How Green Is Your Meat?
August 20th, 2009 by Scott
Of all the boogeymen at the root of the massive global climate change problem, none is more troubling in the hearts of the meat-loving masses than agriculture. The animals we so dearly love to feast upon (and you know I do) are spewing more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, and with the global rise in meat consumption as more rural parts of the world become industrialized and have increased access to affordable beef, pork and lamb (meat consumption in developing countries shot up almost 200% from 1962-2003, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), those levels look they’re only going to keep going up. So, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s absolutely true: steaks and pork chops and lamb legs, delicious as they may be, might very well usher in the apocalypse. Hence, the current dilemma on the minds of mindful carnivores: do I have to become a vegetarian now, or is there any way I can keep the world from meeting a hot, smelly end without having to give up my flesh-indulging ways?Continue reading at The Faster Times
How Green Is Your Meat?
August 20th, 2009 by Scott
Of all the boogeymen at the root of the massive global climate change problem, none is more troubling in the hearts of the meat-loving masses than agriculture. The animals we so dearly love to feast upon (and you know I do) are spewing more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, and with the global rise in meat consumption as more rural parts of the world become industrialized and have increased access to affordable beef, pork and lamb (meat consumption in developing countries shot up almost 200% from 1962-2003, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), those levels look they’re only going to keep going up. So, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s absolutely true: steaks and pork chops and lamb legs, delicious as they may be, might very well usher in the apocalypse. Hence, the current dilemma on the minds of mindful carnivores: do I have to become a vegetarian now, or is there any way I can keep the world from meeting a hot, smelly end without having to give up my flesh-indulging ways?Continue reading at The Faster Times
You Are Going To Die…Would You Like To Hear About Our Specials?
August 14th, 2009 by Scott
After binging on coverage of the current debate over our health care system and all the insanity it’s wrought, I had a seriously disturbing dream last night. It was that special brand of nightmare you tend to have after you’ve been up way too late with a bottle of Stoli and a hefty edition of Kafka. I sat alone in a spare, dark room, lit only by a floodlight with me directly in its beam. Before me, a very tall, menacingly heavy table — all sharp, slightly off angles — at which sat a panel of drably dressed, humorless bureaucrats. They appear to be scrutinizing an avalanche of paperwork for some time, just long enough to make me feel suitably terrified. Then they address me.
DEATH PANEL: Mr. Gold, it is the final and irrevocable decision of this council that, because of deliberate inaccuracies on your initial application for Obamacare Socialized Health Insurance, Inc., your motion for continued existence be denied.
ME: (Baffled) Excuse me?
More Spleen, Sir?
August 7th, 2009 by Scott
As part of , I took part in — and often conducted — a number of meat-themed outings, adventures and experiments. There was the Testicle Festival in Montana (it was hilarious), a day spent helping a young couple on a family farm butcher their cow for the year (it was a lot of work), as well as a trip into the woods of Plain Dealing, Louisiana to hunt squirrels with a man named Leroy Nuckolls (pronounced “knuckles” – and it was emotional). And after I’d attempted to eat my way through 31 different animals in the span of a month came the “tour de beouf,” in which I tried to consume every part cut and organ of a cow deemed medically and culinarily appropriate for human ingestion. Over the course of several months, my friends and I had a blast cooking and eating everything from brains to bone marrow, tripe, hoof, tail, and everything in between.
Well, almost everything.
On Being The Meat Man
July 31st, 2009 by Scott
There’s a great old southern rock and roll song that I have in my music collection — a number of renditions of it, in fact — that I play when I have doubts about my chosen profession. I’ll pop on the Jerry Lee Lewis version, listen to the man go sideways on that piano of his, and feel my sense of purpose and resolve slowly return to me. Here’s a sample of the lyrics:
I been down to Macon, Georgia
I ate the furs off a Georgia peach
Plucked me a chicken in Memphis
Mama, I still got feathers in my teeth
Ate a pound of pork Huntsville, Alabama
From a fine Alabama hog
I went to Dallas, Texas
Got no love, my baby left me
Fed the bone to a Louisiana dog
Oh, they call me the meat man
Ya oughta see me eat, ma’am
Hear I’m the meat man, baby
Ya oughta see me eat, ma’am
The Top Ten Meaty Moments in the Movies
July 17th, 2009 by Scott
I love meat, obviously. But I also love movies. Who doesn’t? When these two phenomena cross paths, I’m a doubly happy man. Here, find my favorite carnivorous cinematic moments in recent years. Have one yourself? Please share in the comments section!
1. The Matrix – In the future, when the Earth and humanity have all but been destroyed by homicidal machines, the only foodstuff remaining is a thin protein slop that one character refers to as a “big bowl of snot.” This probably wouldn’t be a big deal if you were a vegan before the robots turned evil – in my experience, most vegan food isn’t far removed from that sort of meal – but for a carnivore, it’s about as depressing as never being able to see the sun again. Joe Pantoliano’s character, Cypher, decides he can’t take the gruel any longer and turns double-agent for the machines, meeting with the evil Agent Smith inside the virtual reality of the Matrix. As he leisurely smokes a stogie, rolls a deep burgundy around a goblet and cuts into a giant, rare porterhouse while harps play angelic cantos in the background, he explains his treason: “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that, when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it’s juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?” he asks as he forks a hunk into his mouth and sighs in abject pleasure. “Ignorance is bliss.” Betraying the entire human race never looked so delectable.
When The Chef Is Trying To Kill You
July 10th, 2009 by Scott
I recently took a long vacation with my family to Portland, Oregon, foremost to celebrate my brother’s college graduation, but perhaps more importantly — we being a family of New Orleanians — to do as much Pacific Northwest eating as we could manage. And I have to say, the food scene in PDX is inspiring. Plenty of high-quality, local organic product, talented cooks gunning for culinary innovation and fun, and, best of all, a low cost of operation that makes it easy for an up-and-coming chef to take a few chances on a new restaurant. If the proof of this experiment’s success isn’t in the pudding, per se, it was definitely in the outstanding ono ceviche we enjoyed at Andina, the grass-fed and finished strip steak at Urban Farmer, and of course the spiced boar collar and fish sauce fried chicken wings at Pok Pok. As I said: Outstanding. But it was on my last night of the trip, mere hours away from boarding a red-eye flight back to New York, that I confronted one of the most outrageously ballsy menu items I’d ever seen in my life. At the diminutive, elegant Le Pigeon, listed nonchalantly among the other appetizers, was this:
Foie gras jelly donut, $16
All The President’s Hamburgers
June 25th, 2009 by Scott
Recently, the food staff at The Faster Times (or most of us, anyhow) decided that we should all meet up over a nice, long lunch and get to know one another. Now, we being people of certain culinary aesthetics, philosophies, and discernment, you might wonder what cuisine we’d share as we, five ladies and a gentleman, gabbed about ourselves and each other, and, most importantly, about food. Asian fusion? Classic continental? Molecular gastro-pub? Playful, avant-garde food art?
Lord, no. We wanted hamburgers, baby.
How Green Is Your Meat?
June 2nd, 2009 by Scott
Of all the boogeymen at the root of the massive global climate change problem, none is more troubling in the hearts of the meat-loving masses than agriculture. The animals we so dearly love to feast upon (and you know I do) are spewing more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, and with the global rise in meat consumption as more rural parts of the world become industrialized and have increased access to affordable beef, pork and lamb (meat consumption in developing countries shot up almost 200% from 1962-2003, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), those levels look they’re only going to keep going up. So, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s absolutely true: steaks and pork chops and lamb legs, delicious as they may be, might very well usher in the apocalypse. Hence, the current dilemma on the minds of mindful carnivores: do I have to become a vegetarian now, or is there any way I can keep the world from meeting a hot, smelly end without having to give up my flesh-indulging ways? Continue reading at The Faster Times
Max’s Maverick Moose Loaf
March 9th, 2009 by Scott
This is Max:
Aside from being a total rock star and one of the coolest people I know (especially when he’s in his Batman getup), Max is the four-year-old son of my friends Emily and Greg, who are also kind of unfairly cool. It obviously runs in the family. So here’s the story: Last Fall, Emily had an idea to invite me to a super-swanky dinner party to celebrate the publication of , which she edited. Like I said, unfairly cool, this person, although lacking the good judgment to keep me away from parties which feature both open bars and assorted celebrities. Fortunately — and I’m not exactly sure how I pulled this off — I managed to have a friendly conversation with The Batali himself, after two cocktails, without either devolving into a slavering fanboy or making a whopping ass out of myself. Nice. The bulk of our discussion, as I remember it, concerned the duck hearts at Casa Mono. They are excellent (as I was pointed out to declare in the New York Post). The rest of the evening was equally strange and enjoyable, from the meal and the good company to the after-party, which found me at the Spotted Pig, somehow deep in conversation with Jimmy Fallon about his recent “master cleanse.” Weird, but fun.
The following week, I felt it would be a nice thing to thank Emily for the invite. Knowing Emily and Greg to be busy with Max — and with another addition to the family soon to arrive via stork, as well — I figured my thanks could come in the form of a home-cooked meal a la Shameless Carnivore. They eagerly accepted, after which the question became “what to prepare?”
“Well,” said Emily, “we still have a lot of that moose and caribou that Greg brought back from his hunting trip in Alaska last year…”
“Wait a second,” I replied, incredulous. “What are you doing holding on to all that wonderful product?” She’d told me about the expedition months earlier, and, being a certain kind of carnivore, I simply imagined that they’d polished it off not long after. To my delight and surprise, they hadn’t touched it.
“We didn’t really know what to do with it,” was her reasoning.
“Oh,” I said, with the sort of wicked, hungry grin that creeps across my face when I know there will soon be shenanigans, “I know what to do. I know just what to do.”
* * *
Now, realize that this was last Fall, during which time, because of the predatory and culinary habits of a “mavericky” Vice Presidential Candidate, there was still a lot of discussion about Alaskan moose meat. (Note: My favorite moose meat related bit came by way of David Reese’s brilliant Get Your War On.) And here I was, amidst all the hubbub and hoopla, with an opportunity to sample the stuff, an opportunity, I’ll add, that didn’t present itself during the research for my book, which is sadly moose-free. Caribou, yes, but no moose.
My plan was to cook up a classic American comfort food dinner — meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and green beans — with my own little Shameless twist: not only would I be using moose for my loaf, but bacon as well. Seeing as wild game such as venison, caribou and moose tend to be on the lean side, they’ve often been prepared with the addition of outside fats, a process known as “larding” or “barding.” In this case, I decided to wrap the loaf in thick cut, hickory-smoked bacon from Tamarack Hollow Farm, which I’d been gifted after a recent cooking demo in the Tucker Square Greenmarket. Brilliant, no?
When I arrived at the home of Max, Emily and Greg, I was greeted with warm smiles, a cold beer, and, straight from the freezer, packages of moose and caribou:
Unwrapping the thawed beast, I found a lovely cut of shoulder meat, glistening and dark in that deep crimson, iron-rich hue you’ll never find in a CAFO animal. No two ways about it, this was truly wild protein, hunted in the frozen Alaskan hinterland.
Then I got to work. First, I needed to grind the meat, which, you might be surprised to learn, doesn’t necessarily require an actual meat grinder (though if you have access to a $5,000 commercial Hobart, I cordially invite you to become my best friend). For a small grinding job, all you really need is a food processor. A Cuisinart is great, but even one of the mini jobs will work fine, provided you segment your meat in 1-2 inch slices and only grind a few at a time. After all the Bullwinkle was nice and ground — also a good call when you’re cooking game animals, since the grinding also tenderizes the meat, which might tend to the tough side — I added a lightly beaten egg, a little milk, chopped onion, bread crumbs and spices, and mixed everything by hand. With that finished, I layered the strips of bacon on the bottom of the loaf pan, like so:
All that was left to do from here was to pack the meat into the loaf pan, top with the rest of the bacon, throw it in the oven and start working on the sides. Of course, Kraft mac & cheese and simple veggies wouldn’t quite compliment this dish, so I upped my game a little, choosing a stellar Mac recipe from my friend Emily Farris’s wonderful cookbook, Casserole Crazy. For the beans, I used a recipe from my childhood: simply steamed green beans — which Max helped me clean and pick the ends from — with salt and lemon pepper and a lemon-butter sauce.
Before I knew it, the loaf was ready. We took it from the oven, carefully turned the loaf pan upside-down on the serving platter, and were gifted with this gorgeous sight:
Glorious! Once sliced, drizzled in a simple brown gravy and plated with the sides, the meal was complete:
Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind was: What will moose taste like? Venison? Armadillo? Old goats? People? Turns out, I have to hand it to Governor Palin — there’s a very good reason she’s hunting these suckers. Moose has a rich, earthy flavor hard to come by in the world of modern industrial meat. In fact, the only time I’ve ever had meat that’s tasted anywhere near this deep and pleasurably wild, it came from another hunted animal. Even through the smoky, porcine layers of hog fat, we could all taste the essential “mooseness” of the dish. And we loved every bite.
And so did Max.
