Pass the Cheese, Please.

Caciodecavallo from David Asher's work shop. The story of this cheese begins in the Apennine mountains where cheesemakers took their herds to the green pastures way up in the mountains. The green grass produced amazing milk but the cheesemakers couldn't carry milk all the way down the mountain - they made cheese instead! Caciodecavallo was tradtionally preserved this way so cheesemakers could throw it over a horse's back to get it down the mountain.

My first cheese revelation took place in Gascony.  It was the chèrve, goat cheese, made by Marie, Dominique’s neighbor. 

Hey now, I’ve had good cheese in America. My favorite spot is Antonelli’s cheese shop in Austin.  What I’d give to stand in there for hours sampling cheeses! 

My latest cheese experience has me hooked. Don’t worry; I’m not setting down the knife for cheese cloth. But still, I’m hooked.

On a two day leave from the Folkets Madhus kitchen in November, I attended a natural cheese making class in Copenhagen lead by David Asher. Originally from Canada, David started out with a goat farm where he made incredible raw milk cheeses. Unfortunately, raw milk cheese can't be sold in Canada - his running joke was that he was invited to every party and he had the best Christmas presents. He ended up writing his manifesto for cheese making, made the tough decision to sell his farm, and hit the road to spread the word about natural cheese.

The class I joined was filled with local dairy farmers, all trying to find another way to preserve and sell their precious milk. Asher's cheese isn't the "natural" cheese that you find in the grocery store. He doesn't use freeze dried fungal spores or mesophilic starter cultures - the BS that is in just about every grocery store cheese. He uses natural cultures, clabber, and kefir, along with good, fresh milk from pasture-raised animals - the same ingredients that cheese has been made with for thousands of years. 

Valençay cheese that was coated with ash just after formation. A few months of fungal growth makes a really cool contrast!

* Clabber is raw milk that is left to ferment at room temperature for a day. Ask your grandmother - I bet she knows about clabber. Kefir, a cauliflower looking seed, is another natural fermentation agent. Kefir seed is added to milk and left to ferment at room temperature. These cultures are then added to milk during the cheesemaking process.

Over the two day session, David walked the class through butter production, mozzarella stretching, and the crafting of a wheel of alpine cheese. Surprisingly, there are many parallels between charcuterie and cheese - salt is used in the same fashion (and in the same measurements) to draw moisture out and preserve the cheese.

San Marcellin, another goat cheese, showing incredible signs of fungal activity.

The class was quite the awakening - I also learned that Cheddar cheese should be white, not the distinct bright orange color. Let me explain further: Grass contains carotene. When cows eat grass, their milk has a rich, creamy color. When you make cheddar cheese from a cow raised on grain, the eventual cheese lacks carotene and thus will turn out rather dull and unappealing. Around the time of the advent of industrial farming, cheese makers began adding ground annatto seeds to disguise their inferior cheddars. Add a little annatto powder, and you get that creamy white cheddar color back - add a little too much, and the cheddar turns a bright orange color. Sadly, this trend caught on, and the orange coloring has become part of cheddar's identity.

Do you know why Europe has incredible cheese and the stuff you find in America is just... blah? In Europe, the best milk is designated for cheesemaking; the inferior milk is sent to bottling plant. In America, our good milk winds up in the milk carton, and our inferior milk is made into cheese.

This class certainly sparked my interest. I have produced a few batches of cheese since then with fluctuating results. I'm very excited to see how my latest batch turns out - the ricotta was amazing, and the mozzarella didn't last long, but I have four wheels of cheddar and a jar of feta still in the fridge. If you have any interest in cheesemaking, I highly recommend his book The Art of Natural Cheesemaking 

The Unofficial World Hot Dog Championship

I'll be the first to tell you; I was playing out of my league.  

The six-team contest had some big names:

Team Sweden: Brothers Ebbe Vollmer and Mats Thulin Vollmer from Restaurang Vollmer (2 Michelin Stars) in Malmø. The duo is known for straightforward, down-to-earth cooking using their exquisite home-grown produce.

Team South Africa: Korbus van der Merwe from Wolfgat in Paternoster. Korbus's mission is to cook sustainably while using super-local produce and ingredients. 

Team Japan: Hideto Takeda, Mads Battlefield, and Henrik Levinsen from Ichimatsu and Restaurant Hjemme, respectively. 

Team Denmark: Jonas Boelt, executive chef at Great Northern Food Hall in New York. There, he created a hot dog the NY Post claimed to be the top dog in New York.

Team Spain: Juan Antonio Vargas, head chef of Mugaritz - 9th best restaurant in the world and owner of three Michelin stars.

Oh, and a butcher from Texas...

In the months before the competition, the Folkets Madhus team and I tried to scheme up the ultimate butcher's hotdog - for awhile; there was talk of all the toppings being made from offal with a touch of fresh blood foam.  I decided to compete with a more traditional dog rather than blow everyone away with a butcher's hot dog that would horrify some and cause others to turn vegan. The key word here is more traditional - I still wanted to play around with this dog. For a few weeks, I tested hot dog bun recipes, trying to make something unique. I'm not sure where the idea came from, but I decided to add some dehydrated prosciutto to my dough - a recipe that I will come back to and tweak one day. It definitely has some potential!

In place of a Texas-styled sausage, I opted for a traditional Danish grillepølse that highlights Nordic spices and seasonings. I thought this selection exemplified the spirit of the Butchers' Manifesto - the passage of the craft from one generation to the next. With the help of Mads Cortsen, I topped the dog with caramelized onions, pickled green tomatoes, thinly slice glass kale, a mayonnaise, and watercress. 

The day of competition, Michael, Gustav, and I gathered at Torvehallerne.  After we had assembled our station in our little hotdog trailer, we pulled out a bottle of Michael's famous Bacon Snaps and went to meet our competition.

Initially, the idea was to take the other teams off their "game" with a few swigs, but after hitting five trailers, we agreed our plan had somewhat backfired! 

At last, the competition started: we had to serve 100 identical hotdogs to festival goers and an additional six for the judges. I came a little over-prepared, and we pushed out over 150 dogs.  We quickly became the crowd favorite.

Gustav, Michael, and I busy at work in our small hot dog trailer. Here, Gustav took our wieners out of hot water, placing it in our fresh toasted buns. Michael came along with the caramelized onions and green tomatoes and I finished them off with the mayo, glass kale, and garnish.

I relied heavily on all my F. Dick equipment for this contest - the bread knife was a work horse for those home-made buns!

Finally, the Master of Ceremonies called for all the chefs to come to the stage for the winning announcement.  As I began to make my way out of the trailer, Michael he grabbed me by the shoulder.

"No, screw that! We don't move until they call for the butchers!"

He was right. This was our fight and that of the Butchers' Manifesto: 

We are not chefs. 

We are butchers.

In order to BRING BUTCHER BACK, we had to be recognized.

We held our ground. Shouts of "Vi Slagter!" ('We are butchers' in Danish) started to ring out from the crowd until finally, the "butchers" were called to the stage.

In the end, the top prize went to Team Japan, and rightfully so - their dog was killer. They loved Michael's Bacon Snaps so much that we gave them the rest of the bottle as an additional prize. You can see them celebrating with it on stage.

Team Japan taking the stage as the winning team of the Top Dog Charity contest - Congrats guys! Photo Credit: Copenhagen Food Festival.

,This was a great experience with lots of wonderful memories - we competed against some talented chefs. and were judged by some of the top chefs in the world. After the competition, I snuck over to the judge's table to get a picture with Ramus Kofoed, winner of the 2012 Bocuse d'Or - essentially, the Olympics of fine dining. Ramus also owns and operates Geranium, a three-star Michelin resturant in Copenhagen.

The experience was made possible by Michael Museth. It technically was a Butchers' Manifesto event, but he pushed for me to be on stage. For this, and all the other incredible opportunities he has given me, I am deeply appreciative.

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SIDENOTE: A few weeks after the hotdog competition, Mads Cortsen competed in the Danish National Hotdog competition. His setup was hospital themed - he looked like a bloody surgeon while serving up his hotdogs and guess who got to make the buns?

Eight chefs, from eight different countries were competing to do the best hot dog. Japan won :)

Fleischer-Handwerk

FH FLEISCHER-HANDWERK

FH is a German magazine specializing in production and sale of artisan meat and sausage products.  I am honored to be included in their May 2017 edition.

Roskilde Festival

The Orange Stage, the center of Roskilde Festival a few days before opening.

I didn’t know what I was getting into. I first heard about Roskilde festival on my first trek into Denmark. From what I could gather from my Viking friends, it sounded like a pretty wild music festival where people dressed Amish-ish. Roskilde is, in fact, the largest annual music festival in Europe. Over 135,000 people travel to the old capital of Denmark for a week long non-profit festival dedicated to celebrating music, culture, and humanism. It spans over 8,000 acres, so that means an endless sea of tents, people, food, and music.

About a month ago, Michael Museth, owner of Folkets Madhus gave me a call. For the past five years, Folkets Madhus had been a food vendor at Roskilde Festival and this year he was short on volunteers. That's all I needed to hear. Within a week, my Old Gringo boots touched down in Copenhagen.

I didn’t have much time to catch my breath or unpack my backpack – my second day was spent in the kitchen preparing for a separate catering event for 250 people. In between, my good buddy Gustav and I finished prepping everything for the festival: over 100 kilos of minced meat for the famous “He-Man Chili" and another 100 kilos of Danish BBQ.

As far as Danish BBQ, remember, we aren’t in the Lone Star state.

Danish BBQ hanging in the cold smoker.

Danish BBQ is different from traditional Texas BBQ.  Michael and Gustav had started on a test batch before I arrived - beef short ribs were salted with copious amounts of paprika, chili powder, and other spices then cold smoked for days. The final product was slow-cooked in the oven.

Not "Aaron Franklin style"  but surprisingly was pretty damn good.

SUNDAY - DAY 1
Sunday was officially the first day of Roskilde Festival. Campers who numbered in the thousands and had been waiting for days to score the perfect site to pitch their tents were turned loose. Food vendors were given the green-light too, so the Folkets Madhus team moved in our equipment and setup our tents. Gustav and I broke away to the Northern countryside to pickup his "camplet"  which proved to be a lifesaver. Rain was forecasted, and I had heard countless tales of “Roskilde 2007" - the year, Roskilde received over 4 inches of rain, and the festival turned into a mud-bowl. 

One of the many campsites at Roskilde - over 130,00 campers!

MONDAY - TUESDAY
As a volunteer, I was required to work a minimum of 6 hours a day. In return, I was given a free pass to the festival's musical acts.  So everyday after our shift was over, we meandered over to the small stages to catch shows.  I ended up seeing Foo Fighters, Ice Cube, and Justice, and to my surprise, a band called CcSquele. As it turned out, one of Folkets Madhus's own food runners was "secretly" in the band.  

He "forgot to mention it," but he is a pretty big deal. He plays a total of six instruments, and he rocked the drums that night.

One of the smaller stages at Roskilde festival.

WEDNESDAY - Day 4
On Wednesday, the inner circle which included the Orange Stage and the main food court opened. I got into the kitchen for the second shift of the day and was tasked with making an atrocious amount rice and potatoes. Rico held down the other end of the kitchen by making He-Man Chili and doing great impersonations of Salt Bae. That night, the Orange Stage opened up with The Weeknd. 

The main food hall where we were stationed.

The famous "He-Man Chili" of Folkets Madhus.

Clever, huh?

Flæskestegssandwich, a true Danish treat.

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The history buff in me has to break out for a bit: The Orange Stage was originally part of the Rolling Stones 1976 European Tour. At one point, Queen used it until finally, the tent found its way to the Roskilde Festival. Its iconic color and shape have become the festival's logo ever since.

The Orange stage in action.

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This is what it looks like when the Amish Camp meets Game of Thrones Camp. 

By the end of the week, the fairgrounds were pretty muddy.

Tents for days!

Tent tearing down time.

That day, I worked the opening shift and just as I was scheduled to be relieved things got crazy busy and Michael asked me to stay for another shift. There was only one thing to say. This is the guy that has put a roof over my head and food in my mouth. He has done an incalculable amount for my career. Without a second thought, my apron remained on for another shift until festival goers started questioning if I ever left the stand!

Honestly, I didn’t mind.  I was having fun and learning more about this side of the meat business. 

It was a memorable week. We sold a bunch of He-Man Chili and BBQ, listened to some great music, and made memories that I will always keep with me. I am humbled by my Danish friends who allowed me to partake in this cultural experience with them. As always, they are the best of hosts. Check out my short Roskilde Festival video as well!

My Roksilde/Folkets Madhus crew - Thanks for the great festival guys!

The Proof That Even Slaughterers Can Become Pop Stars Today

By Laura Ewert | WELT Iconist | Berlin | August 2017 | © WorldN24 GmbH. All rights reserved.

The modern butcher blogs and goes on educational journey

At least as beautiful as the meat products from his hands: The blogging butcher Jack Matusek

(Translated from Deutsch)

The butcher is often thick in movies, a bit angry. Sometimes bald. Chabrol rather thick-haired. He is wearing a white apron or white rubber boots and has reddened skin. He saws animals apart and leaves them on large hooks through the slaughterhouse. A place for psychotherapists. Battles are not nice.

Jack Matusek is beautiful. He is wearing a cowboy hat, long brown hair, sometimes green cowboy boots, sometimes a jeans shirt. A soft face. There are many photos of him, because he is a blogging butcher, in English, it sounds as nice as it looks: blogging butcher. He has large pieces of meat in his hand, he shows swine-ear terrines, or how to rouse a whole animal. On his "Raw Republic Meats" page, he writes about his travels, where he wants to learn everything about the craft. The 26-year-old is the proof that even slaughterers can become pop stars today - it helps of course if they look like this.

The slaughterer's new star potential is well explained by the rules of modern gourmets, who eat his bread only artisan and carrots grow blue or crooked. For him, food must be fresh, easily prepared with effort, best self-cultivated. And, of course, ethically correct. This is a tedious business, particularly in meat. One that moves the minds tremendously, in the face of animal protection, in which cow eyes look sadly from truck slits. In the case of conscious eaters, it is, therefore, a good idea to try to find out whether you can kill your food yourself (see the book "Eating Animals"), or at least making a few sausages yourself.

This explains why the butcher is so interested.

“The humble craft of the butcher is definitely coming - worldwide”, says Jack Matusek, who has found his model in Italy. ”I’ve seen videos of Dario Cecchini cutting meat, while he heard AC / DC .  I was excited. Then I understood that it was more than cutting meat. It was art. ”

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Traveling around the world all over the world

This craftsmanship charmed Matusek. He is a Texan, seventh generation.

“If I could wear my hat in the bed, I would do it, he says. ”

Texas is known for one of the most important economic sectors in the country, the cattle breeding. In 2011 the US produced more than one billion kilos of beef . "I grew up on a ranch. As a child, I enjoyed playing in the kitchen and refined my childish cooking skills, says Matussek. Combining cooking and cattle seemed to me a suitable idea."

At first, he studied history and business administration, where he also developed a business plan for a delicacy butchery. This idea grew more and more in him. "So I canceled the job offers after my graduation and decided to learn everything about the butcher's trade." That was 2015. Since then, he has been on an educational journey with regard to meat.

Jack Matusek first researched, wrote e-mails, and asked at various companies if he could learn from them. He enrolled at the best Fleischer school in the USA, Fleishers Craft Butchery in Brooklyn, New York. Because there was no free place for him, he worked in the next slaughterhouse to learn the basics.

At the same time, he began writing his blog. "I wanted to create a way to teach people about good meat with recipes and video tutorials." That's how you see how he cooks his steak. Directly in the fire. He calls it "Dirty Steak", and the video, in which he explains that you have to leave it four minutes per side in the fire to enjoy it "medium rare" is underlined with action music.

Finally, he moved to Europe. "If you want to learn to surf, go to California, if you want to learn something about sausage, go to France," he had read somewhere. So he sold his car, grabbed his backpack and went to France together with a cowboy hat and a good finish.

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Learn from the best butcher

There he worked at the slaughterhouse, on a farm, in a restaurant, ate a lot and learned a lot about French sausages. He spent his 25th birthday at the "Le St. James", a Michelin-starred restaurant in Bordeaux.

Then he went on to Panzano in the Chianti, where he worked with his hero Dario Cecchini, the most famous butcher of Italy. Bill Buford, a New York journalist, was already working as a butcher's assistant. Cecchini sells the self-cut meat in his restaurant "Officina della Bistecca" (Italian for steak workshop). 

Matusek then went to France again. In the Gascogne, he was introduced to the secret of national sausage specialties such as Pâté de Tête. He learned how to make the boneless ham Noix de Jambon from a pig's leg, and that any excess blood can cause the meat to rot during drying.

He also studied in Peru, Argentina, and Mexico. "Each country has its own style, which depends above all on local products. But also the climate and the weather influence the way of preparation and storage." A bit like the wine. The Germans, he says, are very exact at slaughter. They would hardly leave meat on the bone. The French cut rather elegantly.

Jack Matusek: "What did the animal eat, how did it live, how was it slaughtered - all that counts for the taste"

Like a cook, a butcher always has his knives, he recommends that of F. Dick. Matusek's favorite sausage specialty is the Italian Coppa of the Schweinenacken. And he loves Hanger steak, the tail of a long bison loin. He likes to work, the boy from the cattle country, but now with pig. "I just know the most about it now." And his favorite vegetable? This is the potato: "So versatile!" The best sausage is made from fresh ingredients, he says. Naturally. He is enthusiastic about Chorizo: "With different types of peppers, smoked, spicy or bittersweet." In addition, only meat from animals, which had grown well. 

“What did it eat, how it lived, how it was slaughtered - all that counts ultimately for the taste.”

With extreme vegetarians , he had so far no problems. "Vegetarians love the welfare of the animals, just like me. Animals have to live a happy life, and they have a right to pain-free and decent slaughter. "

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Battles, Blogging, and Travel

Matusek is currently working in Denmark, where he is working for a few months. At the end of August, he will come to Germany and look at some pig farms and abattoirs. For the future, he has nothing less than to produce the best sausage specialties in the world. For this, he has to found a company in which he can control everything - from the breeding of the animals through their rearing to their slaughter. "I hope I will return to my ranch in Texas and build an ethically correct slaughter house, with pig farming. And a school for the butchers."

In the meantime, he wants to travel further, to continue writing, to continue learning, to continue, as in Copenhagen at the annual "Butcher's Manifesto Summit". There meet Fleischer from all over the world, to formulate goals for the craft and to exchange ideas about what the world's foodie now calls charcuterie : Superstar meat products.