Ancho Pancetta Oxtail Mole

WARNING: Rated M for Meat.  All recipes in this post will reference meat. Graphic meat references. Recipes involving meat (and some Charcutepalooza references) that may not be suitable for vegans or those attempting to be vegan.

This post is an epilogue of sorts to my original Bacon/Pancetta Charcutepalooza post (read here) and a second chapter to my original Locavore Project post from a few weeks ago (read here).  So it’s sort of a trilogy of my local eats and culinary DIY adventures this month.

I wanted to acknowledge some of my friends who have gone (gasp)–vegan for a week–as part of a made-for-talk show social experiment.  I hope you all have learned from the week of having your meatless, dairy-less meals professionally prepared for you at work.  Must have been tough to go cold turkey off of the Italian Beef sang-wiches in Chicago.  Especially in the middle of Winter.  I’m half joking…but because I know some of you, and because I really did try to go sympathy vegan with you and it lasted all of two days for me.  But I think we all learned the valuable lesson of examining where our food comes from and we will all think twice before walking down those middle aisles of the grocery store when urban foraging.

That week of reading of your vegan flirtation via Facebook updates, served to solidify my choice of being  a Locavore.  I know it’s not for everyone.  Everybody makes their own choices and you come to it differently.    As long as the choice doesn’t involve fake petry dish food and animal factories, it’s all good.  Some people choose the organic route and shop at Whole Foods–I love Whole Foods; but let me dispel the myth that local food is all organic–it doesn’t necessarily meet all the strict standards of being certified as ‘organic’ (i.e., without use of pesticides, fertilizers with minimal processing).

But eating locally does help my local community economy (albeit reaching out in a radius of 50 miles or so); the food doesn’t travel for weeks in trucks, shipping containers, etc; so I am being eco-conscious.  The food I purchase was likely in the ground less than 48 hours prior to being served on my table and it is the freshest tasting food I can possibly eat.  I know this food isn’t processed in any way–it’s my version of farm to table.  Because my food is ‘in season’, it isn’t marked up in price because it had to travel across a continent for my enjoyment.  And because I am lucky enough to live in California, I can take advantage of the economics of a farmer’s market available nearly everyday without the overhead of electricity and corporate brick and mortar operations.

And my market has meat and dairy!  I’m surprised that in my years of living, I’ve never really ventured beyond the seafood, beef, pork, chicken, duck range.  My market sells sustainably raised bison, goat, lamb, and sometimes, even rabbit.  This is in addition to the meat staples.  When I say sustainable, I mean it costs twice as much as the best ribeye at the grocers.   But you pay for peace of mind.  In an earlier post, I had a difficult time explaining where meat comes from to my son (read about it here).  But what my son has latched on to is the idea of treating animals humanely.  They aren’t shoved together in a small space.  They roam the land, they eat a healthy diet of natural greenery and not filler and candy wrappers.  They don’t get so fattened up with drugs that their legs can’t support their weight and they need to be fork lifted or shoveled to be moved to slaughter.

Another plus of the market is the social interaction–learning about farms, farming practices and how the good people who bring us our food live.  And they always give me great recipes.  The goat recipe below is inspired by a Moroccan Tagine (in ode to my co-workers shooting there now), but with ingredients all procured at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market.

It was the mushroom guy who suggested a braising meat (lamb shank) with the black trumpet mushrooms, tomato, onion and fennel.  I picked up the veggie ingredients and made my way to the Jimenez Farm goat/lamb stand, where the lovely Melissa convinced me to try goat for the first time.  She said it was a less ‘gamey’ and more tender meat than the lamb.  So I bought a goat shank.  With the prices as they were, I opted for a half pound, rather than the usual pound for two.  She said she will usually cook up a 1/2 pound to split between herself and her boyfriend–the rest is vegetables she said.

‘Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants’–well stated, Michael Pollan.

I made this dish not only to try black trumpet mushroom and goat shank for the first time, but also the opportunity to try out a Meyer lemon confit.  Finally, lemons have returned to my garden this year, and I tried a recipe that is a cross between the Charcuterie Lemon Confit and Alinea’s preserved lemons.  I had just preserved them a couple weeks ago, but couldn’t wait the full three months before using them in my tagine.  And I’m glad I did.  I served the goat tagine with Israeli Cous Cous.  It was a delicious stew with more veggies than meat and the shank had the pleasant surprise of a juicy marrow that permeated flavor to the sauce.

Goat Tagine

Preserved Meyer Lemon

I had also been wanting to make a dish using my ancho pancetta that would be a bit more original than the carbonara I made earlier and I think I’ve found it with this braised oxtail pancetta stew.

There was oxtail at the market–from the same guy who wouldn’t sell me pork belly or tell me about his bacon cure a few weeks earlier.  But he’s pretty forthcoming with grilled meat suggestions.  One thing I noticed about the 100% grass fed beef is that it smells different–in a ‘could this possibly be spoiled’ kind of way–then you realize it kind of smells like freshly cut grass.  You eyeball it, and it’s red, fresh, with little fat.  Some people would argue that corn fed yields more marbling.  Yes, perhaps; but this piece of meat was a happy animal, roaming and ruminating–and this meat isn’t heart attack meat–it’s high in omega 3 from all the grass eating and fall off the bone tender.

This particular oxtail/pancetta recipe is part mirepoix (celery, carrot, onion) and part mole; since there was ancho and cumin in the pancetta, I added a touch of unsweetened chocolate to the sauce and the result was warm and buttery (in texture from the oxtail gel and pork jelly jus).  Not too rich and not too overpowering with any one flavor.

Chorizo Pancetta made with ancho and adobe peppers

I am so fortunate to have everything at my neighborhood farmer’s market.  So, what if you don’t live in a place with a year-round farmer’s market?  Well, as the Village People say, ‘there’s always the CSA’.  (this is only punny if you are of a certain age…).  Seriously, find a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where local farms create a sort of cartel of produce and their crop is your gain–delivered right to your home.  For meats, you can look into purchasing a ‘share’ from a local meat purveyor.  What’s better than that?  (that is, if you don’t live in warm climes and can troll the market like I do).