Winter Meatballs All photographs by
T
Erica Simone
his month for me is when winter finally starts. Meatballs are a dish that is hearty and warming. Paired with pasta, or as I used to like it (before I went Raw), alone, sprinkled with Pecorino, Karen’s aged goat cheese and a glass of Chianti. The best part of food is the process of finding great ingredients and the people with whom you get to share the final meal. I hope that you enjoy my December walk through the farms of NYC.
Last Saturday I went to Union Square Farmers Market to buy the ingredients for Lamb and Pork Sausage Meatballs and started talking to Karen of 3-Corner Field Farm in Shushan NY, one of the few farms in the country that milk sheep for use in the production of gourmet cheeses and yogurt and who’s sheep are raised with care and respect on beautiful, organically managed pastures. Why should we consider your lamb better than the lamb from a supermarket? A supermarket lamb is “generic”/no-brand and ours is “branded”; by which I mean that we can tell you how they were raised, what they ate, how they were treated, when they were born and how and when they were butchered. Lamb that is pasturefed, like ours, raised in a low-stress manner and allowed to live a natural existence is more flavorful and more tender. Also, our milking breed, the East Friesians, produce a fine textured meat, which is particularly tender. What is your favorite lamb cut and dish? Very difficult to say… I am almost always open to grilled rib chops (we have a grill on our back porch and can use it most of the year – except in driving rain!) as I love to nibble on bones. But, in the cooler weather, lamb shanks braised with mushrooms and served with polenta is a favorite of mine and my younger daughter. A grilled lamb burger is a great option when time to cook is scarce and there is some arugula to serve it on. What is your favorite article of clothing made from lambs wool? I have two favorite (memorable) woollen items: A Jantzen ski sweater from the 1940s that belonged to my husband’s uncle and was passed to him when he was 15 years old. He gave it to me when he outgrew it (we were high school “sweethearts”) and I have had it ever since. It is still in great shape except for the sleeves as I had to put on leather elbow patches to keep the elbows from shredding. Number 2 is a fairly intricate crochet vest that a customer made me with my own yarn. He did this on his own after I admired some of the sweaters and jackets he showed-off to me. It was quite generous and very representative of the great people and relationships in NYC. What is the funniest or craziest thing that has happened to you at the green market? To be honest, most of the dealings at Union Square are friendly, heartwarming, and interesting. I get to speak with people from lots of different walks of life, professions
and countries, and that makes the day very interesting. Probably the weirdest discussions have to do with people’s food issues (One day I am going to write a book about the issues that have come up — they are never-ending). Perhaps this is the wacky type story you are looking for: One woman came to the stand asking specifically if we could get her sheep colostrum (the first milk the ewe produces after lambing — just like humans — which has a lot of antibodies and is critical to developing immunities in lambs). I asked why and she told me a “healer” had advised her to get some to treat some medical problem she was having. (Now, where would a respectable practitioner think an urbanite could get sheep colostrum — ridiculous — and how could sheep antibodies help a human?). When I informed her that all of our colostrum was given to our lambs, she then proceeded to take out a necklace with a pendant on the end and to wave it in a circular motion over our cheeses. When asked why she was doing that she said it was to determine if these cheese would be good for her to eat. At that point I lost my patience and asked her not to perform her “test” as it made no sense to me and might scare away other customers. After she left I felt really badly that someone looking for an answer to a health problem was duped into such bizarre behavior. Some Lamb facts that people don’t know Lamb is the easiest meat for most people to digest. Sheep’s milk is the most similar to human milk of all commercially available milks. Sheep can have multiple lambs from several different fathers. In winter, sheep and lamb prefer to eat snow rather than drink the ice cold water. What other meats do you like to pair lamb with? I never mix meats — we have whey-fed pork, but always eat it separately from lamb — same with beef. It is my meat pet-peeve. I know you spent a lot of time living in Paris, how is the meat different there? Lamb is prepared very similarly to the way its done here in NYC, although there are many more Moroccan recipes used because of the French having colonized Algiers. It is mainly the butchering that differs. It took me a while to figure out what were loin chops as these look quite different.