The brisket is in the smoker… things are going well. Many hours left to go.

While I wait… salsa.

I haven’t done much with tomatillos in my life because… I just haven’t. But the Johnson’s Backyard Garden CSA box brings what it brings and it forces you to find ways to use what comes. When they give you a pound of tomatillos, you use them.

Wife did a quick Google search and found this recipe for a roasted tomatillo and garlic salsa.

I love it.

A pound of tomatillos, which is exactly what came in the CSA box.

A head of garlic.

The recipe calls for jalapeno peppers, but we only have serrano for that is what the box gaver us, so I used only 1 serrano. I love heat, but I’m over that need to make things as damn hot as possible… it’s more about flavor.

Clean those things up and put them under the oven broiler to roast them. Keep an eye on things, turn as needed, remove them as they brown. Allow them to cool. Yes, I thought about putting them into the fire to gain some smoke and such, but these need a lot of nanny-style monitoring so you don’t ruin them, and the constant opening of the smoker would be bad for the meat so I stuck with the oven.

Bunch of cilantro.

Put it all in the blender. Whirr until mixed, but we’re not making a smoothie here. I did add about 3/4 tsp of salt, which seemed just right.

Now, the recipe does call for adding some water, so things can blend. I wish I hadn’t added that 1/2 cup because I don’t think I needed it. Next time don’t add it until later, and only if needed.

But oh my my my my my.

Folks, this is so awesome.

What makes it awesome?

It’s simple.

It’s got ingredients with bold flavors, intensified by roasting.

Then you put them together, and that’s that. There’s no need for artificial things, or filler that, or whatever extraneous crapola. It’s just food as it came out of the ground, as nature intended it to be, made better by fire and mixing together. And it’s kept simple, allowing each flavor to exist as it is.

Oh… it’s so damn good.

I’m going to start on the tomato-based salsa in a little bit.

On Monday night, Wife pulled some lamb loin chops out of the freezer. Each chop was probably 4-5oz (bone in). So again, small.

Backing up….

The lamb was not an intended purchase. But when we were talking with the farmer’s wife she mentioned lamb and asked if we wanted one. Wife jumped at the opportunity. We’ve only had lamb a handful of times, and it’s never really worked out well. Overcooked or dry or just didn’t taste good. I wondered if lamb was worth it, but I figured it had to be more a matter of how it was cooked… or more appropriately, how it wasn’t cooked. So why not get some and try it ourselves, eh?

While there isn’t much yield of course (the live weight was 85# and the hanging weight 42#, so maybe only 35-ish pounds of meat?), the results?

O

M

G

Wife did something very simple. Just salt, pepper, some garlic, then a really hot pan. They were cooked to just a hair past medium-rare (tho not quite medium)… flesh was cooked, but still pink with a nice crust on the outside.

And fatty.

And thus, so delicious.

Tender.

And there’s this flavor to lamb… minerally? some might say “gamey”… but it’s not that. But if you’ve had lamb you probably know what I’m talking about. That flavor was there, but mild, and not bothersome at all. I’ve had it before where it was strong and just made the meat not taste so good. But this? This was wonderful.

So yes folks… there’s better out there. You just have to find the right source for it. Once you find it, cherish it, support it, nurture it.

I know my description of the grass-fed calf meat might not have sounded good, but read what Rog said on Facebook:

Our palates have been conditioned by corn fed feedlot beef to expect that beef should have a a mild “sweet” flavor imparted by a grain diet. That “grassy” flavor is what beef traditionally tasted like before corn became such a cheap commodity that you could use it to cheaply fatten up cattle before slaughter to increase your yields and therefore profit. We’ve engineered out the “bovine” flavor in favor of a more bland one imparted by cheap and arguably unhealthy feed. If you could feed a modern conventional corn-fed feedlot beef steak to your great grandparents, they would probably tell you that it had a pretty bland flavor compared to what they are used to.

People also have the same reaction to pastured pork which has a much more distinct “swine” flavor which has all but disappeared on the western palate since the advent of cheap corn and the practice of pasturing swine fell out of use. Just about all the non-religious reasons people cite for not eating pork stem from a confinement type grain based diet rather than allowing the animals to forage freely on their natural diet (roots, grubs, insects, berries, other small animals).

It may take a little while for your palate to adjust to the taste of milk/grass fed beef, but when once you get a taste for it you will definitely come to appreciate it more than the bland overly sweet flavor of corn fed feedlot beef.

There’s no need to adjust.

It’s awesome.

It’s mostly something on the nose. When you smell the raw meat, you do notice the difference. But the flavor? Frankly if we didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know.

All you would know is how damn good it tastes.

I grilled some t-bones. And yes, t-bones, not T-bones… because they are little. 🙂

They are fantastic.

The meat is certainly fatty, but so buttery… it’s not the same as aged adult cow meat. It has a “young” flavor to it, not that really complex flavor that aging gives you. Much fat too. In this case, the grill was too hot and so things cooked to about a medium-well. Not what I wanted, but it’s how things went. You would have expected some sort of dryness or toughness. Not even in the slightest. It was so tender, juicy. The texture is a little different, because it’s again a smaller animal, younger animal. There’s a difference.

Folks… I don’t know if I could get not-calf in the future. This is just fantastic stuff.

But then, there’s also the raw milk, and the lamb….

Smell.

It’s one of our more influential senses.

Something might look awesome, but if it smells weird, that trumps what our eyes tell us.

So when I first smelled the beef we got from Sand Creek Farm, I didn’t know what to make of it.

Let me back up.

All their cows are grass fed. Truly grass-fed. Not that they’re out in a pasture for a bit, then are brought into a feed lot for the last some months of their life to eat corn and grain and by-product and hay and whatever else to fatten them up. No no, these cows are truly grass-fed. Plus, we didn’t buy a cow, we bought a calf. From Sand Creek Farm’s website:

We prefer to process the fatted calf that is about 500-600 lbs, still nursing on the grass fed only Momma cow.  Instead of weaning them to grow them out for beef, we process them on weaning day.  This is what many call Rose Beef, others call it the fatted calf, it is simply “the best”!

I’ve never had calf. Alysha Godfrey (“the farmer’s wife”) told me that things are a little different, such as the flesh is more pink than red. Sure enough that is the case… it’s not that deep red you’re familiar with. And of course, cuts are smaller — no monster t-bone hanging off the ends of your plate.

But again, smell trumps. When we got home, we took a couple pounds of the ground — after a 2 hour drive and despite extensive use of coolers and such, some of the ground did defrost tho was still cool — and cooked it up. We wanted to see how it compared to typical store-bought beef. We did nothing to it: just portion it into 6 oz patties and cook them on the stove. No seasonings (tho I added a pinch of salt), no smoke, no nothing. Just taste the meat and see what it’s like.

As I was making the patties, it looked good. Again, slightly more pink than red, good fat content (they cooked down to about 4 oz… that’s some fat), but I stuck my nose in the raw meat to smell it.

It smelled weird.

Different.

And frankly… the thought that triggered in my head was, “is this rotten??”

Wife smelled it too, and had a similar thought. She said that it smelled like poo.

Keep reading. 🙂

She was right, but she was wrong. No, it doesn’t smell like shit. It wasn’t a rotten smell. But it was a smell similar to the “dairy air” we had just smelled while at the farm.  And when you think about it, it’s more a grassy smell.

We also bought some raw milk. I’ll write on that another time, but the raw milk had the same sort of overtones.

It’s simple.

It’s not rotten, it’s not bad. It’s just different (and unfamiliar). It’s the cow’s diet. They eat grass, they poop digested grass; if you are what you eat, then the grass gets into the meat, it gets into their milk, it’s just how it all goes. And so all of it makes sense.

It’s not a bad smell, but you just have to know what it is. And it’s not the dominant smell, but just a fair overtone to everything. Everything ultimately tastes as you’d expect (the beef tastes like beef, natch), but you might pick up the grassy overtones in your nose or on your tongue.

But do realize, it does not smell the same as your store-bought beef and milk.

So it was a little weird. It’s different. It’s a change. It’s unfamiliar.

But those simple patties? They were so juicy. It was quite delicious. Wife reported it went well with the cab-syrah she was drinking. I took the unkosher route and had some of the raw milk with my meat. Like I said, I’ll write more on the raw milk another time.

I’m looking forward to trying a steak. That will be simple too: maybe a little salt and pepper, grill over fire, done. Taste the meat.

For over a year now we’ve been a member of Johnson’s Backyard Garden, getting our weekly CSA boxes of locally grown veggies. It appealed to us for numerous reasons: locally grown, seasonal, variety of diet, fresher and better tasting, more nutritious, less time at the grocery store, less processing and preservatives, closer to how it came from the Earth, and many other reasons. But one of the biggest was being able to know where your food came from.

So much of the problem with modern food is we don’t know where it came from, and then we’re shocked when we find out what’s really behind it. Consider the meat you eat. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t because you’d probably be appalled and swear off meat.

For the past couple years we have bought sides of beef from our local butcher. We knew where the meat was coming from, and we could get it processed just like we wanted it. Aged as we wanted it, cut as thick as we wanted, whatever. Yes, once you try it this way you really don’t want to go back to buying cuts as needed at the grocery store. Alas, I found out our butcher doesn’t do sides any more. Lamenting my loss, schnookiemuffin told me about her friends at Sand Creek Farm. After a little discussion, a calf was bought (and a lamb too), and away we went.

I just returned from picking it up.

The freezer is full.

Ben and Alysha Godfrey, the farmers, run a neat operation. Consider how they run their operation. They care and manage everything from the ground up, literally. That sort of care and concern goes a long way. Plus there’s a great deal they do to strive for and maintain high standards of quality. I’m most impressed. Plus they’re some of the nicest folks I’ve met. It’s a shame we couldn’t stay longer, but we had to get our meat and hustle back home to tend to prior engagements. But we will be back!

Anyways, I’ll write more about the meat… and the milk…. because I’ve already tried some, and, it’s an experience.

It’s nice to know where your food came from, and to know you’re feeding your body and the bodies of your family with truly good food.

The freezer is getting empty, so man must acquire meat to fill it!

Alas, I have been unable to get into the field to hunt so I must do what modern man does… and buy it. 🙂

I visited my local butcher to ask for another side of beef. I was dismayed to discover he no longer sold sides! But I spoke with him about it, and I totally understand and support his reasons. In short, it no longer made sense for him, business-wise, to do it. Heck, I was the first person to ask him for one in 2 months. Alas….  Of course I can still get cuts from him, but there’s something cool about having the whole animal, fully done as you want it, and all the choices and selection just sitting in the freezer.

I lamented on Facebook, and friend Schnookiemuffin told me about her friends at Sand Creek Farm. She said they were about to take some calfs in.

OK, I emailed them.

Emails exchanged, and it looks like we’re going to get a calf, about 500# live weight or so (probably yield 200-225# of meat). This will be “fatted calf”, if you will. Fed on momma milk and grass, mom’s all grass fed, organic, etc.. Apparently the meat will be a little more pink than red, quite tender.

To my knowledge, I’ve never had calf before. This should be different, and kinda exciting.

I’ve sent in my deposit along with cut sheet. I’ve only bought a side a few times, so I’m not 100% versed on the best way to get it cut and prepped. But calf is also going to be a wee different, and she had things on there like “arm roast”, and while Google told me about arm roast vs. chuck roast, I really don’t know what the fundamental difference will be… so we just got arm roasts to be different and we’ll see how it goes.

Oh… and they mentioned lambs too. Wife thought it’d be cool to try, so we’re getting 1 lamb as well. The few times I’ve had lamb I haven’t liked it because it was dry or tough. I figure folks just haven’t cooked it right, so this might be worth trying.

We shall see.

I reckon it’ll be a couple weeks before it’s ready for pick up. But I’m really looking forward to it! Not just because the novelty of calf, but more about knowing where my food comes from. How it was raised, how it was cared for, all that went into it. Food is better the closer you can get to where it came from. Closer to how it came from the Earth. Done old school. The CSA box we get from Johnson’s Backyard Garden. Getting this sort of local meat. The wild game I take. This is food.

Went to my local butcher today to order a side of beef.

I was dismayed to learn he stopped doing it. The cost was becoming way too much, not just in terms of money, but in terms of labor. He said it took about 6 hours to process it, and with so many other parts of the business booming — especially restaurants — it just didn’t make sense any more. He also said I was the first person in 2 months to ask for it. So, while I was bummed, it made total sense and I don’t blame him one bit for stopping it.

So I opted to drown my sorrows by buying 6 1.5″ thick Choice NY Strip steaks from him. 🙂

Thing is, I rarely cook steaks that thick. Usually 3/4″ or 1″ at most. I knew they would need a different approach being a somewhat leaner cut but also so thick. Don’t want to risk killing the meat, but it does need to get cooked. What to do?

Google to the rescue. 🙂

I saw enough places say to use indirect heat, which made a lot of sense. That will allow the steak to cook but not get burned on the outside while still raw on the inside. Then I read about this “rule of 3” technique, which I liked. The technique is made for NY strip or ribeye, 1-1.5″ thick. Just what we have.

The steaks need to come to room temperature, and just a little salt and pepper on them.

Get the grill HOT. If gas, crank it up. If charcoal, get a lot. You’ll make 2 zones: a hot “direct” side and a cooler “indirect” side. The hot side should be so hot that you shouldn’t be able to hold your hand over the coals for 2 seconds… it must be hot!

Then, it goes like this:

3 minutes, side 1, direct heat

3 minutes, side 2, direct heat

3 minutes, side 1, indirect heat

3 minutes, side 2, indirect heat

Take them off, let them rest, let some butter melt over them, if you wish. Should turn out a medium or medium-rare steak.

The author says to never do more than 3 minutes on direct, tho you can do 4-5 minutes on indirect if you want a more medium to medium-well steak.

I will say, this technique worked out great! They turned out a nice medium-rare (almost medium) and were just delicious.

I think next time I need more heat, or I might try 4 minutes per side indirect. I thought more time, but when I think about the crust from direct it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been so yes… I think I need more heat next time. It was hot, could be hotter. 🙂

Anyways, thank you John for your technique. Solid!