MEATY MATTERS
by Rebecca Mali
May 22, 2002
Meat has been on the lips and tongues of many Americans recently.
We eat a lot of it, for one thing. We talk a lot about it, too.
Meat was again on the table--in more ways than one--at a recent Chefs Collaborative seminar on beef and pork raised using sustainable methods. The event, called "The Meat of the Matter," focused on the taste and terminology of sustainable meat, as well as how to order it, butcher it, cure it, and sell it profitably in a restaurant.
The term sustainable in this context is difficult to define. A sustainable method of meat production might be as gentle as possible toward animals, people, and the environment while still proving economically viable for those who make a living from it.
Panelists featured at the seminar included Eric Schlosser, author of the bestselling book Fast Food Nation; Ed Behr, editor of the fine-food quarterly, The Art of Eating; and Diane Halverson, farm animal advisor with the Animal Welfare Institute.
About 70 people- chefs, writers, and meat producers among them- attended the seminar. The French Culinary Institute hosted it. Peter Hoffman, national chair of the Chefs Collaborative and chef/owner of the Savoy restaurant in New York City, moderated it.
"As time has gone on the reality of our food supply has become more opaque," Hoffman said. "It often does not reflect the values we care about as chefs and consumers."
"The Meat of the Matter" was designed to clarify those cloudy issues through education.
Perhaps the most visually dramatic segment of the four-hour seminar was butcher Ted Johnson's demonstration. Wielding huge hunks of rosy, fat-marbled beef, Johnson sliced with a surgeon's skill, then held up and named the cuts of a cow's fore quarter. He also suggested ways to serve the cuts.
"We want to accentuate the lesser cuts because everybody knows what to do with a strip," said Johnson, owner of Almar's Country Road Meat Market in Hudson, New York. "We want to show them what to do with a chuck."
The Chefs Collaborative, founded in 1993, "celebrates the joys of local, seasonal, and artisanal cooking," the organization's literature states. At the same time, "Collaborative members recognize the impact of food on our lives, on the well-being of our communities, and on the integrity of the global environment."
To learn more about the Chefs Collaborative, visit: http://www.chefnet.com/cc2000.
