The December 3, 2007, issue of the New Yorker contains an article called Red, White, and Bleu, by the hale and cerebral food writer Bill Buford, which focuses on the joys of being a carnivore.
In it, Buford "reviews" three books about meat, while weaving in his own questions, philosophies, and conclusions on the topic — and these are many, given this is a writer who’s been bloody-to-the-elbows with butchers and renderers many times before.
What do we eat when we eat meat? Buford asks at the outset. And it’s clear he believes on some level that each and every one of us should know. We should have some image of the saw that’s used to hack through a carcass; the way entrails come out of a just-dead animal all glistening pink and linked; the various parts (like knuckles and snout and lungs) that most habitual steak eaters and foie gras fans wouldn’t even touch.
It’s worth a read. And if you’re inspired then to sample some meat you will recognize, make a reservation at Heartland, where chef Lenny Russo informs me he’s just taken delivery on a whole hog. Then again, if you wait until tomorrow, Russo will have an entire wild boar on hand, so you might be able to get your porcine meat garnished with a horn. Also, Russo is expecting a bull calf in time for the weekend and two woolly lambs should be arriving by Fed Ex on Tuesday next week.
This is no magical mystery tour. At Heartland, you will get meat dishes that wear their origins proudly. Russo — an adherent of the near-Biblical tenet that you do not waste any edible portion of the beast you kill — promises to find a culinary use for "all the bits and parts." And this includes, but is not limited to, livers, brains, kidneys, testicles, and tongues.
So what kind of a carnivore are you? Are you brave enough to get to know your meat? I dare you. Go whole hog.
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