bloomington. He's no shrinking violet! He chef'd New York's La Grenouille to three stars many years ago. Now, he's back home in Southern Indiana, with the multi-complexed FARMbloomington. Orr combines local food with his well-traveled backgrounds. The menus sound about right, but I can easily relate to the skepticism raised on this blog. How much of a rivalry does David Tallent have for Orr. He's been on the high-end, local Bloomington scene since 2003 at his namesake restaurant. Buzz around his place is generally better or at least more consistent (typical). If we tire of dueling resume'd chefs, I can follow the advice of one of my favorite bloggers, Virtual Farmgirl and have big steaks and Yugoslavian foods at Janko's Little Zagreb.

We would not be hot on the Bloomington trail without a farmer's market in site. Bloomington reportedly hosts the largest farmer's market in Indiana. It does not pack up in the winter either. If the market carries half as much stuff as it did last year, it will be worth it. In other markets, Bloomingfoods seems worth a visit and maybe Sahara; I mean besides local food, Sahara prepares over 30 varieties of olives, olives being one of my favorite exceptions or exemptions or whatever we call non-local food these days.

A local brew would be in order, and Uplands sounds OK.

Of course we would be hot on the trail of regional specialities that may or may not be around when we visit Southern Indiana. The genius who thought to fry biscuits worked at the Nashville House (so they say), but they are at other places now too. The will be maple sugar a-brewin' around the end of February (cf). A good and decent Indiana persimmon is only ready to eat when it gets so ripe if falls off the tree. There are gathered from lawns all around in the fall. Because the fresh product would have a shelf life of a half-a-day, it usually frozen, with little effect for pudding or ice cream use. If American persimmons are under appreciated, what about Indiana's hickory shagbark syrup used by Wolfgang Puck and Rick Bayless. And who would leave without finding a pork tenderloin? It may not be served in a gas station, but Gnaw Bone still serves a famous version.

Bloomington, high on the Vital Roadtrips for 2009

Gosh, I Love Helen

As I eagerly await Sunday's Mado goose dinner, some other goose thoughts crossed my desk. Hear what she has to say!

Round Steak?

So, yesterday I went to the basement freezer for some meat. How could we stay a locavore family if my wife was grumbling about Kuma's. I'd make burgers to keep her. The 1/2 frozen state of the meat at dinner time, however, led to my version of keema instead of burgers with my secret sauce. But that's neither here nor there for the question at hand. As the supply of Bessie dwindles, we are left with the odds and ends, especially the round steaks. I found three packages of round steak on my way to ground beef yesterday. What does one do with round steak.

It's not that I keep kosher, nor have I had any trouble finding uses for the sirloin or other cuts from that end of the cow, but the round steak, for whatever reasons, seems like an especially foreign cut to me, goyish to me, or at least rural to me [ed. which is a more PC way to say it?].

Advice on the round steak much appreciated. NB: these are round steaks, not roasts or anything else.

A Head's Tale

My artistic ideas far out pace my artistic abilities. Luckily, like any good Chicagoan, I got my guy. My guy has a camera and editing software and very good abilities using them. And I got another guy. A Chef with a passion for whole beast eating but also the generosity to share his time. And this guy has a gal, his wife, with an equal passion for local food and a willingness to express it all to the Internet. And, before I go on, I got another guy, a local farmer with a huge commitment to real farming. Me and all of those guys plus a few with the onerous task of sampling and expressing their gastronomical opinions; we all made a new Sky Full of Bacon video. We all believe that if you are going to slaughter an animal for food, you should consume the whole animal. This includes the head. As the video demonstrates, with not too much work, you can make the head into something not the least bit gross.

Well, not all of us made the video. That would be Mike Gebert, the man with the camera and the ability to dice several hours of footage into an actual story. Emily and Dennis Wettstein raised the hog on organic pasture and organic feed, and Dennis Wettstein gave a bit of background on organic farming for the folks in TVland. Rob and Allie Levitt of Mado played the role of teachers and advocates, showing their passion for doing things the right way, as well as specifically showing how to turn an ugly part of meat, a pig's head, into something beautiful and tasty. A few folks from LTHForum as well as a special guest blogger turned up to see if it actually tasted as good as it looked. Check out the video to see how they liked it [SPOILER ALERT, IF YOU CLICK ON THE LINK TO HELEN'S BLOG, YOU'LL FIND OUT WHAT SHE THINKS, SO PERHAPS WATCH THE VIDEO FIRST].

There area a lot of "lessons" in this video--and thank the talent of Gebert it does not come across as too preachy--but the lesson I want to most emphasis is how easy it really is to make a dish from the pig's head. As Rob demonstrates, it does not take a lot of special skills, nor does it take an army of sous chefs. There are time elements, a long slow simmer, and then a few days set, but otherwise, the work time is limited. Mike has the recipe on his blog. Consider giving this a try. Before I sign off for now, let me add that it would not be a stretch to make this versions of this dish from other, perhaps more accessible, cuts of meat like beef shanks.

Glimmers of Local Food

Non-food advice to anyone with with a teenager daughter: hide the camera.

Is it fully her fault? I've been meaning to download the pictures on the camera for ages. I was not sure where I stashed away the cord, but it turned out to be not hard to find. Do I share some blame over the local food pictures being over-written for artistic shots of her and her friend [ed. and her and her friend and Moe the cat]. Instead of pages full of images of what local food looks like, here, my friends are a few glimmers.



Here's a few glimpses of our local meat, beef from our 1/2 cow we purchased over a year ago from Farmer Vicki's Genesis Growers. I think these pics support my view that there is little loss of quality with freezing the meat. On the other hand, the first pic shows one of the downsides with local meat, the butchering. Look at the middle steak. Ever see a ribeye cut that way?

The locavore's mantra is to eat what is in season, eat it in abundance and then be done with it. We may catch up with some frozen asparagus in the winter, but we enjoyed it while it lasted.



This was the riso discussed here and here's Tuscan night mentioned in that same post.



Local fava beans are even more fleeting than local asparagus. We've never had much need for favas until Chad Nichols introduced us to favas and the grill. Here's our it looked the first time I did it.

Eat Local Meat

Nose to Tail

I've mentioned many a time, that the best way to purchase and consume local meat is by obtaining the whole beast. In this week's Time Out Chicago (via) Heather Shouse talks with several local chefs who get their own animals and then break the carcasses down themselves. Of course your whole animal will probably come broken down already. Still, like the Chefs, you'll have plenty of odds and ends as well as the kiskes or fifth quarter. See what these guys are doing with their local meat.

It's Good to be a Locacovore - 7+ Days of Local Eating

Local as I Wanna Be

Before all these meals drift off into happy memories, here's how we use our local bounty. I'll go has far back as I can remember.

Last night - The first of the year tomatoes (grown inside but in soil) dotted with Hidden Springs Creamery "Driftless" sheep's milk cheese. Chicken from Farmer Vicki's Genesis Growers new avian CSA, spice coated and grilled; chard leaves and beet greens sauteed with garlic and keeper onion (yes we still have); grilled radicchio; leftover bread pudding.

The night before - Batter fried squash flowers, then Pleasant Springs Hatchery farm raised perch "puttanesca" and a salad of kohlrabi, carrots and pea shoots.

Sat/Sun - Madison, WI

Shabbat Dinner - The Jews who eat pork for Shabbos! Fava beans grill/steamed in their shells for nibbling. Smoked Wettstein Organic Farm's pork shoulder, grilled summer squash, last year's fingerlings grill roasted and dressed with a cumin-allspice lemon vinaigrette; Farmer's All Natural Creamery buttermilk cabbage, carrot and kohlrabi slaw; roasted cauliflower with olives; bread pudding with Michigan dried cherries and freshly whipped Farmer's All Natural Creamery cream.

Thursday - Tuscan Night. Wettstein Organic Farm's thick cut pork chops, marinated in rosemary and garlic, grilled, served with salsa verde; kohlrabi arugula salad; grilled tropea onions.

Wednesday - Pasta with garlic scapes, asparagus, cultivated local mushrooms, green salad with fresh shallot vinaigrette. Strawberries and sour cream, brown sugar.

Tuesday - Northern Italian Night. Riso con asparagi with plus beets/beet tops with lime butter.

Monday - Big salad of local greens, carrots, sugar snaps, turnips, Saxony aged cheddar and Gunthrop Farms ham, shallot vinaigrette.

Sunday - Sandwich of leftover ribeye steak, local provolone, giardinara; cucumbers with sweet onions.

Saturday - Mado

Other Shabbat Dinner - Herbed farmer's cheese to staunch hunger followed by fava beans grilled/steamed in their shells; sitting down to bowls of fresh pasta dressed with arugula-black walnut pesto followed by locally raised ribeye steaks, grilled; salsa verde on the side; grilled beets, grilled tropea and cipollini onions. Eli's cheesecake.

Any themes emerging?

Eat Local Meat

Buy Cow

At least one person has asked me about purchasing a local cow, and I know at least a few more of you have at least thought about it. Buying a whole, 1/2 or 1/4 cow is the best way to ensure a good stock of local meat at a reasonable price. I'll confess/warn you need a full sized freezer to fit a 1/2 cow, but you can get by, maybe with a regular freezer and a 1/4 cow. Not only will you save money, but you'll have access to head-to-tail eating. This was one of the best cooking ideas I've ever seen! This particular cow is all grass fed and grass finished, but other than that, I cannot speak to is deliciousness. I post this only as a public service.

Prairierth Farm of Atlanta, IL (Dave Bishop) has one head of cattle ready for processing in a few weeks that is certified organic, grass-fed, and grass-finished. He's hoping to sell 1/4 or 1/2 sides and would be glad to discuss price and delivery/pickup options. Better yet, get some friends together and buy the whole thing! He's a member of the Midwest Organic Farmers Cooperative and grows a wide variety of certified organic produce and grains, in addition to about two dozen head of cattle and a few dozen chickens. Contact Robin at robininwinter @ aol.com if you'd like to be put in touch with Dave.

Eat Local Meat

Cutting Instructions for 1/2 Hog

As I have mentioned before, the easiest and best way to ensure the eating of local meat is to purchase it in bulk, as whole, half or quarter animals. This web site can locate you farmers in Illinois for your whole hog, etc. You can find other sites on the Internet for sides of meat from Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Although we have plenty of beef and lamb from our previous forays, we (mostly I) decided to supplement, nay add, with a 1/2 hog from Dennis and Emily Wettstein's organic farm.

A processed cow produces nothing if not a lot of hamburger, and when every last steak, roast, soup bone and bit of offal from our cow is eaten, we will still, have, I believe, hamburger. (Next cow we get, my wife insists we ask for stew meat too.) The lady at Eureka Locker, who is processing our pork, told me that pork is not so wasteful. There is trim, but it has to be used in a tidy way. At least she wanted it tidy. None of this, make a bit of brats, a bit of fresh sausage and the rest as ground pork. Trim needed to be proportioned evenly. Here's how we portioned our trim and divvied up the rest of the 1/2 hog, which is coming in at around 150 lbs:

• Leg - boned, cured and smoked; after the smoking, they will cut two center ham steaks, leaving us two whole ham roasts. I plan on slicing at least one, maybe both of the ham roasts as lunch meats and re-packaging them in smaller baggies. Organic cure.
• Hocks (2) - cured and smoked (organic)
• Shoulder - One larger cut, 8-10 lb for a BBQ pulled pork; the rest of the shoulder cut into 5ish lb roasts
• Belly - 1/2 cured and smoked (organic), 1/2 left fresh, packaged in one pound cuts
• Spareribs - 3 or so lbs worth
• Loin - One larger roast and the rest cut into chops 1.5 inches thick. I had wanted to get the chops cut in range of thicknesses, some thinner. The locker woman originally said she could do that, but as we talked it seemed easier to go with one size fits all. Because I asked for bone-in chops and roast, there is no baby back ribs
• Offal - The nature of small America lockers does not allow for too much nose-to-tail eating. I am not quite sure all the reasons. We get the heart, liver and kidneys, that's it. See below for a bit of head talk. I wanted the feet for braises and the tail to use for beans or greens. Neither was available to us and forget about home made blood sausage or kishkes.
• Fat - We have to render the lard ourselves, but we get all the fat, including the kidney fat for leaf lard. It will be cut in 1 lb chunks and packaged in five pound bags.
• Trim - Italian sausage, bratwurst and packaged ground pork, which my wife did not so much approve she wanted more plain and less seasoned.

No one with a copy of a Fergus Henderson book could want a hog without its head, no? His latest tome, Beyond Nose to Tail Eating, has a stunningly, grossly attractive picture of a braised pig's head. Could I duplicate that? More likely, I am working on a trade with Rob at Mado. Anyways, I mentioned to Emily Wettstein the other day that I wanted the head. The head from a local hog can be had if requested. I requested. She forgot to mention that to the locker. Still, before I could get the least bit distressed, they realized their mistake and realized they were processing another hog next week. I could have that head. I asked the locker if they would split the head for me. They said no. If I wanted a hog head, I was getting a hog head. Smarty.

We pick up our 1/2 hog on July 5, 2008 at the Oak Park Farmer's Market. You know I'll have more to say. This year the Wettstein's will be at the market every week. If you cannot get the whole hog, you can buy your own parts, no head, each Saturday as well as organically raised lamb, chicken, beef and eggs.

Eat Frozen Meat

Rick Bayless Sez So

I think this is gonna be the week of blessings and curses on the blog. Which is it, then when it comes to local meat? Except for some Amish raised chickens I can find here and there, my family and I are pretty much restricted to getting our meats frozen to stay committed to local meats. A...a curse angle, at least, as I have said many a-time, is the hassle of frozen meat. It puts a bit of a damper on spur of the moment meals, and means we plan our Friday night dinners by mid-week. Are for losing quality, I've not found it, and now Mike Sula has got Rick Bayless to weigh in:

"I think the freezer is a really good tool," he says. "We went through this period back in the seventies, eighties, when people would say if you had anything frozen in your place, you were an awful restaurant. And if you're talking about frozen prepared foods, or choosing frozen ingredients when you could get the best stuff fresh, then, yeah, that is awful. But we have huge freezers. . . .If you know how to use a freezer and you understand that you can only freeze certain things, and you know how to defrost slowly at the right temperature, you can serve great local food all year-round."

Eat Local Meat

Arnold Farms Delivery's

Via, e-mail, Tom Arnold informs me that he will be making several delivery stops for his meats in the Chicago area on May 14 (Wednesday) and May 16 (Friday). If you are interested in ordering his meat, see his web site for more info.

May deliveries will be divided over two days: Wednesday, May 14th, and Friday, May 16th. The last two stops on Wednesday are at new times, and the Friday delivery is an all-new day and schedule. Let me know how these changes will affect you. The schedule is as follows:

*** WEST & SOUTH. Wednesday, May 14: Stops for this day would be Elgin, 8:15 am; Bartlett, 9:00am; North Aurora, 10:00; Downer’s Grove, 11:00; Villa Park, 12:00; Lockport, 2:00 pm.

*** CHICAGO & NORTH. Friday, May 16: Stops for this day would be Oak Park, 11:00 am; Downtown Chicago, 12:00; Northwest Chicago, 1:00 pm (location to be announced pending where majority of order come from); Park Ridge/Des Plaines, 2:30 (location to be announced); Arlington Heights, 3:30; Round Lake Beach, 5:00.

Sides of beef and pork are still available for May. As noted last newsletter, I need to book orders for sides and special cutting instructions at least one delivery in advance due to our processor, Lena Maid Meats, running close to capacity and increased demand for our meats. (Ex.: order a side of beef in May for July delivery. We may be able to be more flexible on sides picked up by you at Lena Maid.) However, we do have several animals unspoken for for May delivery but will need to know if you are interested ASAP and have your cutting instructions no later than Sunday, May 4th.

As his e-mail is not very specific on the locations, I suggest following up with him.

Eat Boiled Meats

Passover Bollito Misto Sauces

The other night, we ate leftover bollito misto. I counted five sauces: herbal salsa verde, tomato-based (canned) salsa rossa, creamy horseradish, intriguing honey-walnut and using the cranberries that we've carried all winter, cranberry mostarda. Five sauces for four meats: veal shoulder, beef shank, brisket and capon. How did we go wrong. I wanted symmetry. How did we screw up I asked my wife. The merguez, I had forgot to count the merguez. We did have five meats. Happiness reigns in the Bungalow.

As I noted the other day, 1/2 the reason to eat bollito misto is for the sauces. Boiled meat, especially good local meat, is tender, rich, but yes, not exactly zooming with flavor. Bland. A vehicle. An excuse. To counter the plainness of boiled meat, bollito gets served with flavor-forward sauces, the sting of fresh horseradish, the cloy of honey, the salty jolt of anchovy mixed with herbs and the exotic, Renaissance taste of the salsa rossa.

Salsa Verde

This is a standard in the Bungalow. Bollito misto was not the only meal centered around this sauce. It's probably easiest to make this in a blender or food processor (Robot Coupe as they said about five times on Top Chef last night), but I like to make it in a mezzaluna. I enjoy the workout, and I think the texture, rough, inexact, is more pleasing.

Roughly chop a good amount of fresh herbs on hand; traditionally the dominant herb is parsley. Mint, oregano, basil, rosemary, chervil and tarragon are all good additions (I used the first four).

Garlic, three cloves. Finely minced. I start the garlic on a cutting board but then add to the mezzaluna board, so that I'm chopping the garlic as I continue to chop the herbs.

Dried local hot pepper. Minced. Just in the mezzaluna. The later liquid elements will hydrate the pepper a bit.

A good dollop of Dijon mustard. Not all salsa verde recipes include mustard, but I find it adds needed binding as well as complexity. The mustard goes into the eventual serving bowl with the ingredients from the mezzaluna board.

Salty elements, anchovies, cornichons, dill pickles, etc.; I used one salt-packed anchovy. Finely minced. I do this on a separate cutting board to keep things less smelly, then add to the serving bowl.

A splash of red wine vinegar.

Olive oil, extra virgin but not one of our fancier ones until I get the right consistency. The herbs should just float in the oil.

Horseradish Sauce

Equal parts sour cream, red wine vinegar, olive oil. Minced fresh horseradish to desired nasal-clearing.

Salsa Rossa

Adapted from David Rosengarten Entertains

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 onions, diced

6 cloves garlic, sliced

1 large carrot, scrubbed and diced

1 stalk of celery, diced

Good glop of tomato paste, more than a tablespoon

1 28 ounce can of tomatoes, drained

Cayenne, nutmeg, cinnamon, enough for an exotic, Oriental flavor + salt and pepper

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

At medium or lower, heat the olive oil in a skillet, add the onions, celery and carrots, cook for a few minutes until getting soft. Do not crisp. Add the garlic and cook a bit more. Add the tomato paste, cook for one more minute. Then, add the canned tomatoes, squishing them between your fingers as they go in. Add the spices. Cook over low heat until the stuff thickens. Let cool and puree in blender or food mill. Add the vinegar. Adjust the seasoning.

Honey Sauce

Adapted from Kyle Phillips

Handful of black walnuts, crushed

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup cooking stock

Cranberry Mostarda

Adapted from Mario Batali

2 cups granulated sugar

1 pound cranberries

5 tablespoons Colman’s dry mustard

1 teaspoon mustard oil (available at specialty stores)

2 tablespoons black mustard seeds

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the sugar and 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add the cranberries and cook over until the cranberries are just beginning to burst.

In a bowl, make a paste from the other ingredients and some water. Stir this mixture in to the berries and cook over high heat until the mixture is thick and syrupy, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

All the ingredients were local except for the canned tomatoes, the tomato paste, the spices, the olive/mustard oils, the vinegar, the sugar, and have-to-admit, the parsley.

Eat Boiled Meats

Passover Bollito Misto

Chicagoans, Midwesterners, Americans, collectively, we are not a boiled eatin' group of peoples. There are, I believe, several reasons for our boil-aversion. People associate boiled meats with poverty food; the ol' hobo cooking his shoe type of meal. Sort of hand in hand with that, the meats most associated with boiling, are stuff. I mean the classic inclusion in a bollito misto is a calf's head. Tongue is mostly also included; often the stuffed pig's foot called zampone is too. Now, of that group, Chicagoans, Midwesterners, Americans, are they a stuff-foot eating, calf-head buying, kind of crowd? Two strikes. In contrast, we groups tend to favor roasts. Roasts equal middle class prosperity. And there surely is a bias towards crisp, crisp meats. 'Tis a shame.
Eat boiled meat. Bollito misto, a giant collection of simmered meats with assorted sauces has appealed to me for a long time. Partially, I like any excuse to make and eat the herbal accompainment, salsa verde. Partially, I needed an excuse to clear out some room in our freezer. Partially, I have a particular fascination with the food of Piedmont, Italy, which has a cuisine and climate, in some ways, that matches ours (some ways Antonious, some ways). Of the various limitations keeping bollito misto out of the Bungalow (cf. see above), the biggest thing stopping me was the big mess of hungry eaters. We needed an occasion. Shortly after my agreed that we could have a Sedar at our house, she agreed that we could have a bollito misto. What a woman!

I took a picture of the meal, cooking and done, but neither image is worth posting, talking gray and grayer. Let me just say flat out. Eat boiled meat.

One does not so much really cook a bollito misto as compile it. First, determine the misto or mix of meats. The classic, fanciest, Bollito Misto alla Piedmontese, includes seven meats. Seven is a lot, but the number has to be more than two from a range of beef cuts, veal, fresh sausages, poultry and offal. We decided on capon (the one taking up so much space), beef shanks (so nicely marked by our locker as "boiling beef*"); brisket, and veal shoulder (from Sahar Meat). We have the tongue still from our 1/2 cow, but that's for a more private audience. We skipped the fresh sausage because, while we do not keep kosher, we decided that maybe, maybe, the Sedar should not include pork. Instead, from Sahar, we purchased a bunch of their house made merguez sausages (spelled merkens at Sahar), and baked them for that aspect of the meal. There should be a contrast of meats, both for texture and to flavor the broth.

My wife rolled and tied the brisket and veal shoulder. We (I say we, but my wife did 82.74% of the work) used stock and water for the boiling liquid, some recipes use just water. We seasoned with carrots, celery, onion, peppercorns, fresh thyme, allspice, cloves, not too much salt as the meat was salted before entering its bath--we forgot-slash-did not have the advanced time to season the meat too far ahead, but per Alice Waters, I think it would (surely not hurt) to season the meat as much as two days in advanced. Our problem was waiting for the meats to defrost, and having taken out on Tuesday, the capon was still a bit chilly on Saturday.

The meats go in stages. We start with the two cuts of beef, later the veal and finally the capon. The key with the boiling is, classically, not to boil. As one of the recipes says, you want the flavor to stay in the meat not the broth. It is a bit of a battle to find the sweet spot on the dial, where the bubbles break the surface enough to cook the meat in time for dinner but not so much as to render the meats tough. Just fiddle.

The harder question becomes can you fit all of the meat in your biggest stock pot. We have some big ones. We also had some big cuts of meat. The brisket was about three pounds, the shanks about four. The veal shoulder, on bone, took up a lot of space. By the time we got to capon, even a capon cut up, we were out of room in the pot. We needed to bring in Bruce Sutter, finishing the capon in its own pot, having ladled out some stock and adding fresh cold water.

The hardest question is the timing. For one thing, none of the recipes had the exact mix of meats as ours. For another, the recipes tended to have vague directions such as "cook until tender". The problem is, you want tender, yet firm. It's not bollito musho. Luckily, we have the excellent tome by our guru Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River Cottage Meat Book. At least this book gave cooking times for several boiled meats. I would say the meats simmered for the following times:

• Brisket/beef shank - 4 hours
• Veal shoulder - 3 hours
• Capon - 2 hours

Bollito misto requires a big platter as well as a big pot. I sliced the brisket, capon breast and veal shoulder against the grain. The capon thighs we chunked. The beef shank just sort of feel into pieces. For four boiled meats, we served four sauces. Sauces for another post.

*The fact that the standard Midwestern meat locker cutting order includes "boiling beef" suggests that maybe there is a sub-rosa society of boiled meat eaters around me.

Eat Local Shabbos

The Versitility of Ground Meat

Buy 1/2 cow and you get a lot of ground meat. At least there's a lot to do with ground meat. When the weather seemed Spring, early in the week, I thought I'd mix the ground beef with some local onions (minced), local garlic (minced) some local herbs and some non-local spices, toss it on the grill and call it kefta. By Thursday, we were thinking spaghetti and meatballs. Friday morning, the weather seemed grillable again.

As I noted earlier today, I cannot just have food. I need food in the proper combination. What goes with kefta does not go with spaghetti and meatballs. Because the morning sun did not fully convince us of kefta, we went shopping for antipasto fixin's. At Caputo's Cheese Market, we did not really buy, and the rain that came seemed not enough to stop the grill.

Indecision brings new ideas. Sheppard's pie my wife suggested. A new way to use the ground beef. By the time the kidz came home from school, we had not figured it out. We surveyed. I mean one of the reasons spaghetti and meatballs was not moving full speed ahead was that I thought the kidz did not like. The survey results came in, and the meatballs, to my surprise/dismay, came in third, ahead of the kefta. Of course, to my real dismay, the write-in, Wingstop, came in first in the survey of kidz choice for Friday Night Dinner.

In second, they picked the devil they did not know, Sheppard's pie.

Hat Hammond would be proud of the recipe my wife dug up, from Staffmeals, one of her favorite cookbooks; ketchup being the secret ingredient to the ground beef. It did add a touch of sweetness that married well with the frozen peas, frozen corn (all local) sauteed in plenty of local butter and finished with a good splash of local cream.

Before the Sheppard's pie, I made soup from local escarole, a prosciutto end from Caputo's and the rind of some Roth Kase Grand Cru Surchoix Gruyere and a semi-soffritto of local onions, local carrots. Sheppard's pie seemed to demand a cheese plate and we sampled four great local cheeses: (from strongest down) , Hook's Blue Paradise, Hook's 10 year old cheddar, a new wedge of the same Roth Kase used in the soup and Zingerman Creamery's Manchester. We had to drink local. The kidz had Filbert's root beer. Mom and Dad finally found the L. Mawby Michigan champagnes we've been searching (Marion Street Cheese). We had Sex (hahhaha), a fitting Sheppard's pie kinda wine. We digested our food in front of recorded NBC Thursday night comedies, then ate pie.

Local Mystery Meat

We did not fully commit to local when we committed to local. We were just not ready to pay the price of getting all of our meat from the farmers markets. We could get some of our meat there, but given the prices, my wife and I agreed that we could not get all of our meat there. We have since leaped the price hurdle by buying our local meat in bulk. Although we can now comfortably eat local meat, we still face problems.

I've complained before about the frozen nature of our meat. It means that all meat meals must come with a bit of fore-planning--in fact I could not quite understand how the Top Chef chefs bought meat at the Green City Market and then used it shortly thereafter????? [ed. TV Magic?]. The other problem with local meat, one I'm sure I've mentioned before, especially local bulk meat, is the mystery of it all. One never know quite what will be in side the white paper packages until they are unwrapped. It happened the other day when I decided to cook skirt steak or as I'll call it, "skirt steak".

I could tell from the feel of the package that it was not a big steak. It was not to be an Atkinsesque meal. Instead, I planned on making big salad with the steak and some our mondo lettuce head. I did not expect to find steak pinwheels. Inside my package marked skirt steak were two rolls of meat, each pinned in place with wooden skewers. The meat itself was about the size of a garter snake all rolled up. They were perhaps the skirt or from that part of the cow. Perhaps, they were surely quite fatty but also with the livery-ish flavor of hanger steak. I pan grilled one rolled and one unfurled (the kidz like their steak more well done).

Like all of our meat, it featured the sweetness of our cow's diet of surplus fruits and vegetables. It may have been too fatty. How it got packaged as a skirt steak, well that's a mystery.

Eat Local Lamb

Try Locally Raised Lamb for Easter (or Passover)

Good article from today's CTrib on local lamb.:

"When you're buying from a local grower, you're buying from someone who really knows his own land. Many revel in the uniqueness of the flavors of regional lamb,"

The article includes a small sidebar on buy-direct sources for local lamb. The article also mentions Marion Street Cheese Market as an outlet for local lamb (Country Cottage). A couple of other places for local lamb are Cassie's Green Grocer and the Inglenook in Geneva. Both of those places sell the lamb from Mint Creek Farm.

Eat Local Meat

"Where'd Ya Get the Cow?"

As my older daughter's been highjacking the computer--who now knows more about her research topic, SNL, me or her? I never responded to PJ's question in the comments. It's a good question. Where'd the meat in our freezer come from.

3 or so years ago, when we starting eating local, our local was not quite as local. We ate some local meat, but we balked a bit at the price of some of the meat being sold at the farmer's markets. We just were not ready to pay that much for all of our meat. Buying meat in bulk has been a real Godsend. We had the chance to purchase 1/4 of a heard of cattle raised by Farmer Vicki of Genesis Growers. Nearly a year later, we are still eating that cow. We also have 1/2 lamb that we purchased from the Wettstein's. The per pound price for bulk meat makes it a lot more affordable. Getting the meat that way has ensured us that much more of our diet is local.

Genesis Growers is not a viable source right now for meat. There are plenty of options though. The Farm Direct site lists tons of farms in Illinois that sell local meat. The site includes the Wettstein's who sold us our lamb as well as Arnold Meat and Farm Direct Black Angus who sell at Robin's winter markets. See below.

Local meat is very doable.

Eat Local Meat

More 1/2 Cow Use



Cholent again, an Ashkenazi version. Two cuts of meat, short ribs and rump roast; Michigan beans, Wisconsin potatoes, Illinois carrots.

People Want Safe Food

More From CTrib

Blogger Julie Deardoff continues the crusade.

Yet, as the largest beef recall in history shows, most of us have no idea where--or from whom--our food is coming. And because we're disconnected from the process and the environment, we no longer eat intuitively or instinctively. Instead we read confusing labels, we listen to marketers, we look for so-called "health claims" and we follow diet plans. We rely on a mechanized system of food production that is not in sync with the earth; it relies on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetic modification.

Eat local.