Chef John Fink at Heritage Fire. Photo: Laiko Bahrs

• Juicy Loins, Tender Rumps
• Bacon, the Gateway Meat
• Needs Salt
• Smells Good in Here
• Ms. Delicious
• Pigs are Magic

And let's not forget my very favorite bit of meat geekery, Bacon Gives Me a Lardon.

What is it about studly-butcher culture that loves a pun? (The fondness for bacon needs no explanation.) Whatever it is about long days spent with a knife and cleaver, or all-nighters tending the smoky maw of the barbecue pit, the t-shirt slogans that result are always worth wearing. Especially if you've stained it, proudly, with the ducky goodness dripping off something as mind-bendingly awesome as a handmade duck hot dog piled high with duck confit, chicharrones, diced duck egg and duck foie gras.

Sausages from Smoakville. Photo: Laiko Bahrs

But even if, like me, you arrived just a little too late to snatch up one of those already legendary duck dogs, there was plenty of meat for the munching on offer at last Saturday's Cochon Heritage Fire in St. Helena. Cochon 555, the parent organization, is known for its celebrity chef spectacles celebrating the pig across the country ("cochon" is French for "pig"). But once a year, in Napa, the all-pig menu is diversified to celebrate heritage breeds of beef, lamb, goat, and poultry, many of which are staked whole and slow-cooked outdoors over a wood fire.

Perhaps the setting--the shady emerald lawn, complete with fountain, fairy lights and gazebo, of the very posh Charles Krug winery--inspired a little more decorum in this year's organizers and chefs. Participants couldn't really wander from roasting goat to spitted feet-dangling chickens as they could at last year's slightly more rustic event (then called Primal Napa). Whole beasts were definitely being cooked, but their funkier bits weren’t so much in evidence. No pumpkins filled with pork liver, no skewers of heart, no smoky lamb jawbones (tongues included) for Neanderthal gnawing. The offerings were a little more restaurant-refined, the gluttony a little less greasy. The butchering demos, by Dave the Butcher (Marina Meats, the pork happy hour at Fatted Calf) and Joshua Applestone (Fleisher’s), were held upstairs at the tasting room, not with the meaty carcasses strung up on a rock-star stage in the middle of the feast.

Whole animals cooking at Heritage Fire. Photo: Laiko Bahrs

That said, the meats on offer were absolutely delicious. What did I love best, the pink, tender slices of lamb cupped in Boston lettuce leaves with fresh mint and pickled red onion, or the succulent Indian-spiced lamb masala patties? The crackling skin sliced off the enormous chanterelle-stuffed porchetta, as good as any I’ve had at farmers' markets in Italy? The moist chunks of fennel-rubbed rabbit? John Fink of the Whole Beast's treyf special, roasted tandoori-spiced goat with goat yogurt? The snappy, ruddy Italian sausages from Smoakville BBQ in Napa? The long, slow chew of Woodlands Pork's country Mountain Ham, made from forest-reared, terroir-expressing pigs rooting through the hollers of West Virginia? According to Woodlands' Irish-born president and ham obsessive Nicholas Heckett, this is no dainty appetizer ham. Said Heckett, "I like it after dinner, with whiskey and a fine cigar." The finish is so long, and the taste so concentrated and intense, he explains, that it would knock out any less robust entrée to follow. Like the famous French chef Joel Robuchon, who frequently included a plate of utterly unadorned jamon iberico as part of his tasting menus, Heckett staunchly believes that high-quality ham needs no adornments. (Then again, Robuchon, sad man, has probably never had a warm Southern-made buttermilk biscuit, split and stuffed with slivers of country ham and a dab of homemade peach chutney.)

Rabbit menu from Heritage Fire. Photo: Laiko Bahrs

We end up, as one does at these events, lying under the trees, drinking wine out of GoVino’s reusable plastic cups (picture a Riedel stemless wine glass, reimagined for picnicking), conjuring up the outrageousness of meats past. "Remember those bacon eclairs?" says one friend, dreamily. They were thumb-sized, she said, filled with something bacon-fatty, with a crunchy slice of bacon on top, where the chocolate glaze would otherwise go. Another friend toyed with recipe ideas for the twine-wrapped package of lamb liver that he’d begged off the crew doing the lamb butchering demonstration, using a whole lamb from local Stemple Creek. (The various cuts of meat from each demo were raffled off at the end of the evening.)

This being a chef event, the eating and drinking had to continue at an after-party held down the street at Farmstead. And naturally, there had to be a fire, in this case a roaring bonfire built in the sand pit out back by Heather Shouse, a red-headed, Southern-twanged food writer on hand from Chicago. Shouse, the author of Food Trucks: Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels, is criss-crossing the country as a Cochon camp follower as she works on an upcoming Cochon cookbook. Before becoming a writer, "I worked in restaurants all my life," she said, and she has the tattoo sleeves to prove it. One chef brought out a plate of salmon he'd smoked the day before; another crew arrived bearing a deep hotel pan filled with bite-sized chunks of pork, juicy and sweet, carved off the last animal left over the coals. A bright full moon shone down. There was meat, beer, cigars, and a ring of sweaty, smoky men and women kicking back after doing what they do best: taking care of the people who love to eat.

Jessica and Joshua Applestone's story is, by now, a familiar one. Vegetarian/vegan couple gets interested in sustainability, organics, and the implications of ethical eating. They start reading and going to farms and farmers' markets, realize that the staff (and signage) at most big food retailers--even the ones that tout their eco-friendliness--are uninformed and unreliable. Who to believe? How to make a difference? What to make for dinner?

This is where the Applestones' story veers off from the typical hipster vegan-turned-ethical omnivore trajectory. They didn't just find a meat CSA and fill their freezer with grass-fed hangar steak and pork belly destined for homemade ramen or home-cured bacon. That's what might happen now, in 2011, here in San Francisco. But this was 2004, only a couple of years after Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation had been published. Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine article, Power Steer, which followed the short, unhappy life of one young, burger-destined steer in a Kansas feedlot, had just made millions of beef-eating Americans realize that most of the corn- and soy-stuffed animals they were buying had never come near a blade of grass. Grass-fed meat, what little there was of it, was hard to find, and usually available only shipped frozen from the Midwest. So what did they do? They started a butcher shop in New York's Hudson Valley selling only pasture-raised meats, a butcher shop that bought only whole animals from small farmers and ranchers they knew. Joshua, still vegan at the time they started the business, learned the butchery side, a trade plied by both his grandfather and great-grandfather. They called the shop Fleisher's Grass-Fed Organic Meats, from Joshua's family name. They got advice from dozens of retired butchers, almost all of whom told them that they were crazy, that they'd be out of business and worse, divorced, in a matter of months.

Now, some 7 years later, their business (and their marriage) is not just intact, but thriving. This fall, they're opening their second shop, in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood, with a third one planned for the Upper West Side. (Take that, Zabar's!) The food culture has caught up with them, and "grass-fed" and "pasture-raised" have entered the common dialogue of more than just a few provenance-obsessed food folks. This week, Joshua and Jessica made the trek West for a series of events promoting their new book, The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat: How to Buy, Cut, and Cook Great Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, and More. I caught up with them at an after-party at Bernal Heights butcher shop Avedano's, following their book-signing at nearby Omnivore Books and their on-air appearance on KQED's Forum with Avedano's butcher and co-owner Tia Harrison. (Harrison is also the chef at Sociale and a co-founder of the Butchers' Guild.)

Like a lot of New Yorkers, Jessica has a San Francisco connection; while she was raised in Long Island, her father grew up here, and she lived in the city from 1989-1991, working at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Mercury Press before moving to Tokyo and New York City. "I miss the real foodie culture here, the diversity of ethnicities. And the Mexican food!" she said as we stood near a candlelit platter of ham. She and her husband have dubbed Kingston, NY, where they have their shop, "Park Slope North" for the number of Brooklynites from that Berkeley-ish neighborhood who spend their weekends up in their locale. Woodstock (yes, that Woodstock) is close by, as is New Paltz, a busy college town whose young mayor made headlines in 2004 for issuing marriage licenses and performing civic weddings for 25 same-sex couples, six years before gay marriage was legalized in New York. Without customers from these bourgeois-bohemian enclaves, she admits, much of their painstakingly sourced, meticulously cut meat wouldn't get bought, week after week. Although their learning curve was steep (says Jessica, "We didn't have a learning curve; it just went straight up from the minute we started"), their butcher shop has become, amazingly, something almost exactly what they envisioned: a source not just of meat but of community, a place where the butchers know their customers by name, and where people chat and ask questions, take classes, share recipes and swap neighborhood gossip, and in the process, use their food dollars to support a whole network of local farmers, ranchers, slaughterhouses, and more.

Their book is an unintimidating, user-friendly guide for the home cook, one who's curious about this whole whole-beast thing but doesn't yet have the chops, or the knowledge, to get busy with a boning knife. It's a primer on primals, the "big cuts" that well-trained butchers break down into the more familiar chops, ribs, sirloins and roasts. This is no encyclopedia of meats; the type is big, there are lots of chatty sidebars and plenty of weekday-dinner recipes. Even if you never follow their instructions for butterflying a leg of lamb or frenching a crown roast, you can still learn a lot of useful basics to make you feel much more at home in front of a meat case. Particularly useful are the pages championing their favorite lesser-known butcher's cuts, like lamb sirloin (one of my favorites, and frequently on hand at Avedano's), the cuts that a butcher knows but rarely sells.

Jessica and Joshua Applestone. Photo by Jennifer May

While Joshua cuts the meat, Jessica talks to the customers, explaining everything from how grass-fed meat is a seasonal product to the best way to cook bacon (the details are in the book, but suffice it to say that you're probably doing it wrong. Low and slow, that's the ticket). You've probably seen the dotted-line cow or pig in a dozen cookbooks, segmented and labeled to show where the shank, loin, chuck roast or top round come from. Jessica discovered a faster way to teach customers why some cuts are tender, others tough: the dotted-line human. Just imagine yourself down on all fours, and you can feel where your tougher, working muscles are (like the shoulders, neck, and legs) and what's placid and fatty, like the belly, the back and the meat around the ribs. "I fought hard to get the human in the book!" she laughs, and while it's off-putting at first sight, it does the job. You're not likely to forget where a tenderloin comes from once you've seen it labeled right over a navel like your own.

Hard-core wanna-be butchers may find the book a little too basic for their cleaver-and-chain-mail tastes. For them, there's Ryan Farr's Whole Beast Butchery slated for publication later this fall. Farr, a butcher's butcher who started 4505 Meats, the man who made putting (artisanal) chicharrones on a (handmade) hot dog seem like the ultimate in porky deliciousness, will be offering more step-by-step photographs and specialized instruction, with no stinting on the tongues, ears, and brains. But as an introduction to being a thoughtful carnivore in the kitchen, The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat makes a fine argument for knowing your meats and knowing your butcher.

Joshua and Jessica Applestone will be participating in the Cochon 555's Heritage Fire event at Charles Krug Winery in Napa on Saturday, Aug 13. Tickets $100-$200.

Sustainable Meat and the Art of Butchery
In recent years, more chefs and consumers are demanding local, sustainable meats, driving some to raise and butcher their own livestock. KQED's Forum gets into the gristle with three butchers and talk all about meat, from what consumers should be asking at the counter to how to cook a whole pig in the backyard.

Original Broadcast: Wed, Aug 10, 2011 -- 10:00 AM

Host: Sydnie Kohara

Guests:
• Jessica Applestone, co-author of "The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat" and co-owner of Fleisher's Grass-fed & Organic Meats in New York
• Joshua Applestone, co-author of "The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat" and co-owner of Fleisher's Grass-fed & Organic Meats in New York
• Tia Harrison, co-owner of Avendano's Holly Park Market, executive chef and co-owner of Sociale restaurant and co-founder of The Butcher's Guild

Related Articles:
• A Tell-All Guide to Artisanal Butchery By Adriana Velez (Civil Eats)
• Events: Former Vegan and Vegetarian Write the Book on Sustainable Meat By Mollie McWilliams (SFoodie)

SF Chef 2010, Seminar - Going whole hog. Stephen Gerike cutting off the trotters. Tom Pizzica (left) assisted. Photo by bonnibella

Thursday's SF Chefs Whole Hog seminar mixed savory porcine dishes with butchery and cooking demos. The event was geared toward restaurant professionals, and honed in on how chefs and restaurant owners can purchase and use an entire hog while making money. Guests arrived to the Westin St. Francis hotel room by a sweet, BBQ nuanced smell which served as a preview for the dishes to come. Chef Stephen Gerike did most of the butchery, and is from the National Pork Board, a sponsor. “Unemployed Chef” Tom Pizzica assisted. Pizzica lives in “a one bedroom San Francisco apartment” and was a finalist on The Next Food Network Star.

Gerike and Pizzica prepared and butchered half of the pig on Wednesday, so that food would be ready to eat for the guests. They acknowledged that curing the hog is one popular use of whole animals, but that they had cooked up other options, including: Philly style roast pork sandwich with provolone and broccoli rabe; Trotter log (also known as foot cheese) and Achiote marinated al pastor.

Trotter log. Photo by bonnibella

Chef Gerike says to avoid watery, sticky, or spongy pork. Ph level is important, and reddish, firm meat is the ideal to look for. Mid-way through the demo, questions from attendees ranged from “What is the difference between a picnic ham and a butt shoulder,” to “What will I pay for pork?” Gerike also debated the cooking temperatures, pointing out that the foodservice required temp is lower than that for consumers. “There’s a reason why people find pork to be tough… if it’s been cooked too long, it will be tough. Keep it to 137 degrees and allow it to rest for three minutes before serving. Then it will get to the medium temp you want, of 145 degrees.”

Of all the 90+ slides Chef Gerike showed, one for a dish called the Bacon Turtle, made out of bacon, seemed to garner a mix of interest and humor from guests. Scrapple, a dish popular in other parts of the country, was described as a mix of pork heart, liver, and kidney that is braised. It is then strained and the meat is pulled and blended with buckwheat, polenta, and sage. After being refrigerated, it is fried, usually for breakfast. Gerike said, “It’s the same thing as boudin, or black pudding. A version in Cincinnati calls for oatmeal.”

Cerdo al pastor. Photo by bonnibella

Chef Pizzica used achiote, dried peppers, toasted pasillas, ancho, clove, cumin, tomato, and onion to marinate the al pastor pork. Marinating for 24 hours infuses the meat with flavor and also tenderizes it. The resulting tacos were made from leg meat that Pizzica pronounced to be “mucho sabor.” The samples were happily gobbled as soon as the waitstaff set plates in front of guests; one napkin was barely enough for the red and sometimes oily hands that followed. Chef Pizzica recommended using an extremely hot char-broiler to cook the meat, and using reduced marinade while cooking for added flavor. The one hard and fast rule Chef Pizzica recommended for cooking with pork was using salt and pepper to season. “You can’t do pork without salt and pepper,” he said.

Mary Ladd is a staff member for the SF Chefs 2010 events.

San Francisco residents Ryan & Cesalee Farr are the self described "Mission rat" couple behind 4505 Meats, producer of popular meaty products as chicharrones and Spicy ‘Zilla Dogs that buyers freely gobble at events and the company's Ferry Building booth. Working at the Ferry Building has its advantages; Cesalee said, "We buy all of our vegetable, fruits, eggs, and crackers and any other goodie we may need here."

Ryan is the butcher/chef/teacher and front man of the 4505 venture, and his wife Cesalee does much of the administrative and logistical work. The two also have an eight month old son, named Tanner, who may soon try Fatted Calf liverwurst (more on that later). Cesalee & Ryan Farr answered Bay Area Bites questions via email and phone interview. Comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

THE WORK TOGETHER
Cesalee Farr said, "I run the (Ferry Building) Farmers market booth, work in the office. I try to take care of all details on outside events." She also manages "the kitchen flow… you name it, I do it." If you book a spot for Ryan Farr's pig butcher classes at La Cocina, Cesalee is the one answering the phone, and processing credit card info. Her imprint can also be found on the the 4505 Facebook page, which is regularly updated with market menu, product and class information. Her husband of nearly four years is the main chef, as Cesalee clarifies: "I don't make sausage, but I don't mind getting my hands dirty. I help out if needed."

THE RELATIONSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Cesalee: "We met in Calistoga, which is my hometown. I moved home from school and we happened to be working at the same restaurant, All Seasons Bistro. I was the front of the house, and he was back of the house. Our first date was skydiving. On the second date, Ryan picked me up with tomato dripping down the front of him. I was like 'this guy is weird' but he kept saying he 'never knew what a real tomato tasted like till then….' It’s been love ever since. That was 2002, 8 years together and we’ll be celebrating our 4 years wedding anniversary in August."

DATE NIGHT

Cesalee: "Our house for date night has been the case a lot lately with us having a new baby and a crazy work schedule. We try to make it special, by having caviar & Champagne, but some nights it’s a roasted free range chicken and homemade beers from a friend."

ON ART MADE FROM DEAD ANIMALS
Ryan Farr mentioned that his wife makes and gifts bone/skull related art to friends and families. She makes her art from the bones and skulls of "deer, cows, goat, lamb, rabbits. But mostly, I do pig skulls, since that's what we have most of…" Each skull is individually handcrafted in San Francisco. (Email cesalee@yahoo.com for more information.)

Cesalee: "(The) skulls are sourced from local farms in the Northern California area. It's a small production of handcrafted skulls, bones and more. Created solely for my own passion, with my love for nature and science it all came together."

THE ART PROCESS

Cesalee: "It depends if I get the animal with or without the fur, skin and meat on them. I de-face/de-skin the animal. I know that sounds kinda crazy. Then (I) boil them, changing the water often. I de-meat the skull/ bone, boil it some more, til I have a meatless/ skinless piece. Drying it ideally in sunlight, boil it some more and then in a bath it goes… hair peroxide works best about a 20vol with water. It can't be hydrogen peroxide from a drug store. I found this out by trial and error, I also may have read it somewhere. I also do hair so it works out perfect. (I'm not practicing hair right now, other then for friends.) After a long 36 hour or so soak, it's time for more drying, when the bone is no longer wet, I seal it with a clear kind of epoxies spray. (Then it's) ready for painting or paper mache. I style it out with swarovski crystals, crystals/rhinestones, eyelashes, colored paper, bright colors, etc… Each skull is totally different."

BABY FOOD, THE 4505 WAY
So far, Tanner has been out to eat with his parents to Hana, Starbelly, Tartine Bakery, and Delfina. For eating at home, this baby has meaty options:

Cesalee: "Tanner's 8 months old, and yes, we're looking into what kind of liver he'll be eating. I was thinking Fatted Calf liverwurst, it's to die for. Our 3-year-old niece loves it! She eats it with our chicharrones and doesn’t share. It's smoked with a little garlic and herbs so I haven't actually given it to Tanner yet. I bought some for the last two weeks to give to him and I've eaten all myself. We started buying it for our friend's son when he was about 10 months old.

We make all of Tanner's food. He gets fresh ground lamb from his Dad, fresh egg yolks, strawberries & bananas, pears, apples, avocado (his favorite) and yams. He's not a big fan of asparagus. Meat is our next step. I'm thinking liver mousse and pate is what I want to start making for him next."

THE FOOD FAVORITES

Bi-Rite Market
3639 18th Street (between Dolores Street and Guerrero Street) Map
(415) 241-9760
Hours: Daily 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
Closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Days.

Ryan: "The staff is so helpful. We love that. Sam is definitely an inspiration, in many different ways. The small businesses they support, and the selection that they have… it’s where you go." (Bi-Rite was one of the first to carry 4505's chicharrones)

Cesalee: "I shop here at a lot, I grab cheese, a free-range chicken for dinner to roast, a loaf of sweet baguette, ice cream from their creamery or whatever else I may need for the house."

SanJalisco (Formerly known as Los Jarritos)
901 S. Van Ness Avenue (between 20th Street and 21st Street) Map
(415) 648-8383
Hours: Open daily from 8am to 10pm

Ryan: "I love Los Jarritos. The chicharrones con huevos. Anything there is spot on."

Pizzeria Delfina
3611 18th Street (between Dolores Street and Guerrero Street) Map
(415) 437-6800
Hours: Monday 5pm to 10pm
Tuesday-Thursday 11:30am to 10pm
Friday 11:30am to 11pm
Saturday 12pm to 11pm
Sunday 12pm to 10pm

Cesalee: "It's small, amazing food and I love the staff and the fact it's blocks away from the house it's bad either. Our normal order: Salsiccia pizza, special pizza usually one with an egg on it…., salad of, and if (it's) in season, the fries with eyes. Ryan will have a beer and Cesalee a glass of rosé."

Elixir
3200 16th Street (at Guerrero) Map
(415) 552-1633
Hours: Monday-Friday 3pm to 2am
Saturday 12pm to 2am
Sunday 11am to 2am

Ryan: "Elixir is our neighborhood bar. They're always great to us. We started grilling there on Sundays; (grilled) all last year, in the summer."

Cesalee: "Usually it’s a beer and shot of bourbon whiskey for Ryan and vodka, soda for me."

Avedano's
235 Cortland Avenue (at Bonview St.) Map
(415) 285-MEAT
Hours: Monday – Friday 11am to 8pm
Saturday 9am to 8pm
Sunday 11am to 6pm

Cesalee: "I grab pasta or meat that we may not have at our own kitchen, or if I’m heading to a friends for a BBQ, I’ll stop here."

Hana Japanese Restaurant
101 Golf Course Drive (near Double Tree Dr.) Map
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 586-0270
Hours:
Lunch: Monday - Saturday 11:30am to 2:30pm
Dinner: Sunday - Thursday 5pm to 9pm, Friday & Saturday 5pm to 9:30pm

Cesalee: "Hands down, Hana Japanese Restaurant in Rohnert Park has the best sushi outside of Japan we’ve EVER had!!!! We’ve tried a lot of places. Sometimes we go for lunch and end up staying for dinner. It’s that good."

Dynamo Donut & Coffee
2760 24th Street (between Hampshire St. and York St.) Map
(415) 920-1978
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 7am to 5pm
9am to 4pm Sunday
Closed Monday

Cesalee names Dynamo Donuts as her guiltiest food pleasure, "hands down. I can eat at least four in one sitting."

Photos by Stephane von Stephane

"Is this Satan's dinner party?" my companion Stephane asked me as we walked into a Dogpatch photo studio on Saturday night. "If it is, it sure looks tasty!" At the center of the airy white room, hanging suspended on a heavy chain, was a whole goat, skinned and hooked through the hooves on two sharp cast-iron points. More heavy chains were linked around the waists of Marina Meats' and Avedano's butcher David Budworth, a.k.a. Dave the Butcher and his assistant Josh Kleinsmith, each chain weighed down with an assortment of wicked-sharp knives and cleavers.

Around us, tattoo-sleeved servers in black t-shirts emblazoned with the electric-green logo Chef Stephanie: Culinary Mistress were delivering plates of Alemany Farms greens topped with bright nasturtium flowers and tiny gobbets of goat carpaccio--raw meat, fresh off the hoof--while a band crashed out some power chords in the corner.

Welcome to The Butcher, the Chef, and the Goat, the first episode of The Butcher and the Chef, a roving underground dinner party dedicated to explaining, in the most deliciously visceral way possible, just how food goes from animal to ingredient.

A collaboration between caterer, cooking teacher, and private chef Stephanie Hibbert and Dave the Butcher, the concept was born during a casual conversation the two had a couple of months ago. At first, their business partnership might seem unlikely; Hibbert, who spent six years cooking with Eric Tucker at the high-end vegan restaurant Millennium, was a vegetarian until four years ago. But their mutual passion for sustainability, and for getting their clients to know where their food is coming from, proved to be a perfect match.

Eight weeks later, they were shepherding 50 people up four flights of stairs into a Dogpatch photo studio, transformed into a dining room with the help of green events planner Sadie Waddington of One Big Fish Events. Using her usual prep space at La Cocina, with last-minute staging furiously organized in the studio's tiny galley kitchen, Chef Stephanie created a five-course meal featuring the products of a host of like-minded local suppliers, from strawberries grown at the unionized, organic Swanton Berry Farms near Santa Cruz to beers made by newbie brewer Patrick Horn at Soma's Pacific Brewing Laboratories.

On the plate, the goat was great, from a deep, richly flavored mushroom, liver, and kidney pâté to a black bean and chipotle chile and seared slices of leg (tough and hard to cut, but worth the chew) and a more succulent braised shoulder over polenta and peas. The meat was sweet, not gamy at all, from animals raised at Long Ranch in Manteca, pasture grown and finished on alfalfa. But the real draw? Not the dinner, but the show.

As guests sipped from wine glasses filled with Pacific Brewing Lab's Rough Wooing (a big Scottish-style ale smoothed out with maple syrup, jaggery, and sweet spices), Dave broke down the display goat, first sawing it half, then methodically dividing it from ribs to loin, explaining as he went.

"If you understand how one animal works, you can understand how any one works. The shoulder is always a slow cook, while legs and ribs are a fast cook." To demonstrate, he bones and rolls a neat parcel, made from the "arm"--meat from the shoulder, socket, and shoulder blade--perfect for braising, with just a sprig of rosemary and a little salt.

"I'm a real fan of cooking without a lot of seasoning, so you can taste the meat. If you're not going to taste the meat, you might as well get a boneless, skinless chicken breast and move to the Marina," he says, to much laughing and clapping from the crowd. As the beer flows and the goat is slowly reduced to a couple of ankles and hooves, the audience begins yelling out questions. What about the marrow, asks one man. It's there, just like in a cow, replies Dave. Split the legs, roast them, and you'll have marrow bones. Different taste, and less of it, since the legs are much slimmer, but marrow nonetheless.

Is this, then, what will get our goat? A little glamour and some knife-wielding education? Despite some media hype, goat hasn't quite muscled beef, pork, or even lamb off our plates. For the omnivorous, though, there are plenty of reasons to go for goat. As red meats go, it's a lean and healthy one. Since they're smaller and slaughtered younger, they don't have the impact on the ecosystem that cows raised for meat do, and they're well-suited to smaller operations. Just ask Bill Niman, who left his rapidly expanding meat company, Niman Ranch, in order to focus on sustainable goat farming at Stokes Ranch in Bolinas. He and his wife Nicolette are goat evangelists now, touting the healthful, environmentally sound benefits of goat meat to skeptical carnivores around the country.

So, why not goat? First might be what Dave calls "the ethnic thing." If you didn't grow up eating Mexican birria or Jamaican curried goat, or shopping in halal butcher shops, goat can seem like something other people eat, like tripe or frogs' legs. Gamy, funky, too strong: Dave has heard it all from customers he's tried to get interested in the world beyond tri-tip and lamb chops.

Slowly, though, goat is catching on. Dave says that Avedano's now goes through a whole butchered goat about every two weeks. At a recent Inforum panel discussion on urban farming at the Commonwealth Club, City Grazing founder David Gavrich mused on the possibility of reducing his ever-increasing goat herd--which makes its living munching down the weeds around the City's train tracks--through selective slaughtering, providing truly local meat to interested consumers.

Back at the dinner, guests are purchasing their own party favors. In keeping with the event's no-waste, nose-to-tail philosophy, the display goat isn't just an anatomy experiment, it's next week's dinner. As each part of the goat is broken down, the cuts are wrapped in brown paper and sold on the spot for diners to take home, from the head ("I'm making soup!" announces its buyer jubilantly) to the chops, the shanks, the kidneys, even the tongue.

At the end of the evening, Dave and Stephanie are wiped out but thrilled. For a first venture, it's been a surprisingly smooth success, one they'll repeat on Sunday afternoon from 4 to 7pm. And then, after the buckets of compostable scraps are hauled out, the rented tablecloths packed up in their biodegradable bags, they'll start planning their next event, Gone Fishin', at Coffee Bar on June 27th. As with the first event, which was a benefit for Alemany Farm, part of the ticket price will go to support a local agricultural or sustainability effort, in this case the backyard-gleaning project Produce to the People.

Julie Powell visited KQED's The Writers' Block to record a reading from her latest book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession. She was open to participating in a video interview and shared her thoughts about the importance of transparency in the process of transforming animals into meat; how the fame she received from Julie and Julia affected her career path and personal life; revealed some themes for her next fiction novel and showed us her tattoo.

Julie Powell's tattoo "Loufoque" which translates from French to English as "Crazy, Zany"

Related Links:

• Listen to Julie Powell's reading at The Writers' Block
• Purchase Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession at Amazon.com
• Purchase Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously at Amazon.com
• Julie Powell's Amazon.com page
• The Julie/Julia Project: Nobody here but us servantless American cooks...
• Julie Powell's blog: What Could Happen? Musings from a "Libidinous Shrew."

Credits:
Video by Emmanuel Hapsis & Wendy Goodfriend
Photos by Wendy Goodfriend

"Have you tried the lamb brains?"

Well, it was just that sort of party. The lamb brains, so I was told, were simply smashing--like meaty custard, in the best possible way.

But the lamb brains weren't the half of it. The outdoor tables at last weekend's first Primal Napa event were a head-to-tail, guts-and-all celebration of going deep with meat. There were the strips of grilled beef heart, for starters, and a whole roasted Musquee de Provence squash stuffed with chunks of pork liver. Then slim slices of headcheese, unctuous slathers of nduja, much salume, even entire smoke-blackened lambs' heads, complete with jutting teeth and curled, fibrous tongues. "Yeah, just gnaw right on the jawbone," advised one chef-jacketed guy behind the table.

The setting was appropriately rustic, outside on a beautiful autumn afternoon, under the trees and up against the vines at the Chase Cellars' Hayne vineyard in Napa, with hay bales scattered and, for Napa, quite a young and stylish crowd. There was definitely money here, cool money with BMWs parked in the grass, strolling over for scoops of lamb brains and chunks of rare goat right off the bone.

Back in the hot zone, surrounded by smoking coals, piles of logs and a whole Mediterranean coastline of fresh rosemary branches was Mr. Meat himself, Incanto and Boccalone's Chris Cosentino, jogging from fire to fire in his flaming orange t-shirt emblazoned "USDA Choice," his voice worn to a rasp. In fact, all the cooks seemed to be having a swell time, getting sweaty and grimy surrounded by fire and meat.

Mopping harissa marinade over a long spitted row of feet-on chickens, nuzzling a flat of eggs into a pillow of hot ash, angling an entire spread-eagled goat (furry hooves intact) over a pile of flaming coals: the concept may have been based in subsistence cooking, but the style was deep in the smoky flair that only flambeing can bring.

The mood was definitely gleeful--meat does that to people--and in a funny way, honest. There was no getting away from the fact that eating here meant eating something that once had a face, because that face, or at least the edible bits of it--the tongue, the cheeks, even the eyeballs--were probably right there on the table next to the legs or ribs or tenderloin. And the animals had a pedigree: ask any cook, and they could tell you where the meat they were roasting came from, who raised it and how.

Elbowing up to the platter of slow-cooked pork Hudson Ranch pork belly (divine), one could eavesdrop on any number of serious discussions about heritage pig breeding. Get distracted for a few moments by the leather-and-chocolate Pinots from Hirsch Vineyards, and the roasted goat legs would be all but picked clean, although a few succulent morsels could always be chiseled off and shared by the kind woman wielding a chef's knife on the other side of the table. This wasn't down-home (the highlights and sunglasses on display were much too expensive for that) but there weren't any waiters or coddling, either. In fact, you had to do a little begging just to score a little paper plate and skimpy napkin. Some of the meat was in bite-sized slices; some was simply hacked up and plattered, letting the hungry pull through the shreds and fat with eager hands and plastic forks. We cooked it, the attitude seemed to be. You figure it out.

Up front were hands-on displays of rock-star butchering (a cross-coast trend recently chronicled in the New York Times under the headline Slaughterhouse Live) with Fatted Calf founder Taylor Boetticher whipping through a beef forequarter with deft strokes and cool aplomb. Neatly wiggling out the ball of a shoulder, he pointed out that this particular breakdown didn't require too much finesse, since all the meat was destined for sliders, a rough grind of aged meat and creamy fat made into mini-burgers for the hungry hordes. (Too true: with all the variety meats on display, the table handing out hot dogs and burgers was the one with the surging six-deep, hands-out crowd, right from the moment the patties hit the grill.)

Not surprisingly, the list of participants read like a who's who of current carnivorishness: Fatted Calf, 4505 Meats, Boccalone, Avedano's, Perbacco, Star Meats...and Ubuntu? Wait, that Ubuntu, Napa's famous yoga-studio/vegetarian restaurant, the place my vegan cousin and his new bride had a nearly religious experience over the cauliflower three ways? Thankfully, Ubuntu chef Jeremy Fox (not himself a vegetarian) joined the party to show that open fire-cooking can do wonderful things to vegetables, too. There were terra cotta pots brimming with Rancho Gordo beans in spicy broth, slippery whole roasted torpedo onions, and more.

As the sun slipped away and the strings of white lights lit up across the wine-pouring booths, the heavy hitters came out, finally ready after their hours in the hot zone, staked and salted, roasted and smoky. It was primal, and it was delicious.

Sorry, Mr. Foer. You may not eat it any more, but you know how good it can be.

Photos by Stacy Cahill

Today's food-scape is a rich tapestry woven from a multitude of little ideas and small stories: tradition, history, science, art, and human ingenuity colliding on plates at the intersection of major political and social issues. The individual strands of this loom-y metaphor are people. They aren't always clearly visible until you look closely. People need food to survive, and in ancient times, communities were endlessly preoccupied with finding things to eat and figuring out how to cook them. Civilizations would form and thrive around the domestication of a single species of animal. Proud eating traditions have sprung from time-honed preparation techniques born of necessity. Great celebrations still honor the harvest and hunt. For evidence, look no further than Thanksgiving and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. There's a gulf between pounding poi in Polynesia and nudging a grocery cart through Whole Foods, but the parallels persist even amid changing times and circumstance: we have always been defined by how we eat -- as individuals, families, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. Food used to be seen as fuel; now, it's a mirror, and everything we stuff down our face-holes shows us more about ourselves and the way we live.

The view of Guerrero from inside 18 Reasons

18 Reasons, the Bi Rite-affiliated gallery space on Guerrero near 18th Street, has made such conscious, well-examined consumption its mission, offering exhibitions, lectures, tastings, and classes to draw clear bright lines between food, people, and place, existing essentially as the embodiment of its intention, as a local meeting spot for people who love food and want to talk about it, share what they know, and learn from others. The gallery has received some local press love but this summer's offerings deserve special mention.

Morgan Maki starting on the lamb

Last week, I attended the second part of a Lamb Butchery and Sausage Making class taught by Bi Rite butcher Morgan Maki, the same guy who schooled folks in Stock Theory and Knife Skills a few months ago. The first session saw a 5-foot-long 45 pound lamb broken down and whittled into chops, roasts, and other cuts for cookery. I missed that one due to illness but the pictures tell enough of the story for you to get the basic idea. It came in whole and left in chunks. Maki dropped some anatomy knowledge. Everyone ate cheese and drank wine. When I arrived at the second session, the students were chopping the trimmings from that depleted carcass, sleeves rolled up, ties tucked, and jewelry removed. It was a Tuesday night, and most had clearly come straight from work and were dutifully taxing the bottles of merlot making the rounds. The gallery's clean white walls were bare, awaiting the summer show (Julie Duffoo's semi-gristly Meatpaper photographs of local butchers). The only exhibit on display was the whirl of activity, something like a party happening around the sturdy wooden table in the center of the room: sausage as social sculpture.

Gathering around the grinder

As Maki spoke, some of the attendees frantically scribbled on yellow legal pads. A few people hung back against the walls, silent, literally watching others watch and talk. Most crowded around the table for a shot at slicing, or volunteered to help grind once the ingredients were assembled. "This is probably used in extreme interrogation techniques," quipped one dude as he eyed the sausage stuffing apparatus.

The sausage, ground

People capable of paying 60 dollars to learn how Bi Rite butchers make sausages using $2000 grinders can afford to buy sausage at Bi Rite any time they want. They don't need to learn how to make sausage at home in order to save money or make their lives easier. Prussian statesman Otto Von Bismarck (an abundantly mustached practitioner of Realpolitik who probably put away many many sausages in his day) famously compared the crafting of laws to the processing of sausages. There was once the idea that people wouldn't want to eat sausage if they saw how it was made. Now, people want to know where they can find fresh pork blood and a good deal on a professional grinder.

Those who show up at 18 Reasons for something like this aren't just amassing knowledge for themselves. They're making a personal investment in an enduring artisanal tradition and, by extension, a community. "The more people that use this space the healthier it will be," said Maki when I asked him what he wanted out of the gallery. The neighborhood has definitely taken notice. Every person walking past with laundry and grocery bags stops to peer in. Maybe they all won't shell out the ducats for a class but they'll maybe come to a free event, or at least read up on something they saw posted on the board outside.

If you want to get involved, now is a good time. Classes on the horizon promise to please. On Tuesday, July 7, Maki will teach the first section of a two-part course on Pig Butchery and Curing, in which participants will learn the basics of swine disassembly as well as several principles and techniques of curing in preparation for smoking or curing. The cost is $60 for non-members. Buy your tickets here.

Photos by Michael V. Chopko

A shopper at Duc Loi Supermarket carefully selects large chunks of freshly fried chicharrones, while rendered lard begins solidifying on the counter nearby.

For over twenty years, seven days a week, Howard and Amanda Ngo have sold fresh, affordable produce and a quirky blend of both Latin American and Asian ingredients at the heart of the Mission District.

Looking for purple corn and whole-blossom jamaica in bulk? They have it. Ube yam and cashew fruit and banana leaves in the freezer section? Check. Dried peruvian beans or dried tofu nuggets? Check. Goat ribs and ox tails and whole, fresh pig heads? It's all there at the meat counter. Young, watery coconuts chilled and ready to hack open for sipping on a sunny afternoon? Most definitely yes.

The tart fruit of whole tamarind pods and the smokiness of boiled brown sugar satisfy a range of palates from Malaysia to Mexico.

Landing in the San Francisco in 1987, by way of Saigon and then Georgia, the couple's first store filled a mere 700 square feet. Two months ago, their newly built supermarket stretched its aisles to 4,000 square feet. That's still small for a full-service grocery store (major chain stores might cover 50,000 square feet), but their success in serving their immediate neighborhood's needs in selection and price reflects a commitment that bigger markets rarely have. This past February, the City of San Francisco awarded a certificate of honor to Duc Loi, which just happens to mean "ethical profit" in Cantonese.

"Carne de soya" and a multitude of spices and dried chiles hang along the back wall.

Walk in any day, and you'll see Amanda, wrapped in her puffy down jacket, arranging produce or directing the butchers to bring out more chorizo. They make their own chorizo onsite and every week supply surrounding restaurants with nearly 400 pounds of it. Howard is the man in khakis holding a clipboard and, most probably, rushing to his next meeting with managers, suppliers, community leaders or city officials. The city's bureaucracy is much more difficult to navigate than figuring out which potatoes sell better.

Glistening links of chorizo are tied fresh every morning.

They're still filling out their new shelves. Howard expects to grow their current selection another 1,000 products as they continue to settle into their larger space, sourcing more organic products, building up their clientele, and responding to customer requests. In the coming months, expect to see a deli with Vietnamese sandwiches and other popular takeout food. An underground parking lot will also open soon.

Both Amanda and Howard are open to suggestions and feedback, so introduce yourself if you haven't already. Ask about the ingredients you don't recognize -- I promise you, there will be many of them. We all talk about meeting farmers at our weekend markets, but taking the time to learn from our neighborhood supermarkets is just as important in building a locally based food system that both accessible and cultural appropriate.

Ube yam, young coconut and whole cashew fruit are just a few of the diverse ingredients in the freezers.

More to the point, for those of us who need freshly rendered lard, dried beans, banana leaves and a variety of spices and aromatics for making tamales one day, then Asian sweets the next, there's no better place to shop.

Duc Loi Supermarket
2200 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 551-1772
Map

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