One of my pet peeves about cookbook authors is their pretense that we all live in a world with a friendly neighborhood butcher who is waiting behind the counter with every conceivable meat product ready to carve and cut it to my exact specifications.
What world are they living in? I don't think even most residents of New York or San Francisco have a butcher like that, let alone the rest of us in industrial foodland USA.
Tom Colicchio -- who is not necessarily the worst offender, only the most recent -- says in a recipe for pork belly "to be sure to have your butcher leave on the skin."
Me, I'm just happy that Whole Foods has started carrying pork belly regularly so that I don't have to chase around to a Korean supermarket to find it. Here's how the dialogue goes with the person who happened to be behind the WF meat counter yesterday as he put two slabs of pork belly with no skin onto the scale for me:
Me: "I don't supposed you have any pork belly with the skin on."
Him: "Naw, we don't sell it that way. Anything else, today?"
End of conversation. What next, Tom? Whole Foods is one of two places where I can conveniently shop for high-quality meat. A computer decides what cuts they are going to offer based on which product moves the most through the store. Truth be told, there was one meat-cutter at WF who I could talk to about things like my pork rib roast "honor guard" last year, but I haven't seen him for months and there is no discernible continuity in the people behind the meat counter. Only the expensive cuts are displayed in the case and everything else is packaged in cellophane in another meat case. What you see is what you get and I've not found them in general to be responsive to requests.
The other place where I regularly buy meat is Broad Branch Market, which obviously has a very limited selection of just certain cuts, and the kids behind the counter serving you don't know the difference between a strip and a ribeye. Lots of people like Chevy Chase supermarket, but everything there is pre-cut and wrapped in cellophane, which of course is the way most supermarkets these days handle meat.
More specialized butchers are few and far between. Wagshal's is too far and more often than not service there has been surly when I do venture to make the trip. Some the new boutique butchers springing up in Alexandria and other snob locales basically seem to be adjuncts to restaurants, to off-load what chef doesn't sell, so you can get what they have or of course special order it a week in advance.
Which is the way it is, but it would be nice if cookbook writers could abandon their fictional bubble and talk to people who live in the real world. For instance, Colicchio could have said: "In this recipe, leaving the skin on enhances the flavor if you can find pork belly like that, but otherwise it tastes fine with the skin removed."
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