You say rib steak, I say chop

With the cool evenings of September upon us, red meat is on my mind, even more than usual. I picked up a vitellone "rib steak" from Prather Ranch Meat Co. on Sunday. As I have written about before, vitellone is yearling beef. PRMC's vitellone comes from Oregon and is raised on mother's milk and pasture. I grilled this chop very simply along with some onions and served it with a green salad. For a quick evening meal, especially when splitting a bone-in steak between two people, I like to carve the meat into managable slices and rearrange the meat back along the bone. It makes for a nice presentation usually, though I don't think I was trying too hard this time. The meat, of course, was terrific - mild and very tender.

Overdue

It has long past time for me to write you about my friend, Doug. I have come to know Doug over the past two years, because he has been selling me the finest meat I have ever had the pleasure to buy. I was familiar with Prather Ranch Meat Co. before Doug came on-board, but Doug has taught me a lot more about all the great meat he sells and the ranching and husbandry approaches that are behind it. Doug was referred to by me as my "Meat Guy" until I taught everyone around me his name.

Food binds people together, whether at the dinner table or the market. As our culture in the United States moves further away from the farm, it is dramatic to see how buying meat and produce from the people who actually produce it effects the transaction. My experiences with Doug and all my other friends and purveyors at the market have genuinely enriched my life. As a result, all my meals have backstory. I only need to look in my fruit bowl, pantry, fridge or freezer to be reminded of all the wonderful people and food in my life. It is worth adding that Doug runs his business fairly and ethically and always attempts to give his customers the best. At the shop in the SF Ferry building, Prather Ranch Meat Co. guys, lead by Steve and Scott (pictured above, with Doug), do much the same. As a result, rather than refer to myself as a PRMC customer, I describe myself as a Prather Ranch advocate.

Little oddities

Hanging around at the market has unusual side benefits. You see being only a visitor, though a dedicated one, I am not aware of all the peculiar specialties that occasionally crop up. This past Sunday, Thomas, the "genius" behind RoliRoti , brought a mystery. As I was milling around during a slow period, he asked me (in his wonderful Swiss accent), "Do you wanna try something?" When a great chef like that makes that offer, I thought it was stupid to say no. So he pulls out from a plastic bag in his cooler a dark, bumpy, aged sausage. He proceeds to carefully slice the sausage. He offered me a taste, followed by the expected question. "What do you think it is?" I would not have guessed wild boar. So he explained how it was he came upon wild boar in the Bay Area and we enjoyed his excellent sausage.

Robert of Robert Lambert shared some grapes with me. He proceeded the offer by saying that they had just come into season and they were only in season for three weeks. These light colored grapes, called Bronx, are a cross of the Concord grape and the Thompson seedless. I learned that currently only two mother vines exist for the Bronx grape. Lagier Ranches grows their Bronx grapes from vines started from a cutting from the original vine that is kept at the Cornell Biological Field Station in New York State. This hybrid was created in 1933. They have a sweet Concord flavor with a Thompson-like skin. The inner texture is a mix of the two. The highly vicious flesh of the Concord is muted, making the grape more palatable raw for me. If you have never had a Concord grape raw, they can feel a bit like eating an eyeball.

Indian Summer is upon us. The apples are coming and going. Local citrus is only weeks away.

Fish Heads Fish Heads Roly-Poly Fish Heads

A number of years ago I taught myself to fillet whole salmon from a book. Recently, I have found it very economical to buy whole salmon and fillet them at home. I vacuum pack the fillets with a little marinade and they are good for months. For some reason, I decided to get three salmons from my fish people at Mission Fresh Fish this time. It took me four hours to get these filleted and then to make salmon cakes out of the scarps, but it is well worth it. My wife gets a little grossed out by the operation and usually makes herself scarce. Having done this a number of times now, I appreciate handling the whole fish. It helps me appreciate the whole animal, so to speak, and encourages me to handle it with as much care and skill as a novice fish cutter can muster.

Mission Fresh Fish is a neat company. I used to buy from them years ago at the Mountain View Farmers' Marker. Pat, the head fisherman, is a real character. He looks the part of the sterotypical fisherman. In fact, he was featured in a print ad for Volkswagen as a prototypical fisherman. Unfortunately, when Pat is at the market, it is in Mountain View. But his staff in San Rafael do a great job, too.