Meatless Monday

I have no problem with Meatless Mondays, as long as the goal is not Meatless Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and so on.

I think Americans in general do eat too much meat and that the industrialized meat industry is pernicious. But I don't agree with animal rights activists who eventually would like to ban all slaughter of animals for food. As for the nutrition argument, I think the "health" opposition to meat, and particularly red meat, will turn out to be as much of a fad as opposition to butter, eggs and whole milk.

Jane Black's piece in the Washington Post Food section this week doesn't delve into the arguments for or against eating meat but rather chronicles the efforts of activist groups to promote Meatless Mondays and the meat industry's counter-measures.

Ever since I had my first gout attack at the tender age of 30 while I was on the protein-rich Atkins diet, I've consciously tried to limit my consumption of meat (proteins contain purines, which lead to the formation of uric acid crystals that cause gout). I probably have at least one, if not two, meatless dinners a week (not so sure about lunch).

A campaign to scale back meat consumption could have several benefits. It would encourage people to eat more vegetables, and it might encourage them to buy the more expensive locally grown and butchered meats in the remaining meals. But it also runs the risk of co-opting people into the notion that meat is bad, an unnecessary and harmful indulgence. Meat has always been a part of the human diet and Michael Pollan discusses some of the reasons in his Omnivore's Dilemma.

I have no problems with vegetarians or vegans who out of personal conviction refrain from eating meat or animal products, but I'm wary of a campaign like this getting hijacked by extremists on a mission to proselytize the rest of us or to impose their standards through government guidelines.

I have not yet read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals but it has obviously become a major voice in this debate. I'm in favor of any effort to enlighten us about the issues of industrialized food production, and a significant reduction in meat consumption might convince the industry to begin altering some of its practices. The unavoidable fact is that we cannot continue to eat as much meat as we do now and produce that meat in a humane and environmental fashion.

A slogan like "meatless Mondays" is probably helpful in a campaign like this, especially with institutions, but I think that personally I will continue to let my meatless meals fall where they may. Having grown up with "meatless Fridays", I'm not ready for the regimentation of a new religion.

Meat

I've always loved meat and I don't buy the theory that humans are like apes and are naturally suited for a diet of berries and plants. Man has eaten meat since time immemorial. I accept that I need to eat less meat than I had when I was growing up, and one way to do that is to make sure I eat only high-quality meat. In these days, that means grass-fed, free-range, etc. -- everything described by Pollan, who in Omnivore's Dilemma, at least, never told us the end of his experiment with vegetarianism.

The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is very English, but England, as I've said here before, is way ahead of the U.S. in food consciousness. Visiting a butcher in London or the Borough Market is a totally different experience than shopping for meat here. I picked up this book some time ago and finally used a simple recipe from it during the snow week here.

"Pan-to-Oven Pork Chops With Garlic" is really more a technique than a recipe. You heat up an ovenproof dish as you preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Meanwhile, you take all the cloves from a head of garlic, unpeeled, and sautee them in some olive oil. Then you brown the pork chops in the skillet (I did a half-recipe, just two pork chops); salt and pepper them as they brown. You put the chops in the ovenproof dish, use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic gloves and put them on top of the chops, deglaze the skillet with white wine, reducing by half. You pour the wine over the chops and pop them in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. The result is delicious.

I used forest-fed pig pork chops for this recipe from a farm in Virginia that lets its pigs, a cross between a Duroc boar and a Tammworth sow, roam in 75 acres of woodlands. This meat, called Babes in the Woods, is available for pickup in a couple of spots around Washington, including every other Saturday in Silver Spring.

A friend put me on to this site a year ago or so, but my first order failed because they didn't have any of the things I wanted, so I gave up on it. But I tried again in January, ordering a pork loin roast and the two chops. I also wanted a pig's foot for another recipe but that wasn't available because the farmer does not butcher the pigs himself and the butcher keeps the skin and feet.

I picked up my order from the back of a pickup truck, frozen of course, and was astonished to pay $51 for a 2-1/2-lb. roast and the two chops. The meat was about $14 a pound! So here's the thing -- we want our artisanal, locally grown food, but we rebel against it costing more than the supermarket. Can't have it both ways. I won't buy this forest-fed pig every time I want pork -- the Niman Ranch pork at Whole Foods at half the price is an acceptable alternative -- but I will get it again. The meat is lean, though with delicious marbling, very flavorful and tender.

I cooked the other piece in a recipe from Paula Wolfert's Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking, "Roast Loin of Pork with Golden Raisins." You pound a paste of 4 garlic cloves, 1 Tbl. salt, 1 Tbl. herbes de provence, 6 sage leaves, 1 tsp. fennel seeds and 1-1/2 tsp. peppercorns in a mortar and smear that over the pork roast an hour before cooking. You preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Rub the bottom and sides of a cazuela with a cut garlic clove, smear some olive oil over the surface, add 3 medium onions sliced, 1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar, 2 Tbl. water, pinches of salt and pepper and put this in the oven for an hour. Raise the temperature to 400 degrees, stir the onions and flatten into a bed and put the roast on top. Return to the oven and roast for about an hour (internal temperature of 140 degrees). Transfer pork to cutting board and rest for 10 minutes, remove onions with slotted spoon, drain off most of the fat from the cazuela, add 1/4 c. vin de noix or 3 Tbl. red wine and 1 Tbl. cognac or port and light (this didn't work for me). Add 3/4 c. golden raisins that have soaked for 1 or 2 hours in 1 c. hot water and 1 Tbl. vin de noix (didn't use), along with the soaking liquid. Add cooked onions and bring to a boil, stirring. Slice the pork and arrange the slices over the onion mixture to serve in the cazuela. This also was fabulous as the garlic-herb paste made a nice flavorful crust for the roast.

I've learned a couple of things from this experience. One is that frozen meat is not bad at all, and since that's the only way it can be sold by vendors at farmers' markets I won't hesitate to buy it for that reason. Second, artisanal farm meat costs a lot more than even Whole Foods meat, but it's probably worth it. I can't afford it every day, but I will try more of the meats -- heritage pork, for instance -- available at the farmers' markets.