Real Veal

I have never been one to eat veal. I just never really got started on it. But when I heard all the bad stuff about it, I did not really freak out. I had seen lots of veal calves on the small dairies in New York State where I went to college. Each dairy had a few pens out front, like dog houses with the calves on rope leads. They could move around and were out in the sun. So while I did not eat veal, I thought the crate-raised, milk-fed thing was overblown.

I have now learned several important things. The conventional veal business is very messy. A veal calf cannot be raised to commercial size without grain and hormones without getting too old to be veal. Now the folks at Knee Deep Cattle Co., who supply Prather Ranch Meat Co. (PRMC) with their vittelone, raise calves the right way. Vitellone is the term used in Italy for "red veal", loosely translated as "young beef", which is slightly older than traditional veal and not milk-fed . Their animals are treated humanely, fed grass and supplemental hay, and left in the pasture to be calves. As a result, this Real Veal is like beef, but lighter and more tender. It is not pale white or artifically mild like milk-fed factory veal. Of course, it is too old to be technically "veal", which is why they call it "vittellone" at PRMC. They slaughter their animals at 4-5 months, while the U.S.D.A. limit for veal is three months. I had a Vittelone T-Bone tonight that, quite frankly, was cut more like a Porterhouse. (I'll never say no to a little extra fillet). With a hearty pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and a rub of olive oil, this lovely steak came off the grill just perfect. So if you happen to run into the head of the U.S.D.A., let him or her know that we need a new classification of marketable beef between veal and beef. My suggestion is that we use Cruel Veal, Real Veal, and Beef. I am not being maudlin here. Do a web search under the term 'veal' and see what you find.

Thankfully, we have options...

Easy and elegant summer meal from the Market

Last Sunday, I came home from the market with all the ingredients for a simple and easy Sunday night meal. Simple summer meals accentuate some of what is best about a Farmer's Market. This was certainly true last Sunday.

We had Prather Moroccan-spiced lamb burgers with mint-yogurt sauce, two varieties grilled Capay squash with grilled fingerling potatoes from Zuckerman's farms. Following this, we had a County Line Harvest green salad with wild arugula and some variety of spicy watercress from Star Route Farms in a lime-maple-EVOO dressing. We finished things off with those awesome County Line seascape strawberries macerated in Almandine (a French almond liquor), lime juice, and sugar over a slice of lemon pound cake with an Almandine marscapone cream.

The synergies of the market are part of what make shopping there so much fun. I have been making lamb burgers regularly since I first had Doug's (of Prather Ranch Meat Co.) excellent ground lamb. He gets his lamb from Reed Anderson of Anderson Ranch () and it is excellent. Ground lamb is often the most muttony tasting lamb you will find, but not this stuff. To the lamb I now add a "Berber" spice mixture made by Kathy of the Occasional Gourmet. I use about 1-1 1/2 tablespoons. This adds a lovely flavor and a bit of heat. Though they cook just like hamburgers, the Berber lamb burgers are similarly satisfying, but a wonderful change. To accompany them, I throw some chopped mint into a bit a goat yogurt and season this with salt and pepper. Some still like their ketchup, but to me the mint-yogurt sauce really dresses the meal up. The only other prep to do was to cut the squash and potatoes, toss them in seasoned EVOO with some crushed garlic and grill them.

Visiting the UK

My uncle lives in a small village in the Thames Valley forty-five minutes from Oxford, England. His cottage is perched at the junction of a small wooded area and a field on the edge of his village. Over the various visits I have made to my uncle over the years, there have been sheep in that field, there has been corn, and now we have rape. Rape is the British name for the plant that produces the seeds from which canola oil is made.

In visiting with him this week, one of the traits one becomes aware of is how the psyche of a people are influenced by their nearness to farms and farmers. Outside the major metropoli, the British have a lot of farms spread amongst their towns and villages. Not surprisingly, the British are fanatical about their gardens. The awareness of the land and the effects on the land seem much more pronounced in the consciousness of my relatives and friends there than of my family and friends here in the US. The ultimate sense of individual responsibility for the welfare of the land is incumbent, in part, upon our awareness that by protecting our agricultural resources and the people that shepard them in sustainable and ethically upright ways we are acting in our own self-interest. When your neighbor is a farm and the farmer lives down the street this becomes totally obvious as I have observed on my many trips to the English countryside to see my family.
The top photo is my uncle's shed and the neighboring field of rape. The bottom photo is my cousin's place. Her 18 month old son is trying to escape the garden in adorable fashion. The field across the lane from her is fallow this season.