Veal (Beef Horror 2: Electric Boogaloo)

If yesterday was a horror show, today was the sequel: the same story, only bumped up a notch. A veal cow is a baby bovine under 200 lbs and 4 months old. However, what we eat in restaurants is not actually true veal -- it is calf, which is defined as below 400 lbs and up to one year old. True veal is milky white, while calf is whitish-pink, similar to pork. Early on, Chef M told us that unethical restaurants will serve pork and call it veal. Typically, after the hammering, breading, and saucing, they are very hard to distinguish visually and taste-wise .

To keep the meat tender and pale, the calf is prevented from exercising and fed a liquid diet. Grading, from Prime and Choice down to Utility and Cull, is voluntary and based mostly on the amount of fat marbling, more being better.

Chef M discussed the primal cuts of the veal corpus, making a point to illustrate the cheap, tougher pieces, which naturally get more exercise just from standing and breathing (fore and hind shanks, shoulder, round) and the more expensive tender pieces like the tenderloin, a muscle whose main purpose is to protect the kidney rather than actually do anything active.

Chef M told us a story about how a restaurant he worked in made a Veal Milanese from slices of veal loin, a tender and expensive cut. He would order a primal cut of veal called TBS (Top round, Bottom Round, hind Shank, basically the whole rear leg) With proper butchering and braising, this cut of veal was equally tender to the loin, similar in visual appeal, and had more flavor to boot. Additionally, the TBS was $7/lb, while the loin was $12/lb. The Veal Milanese was still $35 a plate, and the description on the menu was till truthful -- it was not called Veal Loin Milanese, it was simply Veal Milanese. It is this kind of creativity, according to Chef M, that makes a good Executive Chef get a good bonus.

Another place for a chef to express creativity is in offal -- very cheap (i.e., tongue, testicles, ears, intestine, lungs, heart, etc.) utility meats that the public doesn't like, but a good chef can get around that squeamishness. When I was taken to Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo, for my birthday (by the HVS no less!), I ate both beef-cheek ravioli and tripe parmigiana -- and I liked it. Foie gras (liver), sweet breads (glands), and oxtail (cow tail) are all really cheap, really yummy, and takes a clever chef to get them down your throat. Speaking from experience, they are unusually tasty once you get over the fussiness we've been accustomed to.

Some discussion of what's in the food media followed, like the hype around the on-line reservation system of Momofuku, and some gloating over the strife at another culinary school.

Then, out came the knives; first, we cleaned a flank steak that we didn't get to yesterday. This lower belly cut would be where bacon is on a pig, and is notable for its well-defined straight grain. My father used to grill flank on the hibachi in the back yard when I was a kid, smothered in bottled BBQ sauce. I kinda wish he was there with me to look over my shoulder as I was cleaning the fat and silverskin off the meat.

Silverskin: the shiny silverish membrane between fat and muscle. Made of collagen, it is essentially gristle and unpleasant to chew, and must be removed with a long narrow blade while minimally cutting into the meat. Finding the balance between cutting the silverskin and cutting the meat is very tricky, definitely a butchering skill that I need to develop.

Then we got a half-loin of veal, with the kidney still intact. We first removed the kidney and then carved away a lot of the turkey-meat-like fat that protected the kidney. From there we removed the spine bone (with two long ribs attached), separated the loin from the tenderloin from the flank, and further trimmed off other muscles like the chain (a muscle between the spine and loin), the hanger (a tougher piece that lays closer to the back of the kidney) and the sirloin (which is in back of the loin, and is another primal all-together, but lays a little over). After cleaning the loin thoroughly of excess fat and all silverskin, we practiced trussing up the loin as a roast before chopping it down into medallions and hammered-out butterflies and scallopini. Oddly enough, to cut the scallopini was exactly the same as cutting the gravlox yesterday, thinly at a long angle.

After helping measure out ingredients for a cure, including sodium nitrate, Chef M put some veal flank in the mixture of salt, sugar, nitrate and aromatic herbs so we can have veal bacon one morning next week.

ADDENDA:
As I say in the column to the left, I am not a shill. However, I have to say here that if anyone reading this is considering culinary school but can not afford it or have the time, the second-best thing (other than working in a restaurant) is Alton Brown. He has a show on the Food Network called Good Eats, which takes a more formal and scientific look at cooking -- not just the hows, but the whys. I've been reading his first cook book, which is not organized by recipe, but by cooking method, and more importantly, the fundamentals of these methods. He's a bit of a major dork, but a lot of the content of C-School is buried in his shows and books.

I'm cooking for a fellow student and his wife tomorrow night. He's from Arizona and is a bit obsessive about chili and as a New Yorker; I'm obsessive about pizza, of course. He's whipping up some chili, and I'm gonna experiment with some chili pies topped with truffled goat cheese, a cheddar marbled with Guinness and, yep, Fritos. Food-porny pics in the addenda tomorrow!

I stopped by the Broadway Panhandler to pick up a culinary scale, as my homemade pizza dough has been a bit iffy up to this point. This time, everything will be measured by weight instead of volume to get some real precision. Thanks to Mike, who made some divine pizza in his house for B and me a few weeks ago, who strongly recommended the scale.

I planned to go to yoga after class today, but felt tired and pleasantly burnt from the 60 mile bike ride yesterday. Gonna aim to do a lot of prep work today for tomorrow's dinner, so I can get my downward facin' dog-on tomorrow.

BREAKFAST: 6:30, good yogurt with raw cashews, honey, vanilla, .5 bowls, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 10am, small piece of french bread, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 11:30am, piece of veal loin and a couple thing slices of flank steak, country-style mashed potatoes, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Made the potatoes for the class again. Used literally a fistful and a half of salt.

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, large piece of organic chocolate babka, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5
After collecting ingredients at Wholefoods, got home and indulged myself purposefully in this sweet. Really enjoyed it, too. Typically I would put off desert to dinner, but I want to sleep well.

DINNER: 7:45pm, Brocolli with bacon, onions & garlic, butter, a pinch o' salt n' pepper, topped with toasted panko crumbs and diced talegio cheese, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Ilsa has stressed that I need to eat more vegetables, and my original intent was to do just that. After learning the basics of blanching and shocking, I briefly boiled then dumped the broc in an ice bath. I got a little carried away in the saute pan, throwing in a couple of chopped up pieces of good organic non-nitrate bacon from the farmers market with some diced onion and minced garlic, sweating all together to a translucent glow. Threw in a pat of butter with the broc right behind it, reheating the veg then tossing the crumbs over it. Once on plate, placed the cheese on it and had Rufus sit for a portrait with the dish. I tasted....good, though I overcooked the broccoli by a smidge, I think I was to simmer for a minute, not boil...