The Other Red Meat

I probably offended rabbit pet owners with my earlier blog on rabbit "food" by discussing “how to remove the head”, and now I tip-toe into other pet and food taboos by discussing the “other red meat—Horse meat”.

During our chef’s tour of a French outdoor market, we bought horse meat at a chevaline stand. Horse meat is found in specialty butchers and stands but also in grocery stores. The organization La Viande Chevaline in France promotes the horse meat market by listing recipes, nutrition benefits and pictures that include a sexy woman fork-feeding a sexy man tasty morsels of horsemeat. This organization contrasts with pet and sporting organizations in the US that lobby to ban the processing and sale of horsemeat in the US.

Despite opposition to horse meat consumption, US imports in 2004 of this meat product rank highest among French imports with:
· USA at 24%,
· Argentina at 18%, and
· Canada at 15%.
These imports are necessary because French production of horse meat only meets 38% of the demand. This implies that horse meat is popular in France; however, demand has not increased despite marketing efforts. I’ve reviewed several articles on why this may be the case, but I mostly wonder if price is an issue since horse meat has a history of acceptance in French culture. The average price in 2004 was 13 euro/kg or in current 2007 dollars about $9 per pound, similar to the price of veal.

While I could dwell on the philosophical, religious, cultural and socio-economic considerations for why to eat or not eat horse meat, I will bail out and say “hey, I’m a nutritionist, so is this good eats or not?” One of our chefs’s mentioned that horsemeat had only 2% fat which seemed incredible to me. So I did some research and found several web sites that indeed indicated 2-3% fat. But when I looked at the data, these sites had calculated percent fat based on weight, not percent of calories. A gram of fat is equal to 9 calories, so fat content is meaningful based on a percent of total calories, not percent of weight.

At 30% saturated fat, low cholesterol, high iron and low calories per gram by weight, horse meat compared to beef looks nutritionally advantageous. Particularly since the beef cuts are shown as trimmed to 0% fat (see http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/) for more details and my nutrition table below.

But does it taste good? Check out the picture—only a few pieces remained soon after the chef prepared it for our picnic. To me it tasted like a good cut of beef, but I’m not really a red-meat eater, instead I pounced on the cheese platter (talk about fat content...).

Baguette Etiquette and Sourdough Invasion

So this is me with my favorite French starch. And yes, people carry just purchased baguettes around like this on their way home—it’s not a stereotype. This baguette was purchased after I had prepared my dinner, poured my red wine and realized I had no baguette for my meal: horrors. So I raced out in the rain to my favorite late night boulangerie and procured my .85 Euro (1.29$) baguette.

So, if you look close, you’ll notice I ended up eating some on my walk back to the apartment. I’ve been thinking I’m gauche and piggish looking doing this, but our Parisian friend, Michel, informed me this is ok baguette etiquette. David Lebowitz in his blog further explained this tendency. Apparently, munching on the “quignon” (pronounced Keenyon), the crispy end of the baguette, is common. Good, because I can never wait until I get home to start munching.

So, how many calories are consumed by such munching? Of course, I measured this on my digital scale like any good nutrition nerd. I discovered I’d eaten a fourth of the baguette on my way home (remember I did walk to and from school, briskly, carrying a heavy knife set, and cooked 5 hours…). The entire loaf was 260 grams, and my 65 grams was about 160 calories. This is similar to two slices of typical sandwich bread, but oh so much better. By French law, baguettes have to be 250 grams, so my favorite boulangerie is on the up-and-up.

My favorite loaf is Baguette l’ancienne because it is levain or contains sourdough starter. Since I miss my husband’s fabulous fresh sourdough, this has to do; however, French sourdough is no yeast contestant for the tangy American version. I’ve been told this by Parisians who appreciate sourdough. However, our tangier version (think San Francisco or Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis—the lactic acid bacteria responsible for the sourdough flavor) is considered “trop acid” or too acidic for other Parisian palates. But L. Sanfranciscensis may be migrating to France. In a recent article of Food Microbiology, the microbiota of four industrial French sourdoughs were dominated by our American bacteria—oh no, another incursion into French culture.

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/08/baguettes.html for more information on baguettes.

Caul fat: intestinal delight

So, you want to stuff your chicken or pork and keep it from bursting during cooking. Just reach into your kitchen fridge for your Caul fat, you know the fatty intestine linings of cows or pork that you pick up at your local grocer. Well, actually if you really want this lacy, translucent fat (anatomically speaking it’s called omentum) to wrap foods for baking or roasting, you’re going to need a good butcher shop. But here in France, it’s not so difficult to obtain. Thank goodness! Otherwise I would not have had a chance to play with this intestinal delight.

Caul fat did work great for keeping my “farci” or stuffing of pork and chicken in my “Jambonette” (a style of Habillage or cutting and dressing my leg/thigh piece to resemble a ham). Other non-innard techniques for stuffing control include sewing the skin together with a trussing needle, or how about the simplest—wrap your meat or poultry in some aluminum foil and remove near the end of cooking to brown your meats. I will say that caul does help keep the meat most and mostly melts away near the end of cooking. Plus, I have this cool picture of the spidery web look of intestine linings.

Brunoise and Bandaids

Le Cordon Bleu “Lexique” or glossary defines Brunoise as “Vegetables cut into very small regular cubes, about 2 x 2mm”. Unfortunately it doesn’t explain why you would want to cut vegetables to .08 square inches. Therefore, most students surmise it is simply a form of chef’s torturing students. I suppose you could say it looks petite and pretty, but at my age, I need reading glasses to decide if this is true.

Frankly, I think it’s another French way of using vegetables as garnish and avoiding actually having to eat them. I make this limited and nutrition-centric observation after 6 weeks of boiling vegetables to al dente texture, straining them through colanders so only the juice essence remains or turning 1 kilo of vegetables into a handful of decorate vegetables.

Here’s evidence of the effect of brunoise, so you decide: 1) a picture of Chef's beef stroganoff with rice and a brunoise of zucchini, haricot verts (beans) and carrots versus: 2) a picture of my fingers after trying to clean my knife of obnoxious brunoise particles that attach to the knife when cutting them (plus one bandage for a blister due to cleaning a hot stove). Here’s a site that summarizes brunoise and several other French cutting / torture techniques. http://www.lacaterer.com/knife-skills.html

Bloody Meats Part 2: I've become too French...

How to tell when red meat is cooked: Ignore your watch. Oh, and please, “No thermometers” says our French chef with a sniff and hand-wave to dismiss this ridiculous idea. Instead use the "fat pad" of your thumb--you know, the old Abductor pollicis.

How do I personally know the fat pad technique works? I actually cooked red meat too bloody for a French chef. In my effort to prove I could cook my red meat the French style rare or “bleu”, I tossed out years of fearing I would poison my guests or cooking students with undercooked meat. And, I ignored my kitchen friend, the thermometer, which I had brought into the kitchen and hidden under a piece of parchment paper for fear of mockery by the chef if discovered. In France I have evolved from a person who doesn’t eat red meat to “hey, this piece of bloody meat looks pretty tasty to me.”

I failed to cook my meat to “bleu” because I tried to use another chef’s recommendation regarding how long to cook red meat for different grades of doneness (see Nov 25th blog). I now know that this chef's grill must be fiery hot and as I’ve always preached “it’s done when it’s done, not when the clock says so”. So here’s the fat pad technique (see links below for credits):


Index Finger = Rare with internal temperature around 125F. Feels soft and squishy, like a sponge

Middle Finger = Medium Rare with internal temperature around 145F (Our French chef says around 135F). Feels firmer but yielding, like a Nerf football

Ring Finger = Medium with an internal temperature around 160F (our French chef says around 145F). Feels slightly yielding, like a racquetball.

Pinky Finger = Well with an internal temperature around170F (our French chef says why would you ruin meat this way, but if you do the temperature is around 150F). Feels springy, like a tennis ball.

So here's my offending piece of meat, with an artichoke and bernaise sauce and twice cooked potatoes (pommes pont neuf style).

Finger doneness pictures from Men's health magazine with link found at http://lifehacker.com/software/grilling/determine-the-doneness-of-a-steak-267250.php

Deglazing Sucs

Even if you’re not into gourmet cooking, when you pan sear or roast meats, deglazing the pan can give you a quick and flavorful sauce or gravy. Of if you are in a French kitchen, particularly at the Cordon Bleu, you can produce a complicated version involving 50-60 liquid reductions and use of 30-40 chinois strainers (perhaps I exaggerate), but the French fondness for intensifying protein flavors and straining the resulting juices and sauces to silky textures contrasts with my KISS cooking approaches (keep it simple…).

Anyway to deglaze (or Déglacer) a pan, you remove (decanter) the meat and add a thin coat of a liquid, generally water, stock or wine to the pan used to cook the meat, fish or poultry. Using a scraper or spoon, you scrape at the carmelized or browned materials and protein bits stuck to the pan bottom. According to our classroom interpreter this is the “yummy bits” or “little brown bits”. Often these are referred to as the “fond”; however this is an incorrect use of fond.

In French, these are called the “sucs” (pronounced sook) from the word sucre (sugar). These bits get mostly dissolved during the scraping and swishing of the deglazing liquid. Fond actually is aromatic bouillon, stock or foundation for your sauces, juices or gravies. Any yummy bits that don’t dissolve can be strained out. So, don’t wash that pan out next time you sear or roast a protein—it’s like throwing out flavor.

P.S. this doesn't really work in a non-stick pan and for a fast summary of why it helps to know French cooking terms, check out:
http://www.nwcav.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/20/it-sucs-to-be-u-niligual/

Bisques are great unless you're the crab

Bisques are a traditional French soup of crushed crustaceans with cognac and wine. Although restaurants now serve bisques without these key ingredients, the traditional French approach involves searing the complete crustacean in oil to extract flavor and simmering in fish stock, cognac, white wine and herbal and vegetable aromatics. These flavors are then strained, thickened, seasoned and strained again for a velvety texture.

This all works great unless your crabs are waving at you before you start the searing technique. My crabs appeared to have expired along the one day trip from the coast to the market, but after pouring water over them to clean and remove any female egg sacs, I woke up some survivors whom I could not look in their little periscope eyes. Hypocrite that I am regarding food—I’ll eat it but don’t make me responsible for its life—I asked a workmate to trade live for dead crabs. Having already commented that she preferred life crabs, this was a fair trade—one done without involving chef. Tomorrow we fry beignets of shrimp…please let them already be in shrimp heaven.

Rabbits as dinner (pet owners please read another blog)

So, I succeeded in the rabbit “preparation”. One year of anatomy training seemed to help me chop apart an animal that I’ve
traditionally considered a pet. I kept focused on the muscles, bones and tendons and removed the head as fast as possible. I haven’t posted any “anatomy” based pictures, but I’ll email shots with requests. Here's a picture of my "Lapin a la moutarde, pommes sautees a cru" oh, and also a garnish of lapin kidneys and livers on a rosemary skewer just for an extra nibble.

Rabbit as Food
Research on rabbits for food yields a passionate response from consumers, farmers and pet owners. In many countries rabbits represent a nutritious and affordable food source, particularly for low income households. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations promotes rabbit husbandry to address undernourishment and low standards of living in many countries. Rabbit consumption is ingrained in many cultures and is a heritage and backyard food particularly in Europe. France and Italy, which has the highest consumption of rabbit meat, have a long cultural legacy of rabbit consumption.

In the U.S. rabbit meat for consumption is increasing and represented about 20% of the total market for rabbit in the USDA’s latest statistics. This is about 2 million rabbits per year compared to 3.3 million sheep/ lamb and 8.7 billion chickens to give a comparison.

Rabbit Taboos
I can’t find the original source but apparently Chef Jacque Pepin has commented that the growing popularity of rabbit in America is due to the sophistication of the American palate, but that if he skinned a rabbit on his PBS cooking show, he would go to jail or "be assassinated by some league or another." I must add that any food that increases in popularity in the US is probably aided by advertising in some fashion—it’s certainly not solely because rabbit is a nutritionally sound meat.

Rabbit pet owners and organizations opposed to how rabbits are raised for commercial consumption have a valid concern. This concern applies to many other commercial livestock practices in the US: animals in small cages with poor living and feeding conditions. For a couple of diverse views on the subject, I’m attaching three sites: Slow food USA on wild rabbits for consumption (non-industrialized approach), Epicurean’s comments rabbits as delectable foods with recipes and a site on issues associated with industrialized rabbit production. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/american_rabbit.html
http://www.epicurean.com/articles/rabbit-almost-too-cute-to-eat.html http://www.rabbitproduction.com/Rabbits_as_Poultry.html



Bottom line...I did like the rabbit, but then again, I'm a cat lover.