meat packing
sea salt pours from the butcher’s perma-chilled hands into a gorgeous old pappy van winkle’s barrel. it will remain here, aging the lardo its falling on, for the next twelve months. it represents our time at blackberry, and a year from today, as this luscious gem is excavated from it’s salty womb, we too, will have arrived. exactly where, remains to be told.
in an exciting turn of events, I’m leaving tomorrow for the best coast for a three day jaunt in wine country. and by jaunt, i mean sixteen hour fits of labor, teetering on exhaustion. michael Sullivan, the reknowned reverend of fat, and the master butcher at blackberry farm, is one of four celebrity chefs cooking for one hundred and fifty folks this Saturday night at the long meadow ranch in st. Helena. it’s an event to raise money for the james beard foundation, and is a celebration of wood-fired whole animal cookery. whole hogs, lamb, rabbits, and salmon, cooked outdoors over an open flame, surrounded by vines and fields, in front of a live audience.
I am traveling with the reverend to assist in any way possible, and to learn in every way possible. farmers and chefs and vintners alike will swarm to long meadow ranch to take place in the extravaganza. and like the sponge I have become, I will soak it all in, as best I can, and think about the day when an event like this will be in mine own backyard.
with new meat factoids on the sharpened tip of my brain knife--with one carry on for clothes, and one carry on for meats—I leave for california.
catch you on the flip side.
I'm High On Cooking
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