{"id":6171,"date":"2015-11-23T07:46:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T07:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=6171"},"modified":"2015-11-23T07:46:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T07:46:15","slug":"garlic-roasted-veal-chop-roasted-heirloom-potato-kale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=6171","title":{"rendered":"garlic-roasted veal chop; roasted heirloom potato; kale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"veal_chop_kale_potato\"<\/a><\/p>\n

it’s looking like we’ve left summer behind us<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I occasionally check out the display case in the Whole Foods meat department when I pass it on the\u00a0way to goodies at the back of the store that\u00a0I can’t get at the Greenmarket.\u00a0The other day a small sign in front of a row of\u00a0veal chops\u00a0attracted my attention, especially since I didn’t remember ever seeing veal in the store before. \u00a0A printed\u00a0note just below the price said that the meat had come from a\u00a0‘Provitello Farms’, in Elba, New York. \u00a0That was the kind of\u00a0specific local sourcing\u00a0I would not have expected from an emporium the size of\u00a0Whole Foods, so I did some research when I got home, to see what it was about.<\/p>\n

A few days later I was back. \u00a0It was a Sunday, I had made no other arrangements for dinner, and I had decided, as an omnivore and someone very conscious of the sources of the food Barry and I consume, to be as reasonable as possible\u00a0on\u00a0the subject of veal, meaning, essentially,\u00a0the morality of its consumption. \u00a0I was acquainted with all of the arguments\u00a0on both sides,\u00a0but my family history, my understanding of the place of a\u00a0young calf, otherwise useless to any market, in the broader context of domesticated livestock, and my awareness of the huge variations to be found in the treatment of this particular\u00a0animal, led me\u00a0back to the meat counter I had investigated earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

A word on the potatoes. \u00a0They\u00a0came from Berried Treasures<\/a> in the Greenmarket, where they are labelled ‘Pata Chaucha’ (my translation would be ‘new potato’). \u00a0It was my first full outing with an Andean heirloom variety whose seeds\u00a0had been\u00a0given to the farmer, Franca Tantillo,\u00a0by an Ecuadorean, David, one of the people who works with Dave Tifford of Fantastic Gardens of Long Island<\/a>. \u00a0As new potatoes, they might properly have been\u00a0stored in a cooler place, like the crisper drawer, but last Wednesday\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0had put them inside a paper bag in my larder. \u00a0When I pulled them out I\u00a0noted to myself once again that they would not have won any beauty contests; they might even have aged in those few days. \u00a0After I had roasted them however I realized beauty was not the story. They were absolutely delicious, incredibly nutty, and with a texture not unlike the very best grilled or roasted eggplant, but juicier.\u00a0 Wonderful.<\/p>\n