The pleasures of the (organic) flesh.
OK, back to my favorite topic: meat. I have discovered a marvelous website:
. Heritage Foods USA was launched in 2001 to handle the Heritage Turkey Project of Slow Food USA. Now, four years later, Heritage Foods sells not only Bourbon Red and American Bronze turkeys, but also Berkshire pork, Romney lamb and grassfed Lasater beef.
What the hell am I talking about? Well, you've heard of Chimayó chile, right? It's similar to the regular old red chile, but those who work to preserve the seeds and grow that specific breed of chile do it for two reasons: because it connects them to their ancestors who grew the same chile, and because it tastes good. This is the same reason why people grow heirloom tomato varieties like Brandywine and Sicilian plum; they generally taste better than the average tomato because they were naturally bred for flavor, not how well they survive being schlepped across the desert in a refrigerated truck.
And similarly, many people have become interested in specific animal breeds. Heirloom or heritage (the words are used to mean pretty much the same thing) turkeys are very similar to the wild turkeys that American settlers would have put on their Thanksgiving tables. These narrow-breasted birds have big, meaty legs, plenty of dark meat and rich flavor. Last year I bought one from Tom Delahanty, the organic chicken guy whose Pollo Real birds are on menus and in stores all over the city. That skinny-breasted bird was the best I've ever had. I will never go back to frozen grocery-store turkeys. Sure you can buy one of those at Albertson's for $10, and my fancypants turkey cost almost $50, but how often do you roast a whole turkey?
Back to the point of this story. I was roaming around on the
when I saw that the only restaurant in New Mexico that was listed as serving heritage foods was Café Pasqual's. So I called Chef/owner Katharine Kagel and she told me the story of how she came to be the first restaurant in New Mexico to serve
(that's NIGH-man, not KNEE-man). These meats are raised traditionally, sustainably and humanely on family farms. They aren't breed-specific, like heirloom turkeys, but these farmers are raising their animals outside, not in giant indoor pens, and without antibiotics or hormones.
Back in the early '90s, Kagel discovered Niman Ranch beef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. "It was the most amazing piece of beef I'd ever had," she told me. "I came back and I said to my manager, 'Could you please call this Niman Ranch and see if we can get that meat here?' He said they couldn't do it; we were too far away. So I told him to take all of the beef off of the menu. If I couldn't have Niman Ranch meat I wouldn't serve beef at all." The manager blanched and, unbeknownst to Kagel, wrote a letter to Bill Niman, the head of the company.
A few weeks later, Kagel got a call from Niman himself. "I'm flying out and I'm bringing 100 pounds of beef and we're going to party down!" the chef recalls him saying. Niman had been so impressed by the manager's impassioned letter, that Café Pasqual's became the first restaurant in the state to carry his beef. Today, all of the restaurant's beef and pork come from Niman Ranch.
If you read this column regularly you may be asking yourself, "Why is she blathering on again about some meat company and Café Pasqual's?" The answer is that a) I do tend to blather, and, b) I wanted to mention Heritage Foods and, c) Niman Ranch published a cookbook last month. With only 40 or so recipes over 200 and some pages, The Niman Ranch Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, hardcover, $35) devotes much of its space to explaining why sustainability is important and what makes small family farms better than big factory farms. It's very well done, the pictures are beautiful and the recipes are fabulous. I highly recommend it.
And speaking of cookbooks, Katharine Kagel mentioned that she's written a second cookbook, titled
Cooking with Café Pasqual's
. The book is being published in April 2006, also by Ten Speed Press, and will feature 65 recipes alongside portraits of the staff that make the place so special.
Café Pasqual's
983-9340
121 Don Gaspar Ave.
8 am-2 pm and 5:30-9:30 pm Sunday; 7 am-3 pm and 5:30-9:30 pm Monday-Thursday; 7 am-3 pm and 5:30-10:30 pm Friday and Saturday
Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to food@sfreporter.com.
