A couple of weeks ago, our friends at The Whole Beast, which specializes in cooking whole animals, took on the task of feeding the hungry hordes at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park (which regularly brings out up to 500,000 people). John Fink and his crew prepared lamb gyros of whole lambs they cooked in the park in the massive undertaking. One onlooker described Fink as pushing through like “a B-17 bombardier” — a bombardier who butterflies lambs for hours on end.

Here are the final numbers for The Whole Beast’s weekend:

28 whole lambs

1,000 lbs of potatoes for french fries

350 lbs of Mangalista (or “Wooly Pig”) fat rendered into lard

70 gallons of yogurt for sauce (which came donated in individual 6 oz packages)

40 lbs of porcini mushrooms

4 festival staffers to help lift the grilling rig onto the truck’s hitch

3 all-nighters to prep

The line for The Whole Beast's Lamb Gyros

CADE (Part 2): The Good Slaughter: A Proud Meat Cutter Shares His Processing Floor from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

 
The piece that Food Curated has done about Upstate New York butcher, Larry Althiser, is probably the best piece of meat journalism we’ve ever seen. Althiser has been a butcher for more than thirty years and Food Curated made the trip to his newly-opened slaughterhouse in an open-minded effort to really understand and appreciate what it means when a steak lands on a plate in front of you.

Even for inveterate meat-eaters like ourselves, standing in front of the butcher’s case at the local store gives us pause. Knowing that an animal was raised and slaughtered humanely is a bit of comfort and informs the appreciation of the meal that we’re about to enjoy. So in a world of processed and packed food, this is the kind of story that really brings to light what food means, how it got to you and why you should appreciate it. And the passion and humility that Althiser displays—for doing his job well and humanely—is a credit to artisan butchers and slaughterhouses.

Food Curated also spent some time with Chris Harmon, the director of The Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE) and did a great piece about the support that CADE is giving to farmers in Upstate New York.

Definitely check out Food Curated’s site for the full story and let’s hope we see more meat journalism like this.

There are times when you are really in the zone — when you’ve got the mix just right. Like say when you have just the right drunk going off whiskey and beer and the joint doesn’t put you over the edge, but rather smoothes everything out just so. Think of your burger mixture this way.

Sure some fresh ground beef is your base layer, your beer if you will, but then you want to add in a little complexity. Folks go for everything from brisket to short rib. We like to reach for some lamb, which gives your backyard patty a bit of game (by which we mean the sort of gamey or earthier flavor some people find it imparts).

The levels vary, but you generally want to keep it weighted toward the ground beef side, using about half the amount of lamb as you do beef.

For extra credit hand-chop the lamb. Pick up some cubes of lamb, such as you might use for a stew or put on skewers. Using a very sharp knife cut this into strips longways and then across into strips the other way. Chop it up very well as you might a tartare until you have ground lamb.

We keep it simple, mixing with a minced clove of garlic, the ground beef, salt and pepper to taste and enough olive oil to keep everything moist. We find this keeps us on even keel.

What are some other tried-and-true mixes?

Food and wine from a region, as the Italians have proven, are a natural match. Thus, when we stumbled across some lovely little chops from pasture-raised New Zealand lamb, we naturally drifted over to the small New Zealand section of the wine store.

The two islands of New Zealand (North and South) are about 1,000 miles long, or roughly the size of Italy and, yes, the kiwis grow more than just Sauvignon Blanc.  We were really hoping  to find a Pinot Noir from Central Otage, the southernmost winemaking region in the world. But alas, the only New Zealand Pinot available was from Marlborough, a region further north on the South Island that is famous for fruit-walloping Sauvignon Blanc.

The Atkins Ranch lamb chops, all from free-range, grass-fed, naturally raised lambs, tends toward having a stronger flavor than other lamb. The meat is lean, or to be more precise, naturally lean, or as Atkins puts it, “grown-lean” not “lean-trimmed.” So the little guys are out there running around, lambing it up. The meat takes on a certain gaminess and more pronounced flavor, which, if you are a fan of lamb is a very good thing.

Some kosher salt, pepper, and olive oil are all these babies really need. For good measure we crusted the ends with a tandoori rub before throwing them on the grill. Grilling lamb chops, like the flavor itself, is altogether more delicate than grilling a steak. The thin chops cook quickly, and you don’t want to go past medium rare with these meat lollipops. On a hot flame, where the fire from the charcoal is just licking the grill, they’ll take less time than you expect to reach medium rare, around three minutes on the first side (one side will be thinner — start with that, so that you can let the meat settle thick side up) and four or so on the thicker side.

The pink meat seemed that it would not overpower the light-bodied Pinot, but unfortunately, we were wrong. A California Pinot may have worked better, with it’s ripe red fruit and richer style, but New Zealand Pinots are almost Burgundian in their earthy delicacy.  Fortunately, the lamb chops were merely an appetizer and after the bones were picked clean, we were finally able to find out what the wine actually tasted like.

Ryan Farr couldn’t find his ribs. Basically an entire side of beef — grass-fed and dry-aged Highland  beef courtesy of Long Meadow Ranch — either hadn’t arrived or had gone missing. Farr, of 4505 Meats, was preparing to demonstrate long-rib butchering at Primal Napa (the double meaning of the name refers to the obvious as well as the primal cuts, which comprise every animal), a day-long celebration of open fire cooking, sustainable meat production, whole-animal utilization, and bacon. A ridiculous amount of bacon. (“There’s bacon EVERYWHERE” one happy attendee posted on Twitter.)

But at that particular moment, enjoying the bacon was far from the mind of Chef Dave Varley of Bourbon Steak in DC, one of the many talented chefs who traveled to Napa to help put on this carnivorous tour de force. Varley kept whispering to butcher Kari Underly of Range Inc in Chicago, who was cutting a different side of beef, hung precariously from a chain in a tree overlooking the vineyards of Chase Cellars in St. Helena, Calif., Primal’s home for the second year in a row. Underly, a third generation butcher, laughed at the prospect of what her butcher father would have to say about butchering an animal from the vantage from which she currently worked.

Chef Varley and Underly at work

If the Highland couldn’t be found, Varley, whose task it was to cook the beef Underly was butchering, said they’d stop at the ribs and share the side with Farr, meaning they’d miss some important sirloin cuts. Just as Underly got close to where she’d need to stop, word came that the Highland had turned up (and what a beauty, dark and well-marbled). Underly grinned. “Let’s have some fun with them,” she said, getting into the choice cuts and swinging them over onto the table where she separated the cuts.

Chef Varley surveyed the slabs of beef, some of which were so tender Underly could rip the cuts away with her bare hands, and wondered at how he might cook them. “This,” he said eying a roast, “we’ll put in a salt oven.” Salt oven?

Now would be a good time for us to explain that all of the cooking at Primal is done in a field over open fires. The chef got to work, tending a fire surrounded on all four sides by cinder blocks. He dropped an iron plate on top of it, sending flames shooting from the holes in the blocks. Next he began building another layer over the plate with more cinder blocks, which he then began to fill with salts and spices. Oh, that salt oven.

Avia Hawksworth of Long Meadow Ranch and Ryan Farr

The crowd watching Josh Applestone prepare a pig

Meanwhile, on the main stage, New York’s Joshua Applestone of Fleisher’s Grass-fed Meats sawed through a whole heritage-bred pig (a sirloin roast from which we had the pleasure of grilling the next day) while Jessica Applestone explained to the crowd what he was doing and why, saying that this (and not very long ago) once went on in every community in America and wasn’t an oddity at all. You might take, as a start in understanding the type of conscientious carnivores who take part in Primal the fact that when the Applestones (now partners at Fleisher’s) first met, Joshua was vegan and Jessica a vegetarian (“With,” she says, “a bacon exception.”)

Applestone and Harrison breaking down a lamb

Sure there was plenty of education spiked into the mix, but, of course there was also flash and showmanship, much of it courtesy of San Francisco’s Dave the Butcher. Dave brandished his two scimitar knives on stage, crossing them as Jessica Applestone pointed to each in turn, one from the 1890s and one from 2010. She urged the crowd to practice the art of meat cutting at home, and said, “You don’t need a knife from 1890 to do this; that’s just cool.”

In the end, the dino-sized ribs Farr sprinkled with chipotle-dust were enjoyed by all — former vegans and those who came mainly because they were enticed by the “Bacon Hall of Fame” alike.

Tia Harrison, Kari Underly in front, and Jessica Applestone with Dave the Butcher holding up his scimitar knives in back

And there were plenty who came with no preconceptions whatsoever, generally they were under the age of eight, though, many possibly seeing where their food comes form for the first time. They watched wide-eyed at the demonstrations, but happily for the future, never reacted with the squeamishness one might fear. One dad, toting a tow-headed boy, walked up to San Francisco’s Tia Harrison as she broke down a lamb on a table. “He just wanted to say, hi.” And the boy did, peering over over the edge of the table and waving. “Hi,” Harrison waved back with her knife.

Butchers on stage at Primal Napa

For videos of Primal Napa demonstrations and more information visit ProteinU on Facebook.

Anyone can roast a pig. OK, not anyone, but it takes real gumption to attempt a lamb roast. If not real gumption, then at least the presence of a Pakistani warlord to oversee the proceedings. At an undisclosed location in Brooklyn this weekend, both were in short supply.

It was, however a valiant effort. As we said, the roasting of a lamb over a pit of flame (or in the case of Brooklyn, an improvised cinder block pit since you don’t want to dig in and disturb the toxic soil) is not easily done. The animal takes constant attention least it burn or dry out. A pig is pretty much the set-it-and-forget-it school of backyard cookery. The lamb is another matter. The butchery of the lamb is also another matter, and unlike the pig, a lamb needs to be skinned. Luckily there are places in Queens that have taken care of all this — and done it in accordance with Islamic law to boot.

The cooked lamb in this case was an impressive and commendable feat. Hours of careful preparation (and, may we add, some very judicious seasoning) net you what looks to all like a the charred remains of a dog on a table, a couple of racks of lamb still attached to their host (which it seems is what every backyard barbarian goes for first, tearing at the ribs to get to what they continually assure you is “the best part”), and a whole lot of people squeamishly attempting to slice what else they can off. This creates a bottle neck, and the Butcher can tell you, that what is really needed in these situations is someone with a sharp knife and modicum of expertise.

Employees Only in the West Village has taken a baby New Zealand lamb chop and done something almost perverse, something that should be illegal in seven states, something that in a just and sane world would have even more people clamoring to squeeze through the hordes to get to its dining room: wrapped that diminutive lamb chop in bacon.

Sichuan cooking expert Fuchsia Dunlop will eat your dog. Particularly yappy Pomeranians, pesky poodles, milling mutts and perhaps the Montauk Monster are all potential fodder for the Chinese menu. Dunlop writes in today’s Times Op-Ed page of the Beijing Catering Association’s decision to take dog off the menu during the Olympics. She goes on and on about Marco Polo and the history of dog food in China and how it’s not even seasonal appropriate fare (apparently eating Fido in August is like wearing white after Labor Day), until finally she gets to the meat of the matter:

“In case you’re wondering, there is nothing alarming about the taste of dog: smothered in chilies and aromatic spices in a Hunanese winter stew, it might remind you of lamb.”

Well, thank you Miss Dunlop. At last. As we all know, anything smothered in chilies is delicious. If you are lucky and we get around it, we will share with you our chilies-smothered recipe for Breasts of Pain torn from a Thrasher magazine in ’80s (the recipe calls for a 12 pack of Bud longnecks, in addition to chilies, chili powder, jalapenos and hot pepper sauce). Dunlop does have the presence of mind to point out that eating other things that many find morally questionable–such as shark fins, live turtles and Tibetan monks–does not seem to bother China men one bit. Any regular reader of this space would know that we are only concerned with thing: how does it taste? Okay, we might be concerned with a couple other things, (perhaps the quality of life of the dog in this video of a drunk woman in a bikini demonstrating the Wii fit), but the point here is that now thanks to a few squeamish officials, adventurous travelers and obese Americans and Germans will be robbed of their chance to sample a local delicacy. The Olympics always seem to bring this sort of fervor. Seoul deemed dogmeat unsuitable for area eateries when the Games descended on that fair city and the World Cup has grappled with canine and kitty comestibles for years. Though it should be pointed out Atlanta said nothing to dissuade places from serving up cowboy caviar during the ’96 Games. God bless America.

“We are like lambs in a field,” wrote Schopenhauer in “On the Sufferings of The World,” continuing, “disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.” It’s fate that’s our butcher. Unlike the lambs, who never know the butcher is sharpening his blade, we sense the ravages of time that determine our fate. Ever the cheerful guy, Schopes points out that it’s work, worry, labor and trouble that define our days. However, as an old Kantian, he offers a reasoning: “But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves.”

This is all somehow applicable to the world of Blandings Castle as created by P.G. Wodehouse. In his novel of gluttonous abandon chronicling a sow-fattening contest, “Pigs Have Wings,” the butler Beach, when caught in the cross hairs of Galahand, is described thus: “But his jaw had fallen, and he was looking at his visitor rather in the manner of the lamb mentioned by the philosopher Schopenhauer when closeted with the butcher.” Now the simile doesn’t quite bear itself out, if one is supposed to get the impression that Beach is terrified, since the lambs are never aware of their fate. However, Wodehouse’s double anthropomorphic somersault maneuver might just work, given that Beach is one of only a few characters in the novel with a greater self awareness than the pigs.