OSSO

I arrived mid-morning on Monday to Osso Carnicería, strapped down with my backpacks and sweating profusely. I had gone from the extreme cold of Denmark to extreme humidity of Peru, and I was starting to question if I’d packed correctly. 

As I entered the shop, Renzo Girabaldi stood next to the counter chatting with some patrons. God, I was nervous. I mean, this was the guy I had wanted to work with for over three years. He and Dario Cecchini were my idols and the key reasons I became a butcher. And here he was, standing before me and offering the opportunity to apprentice with him for a few months.

A peak into one of the dry aging containers in the carnicería.

I didn't need to be anxious - Renzo was very welcoming. After he finished his conversation, we ventured upstairs to the roof where his office was located. After conversing a bit, Renzo laid out his suggested two-month plan. 
- an intro week on the cutting table in the butcher shop
- two weeks in production, making hamburgers, chorizos, and other value-added products.
- a week ghosting Osso’s CFO Alejandro, analyzing logistics.
- two weeks of working at the adjoining Osso Restuarante
- two weeks working at Dondoh, a new restaurant collaboration of Renzo's.

When it came to accommodations, nothing had been planned prior to my arrival. Renzo and Alejandro went to work on a place for me to crash. In the meantime, I’d have to sleep at the butcher shop - not the first time that had happened. 

Renzo had to jet - literally.  He had less than 48 hours in Lima before he departed for a culinary gig in Moscow for 11 days. I’m thinking I’m at the right spot.

I went to the front counter, knife bundle in hand. The rest of the afternoon, I’m jumped in where I could help, mostly removing fat from pig skin. Renzo is a nose to tail man as well - he believes in saving every single little bit of fat. The hard fat is sent into hamburger production. The soft fat, the one that is usually thrown away or declared “too much work to remove” by some, is converted into Manteca de Cerdo, or Pork Lard. Renzo uses it all.

When dealing with dry aged meat, you have to trim off the outside surfaces - mostly dried meat and mold - in order to see the beauty hiding within.

My first week was spent in the shop, working around the large wooden cutting table. I was under the direction of César and Jose, Renzo's two main butchers. Every morning we started by setting the case - I took note of all the cuts, trying frantically to remember all the names in Spanish. My usual tasks were cleaning tenderloins, skirt steaks, and chorizo displays. Once the shop case was merchandised, we begin breaking down carcasses to fulfill the restaurants’ needs as well as wholesale orders. 

José reminds me of some of those super quick butchers you see on YouTube: he can cut a mile a minute because he has done it a million times. He has been kind enough to share some his cutting "secretos" with me. José has taken a liking to my set of F. Dick knives. My large flat honing steel is now the preferred one at the table, and my boning knife stays busy, even when I'm on lunch break. 

One of my morning tasks at Osso has been to restocking the sausage treys. Every shop displays their meat a little differently so I've tried to learn quickly - I still am having difficulties deciphering between the eight different sausages.

The guys at the cutting table realized I knew my cuts and that I knew a decent amount of Spanish. They wanted to learn English. By the end of my third day, my nickname had become “teacher.”

Or Jack "Sparrot." Not Sparrow.

Massive ribeyes headed to the restaurant.

I've enjoyed breaking out my Spanish again, but damn, I didn't remember it being this difficult! It doesn't help that my brain has a little Danish, French, or Italian rolling around in there.

I am fascinated by the setup at Osso, especially all the dry aging facilities. Cèsar demoed the famous sake-infused dry-aged ribeye on the DonDoh menu. After cleaning up the strip loin, he wrapped the entire hunk of meat in dried kelp leaves, then tied it up using medical netting. Cèsar carefully saturated the netting with just the right amount of sake before storing it in the dry-aging cooler.

César working the medical netting over the kelp-covered strip loin.

 
My second week was supposed to have been in production, making massive amounts hamburgers and chorizos. José and César pulled me up to the shop every morning - maybe they enjoyed my insanely sharp knives, or I was actually helping out.

I hope it was both!

Osso, just like the many European butchers I've met, deals with a bunch of quality pork meat. To supply super markets with artisanal chorizos, you need to have a lot of it!

This company has an incredible brand and top notch packaging!

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Sidenotes:
Save the Gringo 1:
After a trio of nights in the butcher shop, Renzo and Alejandro fixed me up with my own pad - a small single room in La Molina, roughly a thirty-minute walk from the shop. I walked for the first week, but the humidity and the insanely cheap cab fare finally won me over. I'm very appreciative of the room. They didn't have to help out some gringo stranger from Texas, but they did.

Save Gringo 2:
It was about this same time I noticed an alarming number of bug bites on my arms and legs. For weeks, I had heard about "chinchas" or bed bugs down in South America - that was my first thought! I mentioned it to Renzo, and 15 minutes later,  a company employee whisked me away to a public health clinic down the street to get treated (turns out it was an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite). Again, Gringo in trouble and Renzo saves the day - incredibly generous.
 

The Carnicería crew getting together for a group picture after my first week in La Molina.

I don't know what it is about staff meals, but I love them. Perhaps its the regathering of the troops to break bread together - the bond of a shared meal. At the Reata, I loved the tacos that the guys served up after the doors closed for the night. Fleishers staff meals in Red Hook were always spectacular thanks to Jason V. Here, a pan-fried potato stuffed with boiled eggs and minced chorizo meat. As with every staff meal here, there is rice and some sort of flavorful and fresh juice.

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?

Where to Find Pig Ear Terrines, Spicy Nduja and Other Adventurous Charcuterie in Dallas

from Dallas Morning News / June 6, 2017 / Coryanne Ettiene, Special Contributor

If you haven't already, it's time to get on board the charcuterie craze sweeping Dallas. Not too long ago you needed a vacation to Europe or some hidden neighborhood in New York City to find mouth-watering charcuterie. But now, thanks to a growing number of butchers and chefs with a culinary curiosity for this time-honored technique, it is not hard to find a shop or restaurant featuring charcuterie with enthusiasm.

Jack Matusek, 25, of Raw Republic Meats is a native Texan from Yoakum who spent the last year studying the art of butchery and charcuterie from some of the biggest names in the industry. He is now completing his butcher training in Europe with the aim of returning to Texas to open his own shop in Fort Worth and a wholesale charcuterie program on his family farm in Yoakum.

Butcher Jack Matusek of Raw Republic Meats (Raw Republic Meats)

"A big difference between Europe and the United States when you start talking charcuterie is prevalence," Matusek says. "Europeans initially preserved their meat using these methods before the invention of refrigeration. You can find some form of charcuterie or cured meat on just about every lunch table in France or Italy. Charcuterie is a staple in the European diet while it is emerging as a specialty item here in the states."

For him, charcuterie is "just like wine, certain tastes or hints in charcuterie develop because of the weather, protein source, or storage and curing conditions."

From spicy, tangy salamis to full-bodied, nutty pates, charcuterie embodies a wide-reaching plethora of incredible flavors and textures that whisper tasting notes specific to the terrain and environment it is produced in.

Speck Alto Adige dry-cured smoked prosciutto from Jimmy's Food Store in Dallas. 

(Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

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Branching out

With so many old-world favorites and emerging flavors to choose from, Matusek says you can't go wrong with a quality prosciutto or culatello, both products from the ham that get aged for two or more years. 

"With a curing cycle that long, some incredible flavors develop that aren't found in other types of short-term cured meats," he says.

If you are looking for something that will add a kick to your board, Matusek is in love with nduja, a spicy, spreadable salami. He recently dined at Knife Dallas and highly recommends their nduja and other charcuterie.

And for the adventurous eater, Matusek suggests lardo, a cured and seasoned back fat sliced paper thin.

"It's a delicious addition to a charcuterie board made from a part of the pig that usually gets overlooked," he says.

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Experimental Chefs

The rising popularity of charcuterie in Dallas is due in great part to an emerging number of local chefs who are experimenting with curing meats. Start at Lucia in the Bishop Arts District and order their salumi misti — a tasting of house-made cured meats such as lardo, nduja and rabbit terrine. 

Pig ear terrine is cut at Blind Butcher by chef Oliver Sitrin. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

Pop over to The Blind Butcher in Lower Greenville for another take on in-house cured meats. Chef Oliver Sitrin's menu is what he calls "worldly local," adapting with the seasons and sourcing local to match his global palate. 

For Sitrin, the charcuterie trend appeals to the artisan, small-batch consumer that is gaining momentum. It's thanks to the "animal movement that is helping people become aware of waste, but also moving them to try different parts of the animal they may not have been willing to try before," he says.

Blind Butcher chef Oliver Sitrin prepared a charcuterie board full of (clockwise from lower left) pork rillette, pork rinds, carrot chutney, head cheese, lost ruby ranch (fresh goat cheeses), pig ear terrine, duck-chicken-duck pate, pickled green beans, lardo, candied pecans, beef-pork-duck pate, pacha, and bacon bratwurst and mustard. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

"Recently we have had more people asking for fun things like head cheese, rillettes and anything pastrami," he adds. "We do a few different types of bacon, and people seem to really enjoy anything you can turn into bacon these days." 

His menu reads like a love letter to cured meats. It's reminiscent of old world flavors but with a contemporary flair that draws you in and sparks a hungry meat-eater to try everything.

The charcuterie case at Jimmy's Food Store in Dallas. (Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

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Try it at home

For those looking to embrace charcuterie at home, Jimmy's Fine Food Store in East Dallas has been dishing up charcuterie long before it was a buzzword on the tip of every foodie's tongue. 

Visit on a Saturday afternoon and you will find yourself sharing a line with locals hungry for smoked prosciutto or Beretta spicy salami. Their old-fashioned deli counter packed with a huge selection of charcuterie, cheese and Italian delicacies is a must for those looking to create the perfect board.

Local butchers such as Deep Cuts in North Dallas and others also carry a wide range of dried and cured meats, as do cheese shops such as Scardello.

Beretta spicy sausage from Jimmy's Food Store. (Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

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A learning environment

You can always try your hand at curing your own meats. There is an emerging number of home cooks and hobby butchers that are learning the art of charcuterie with the hope of crafting their own spin on traditional cured meats inspired by restaurant boards and deli counter finds. 

Matusek isn't the only chef passionate about educating consumers and chefs on the art of charcuterie. A variety of workshops by trained chefs and butchers are appearing across the country. You don't have to attend full-blown culinary school to get a taste of the cure.

Cuisine University held a charcuterie and salumi workshop in Dallas in April taught by chef Brian Polcyn, author of  Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing.

"The recent popularity for charcuterie has been going on for about seven years, maybe a little longer," says Vic Rose of Cuisine University. "Chef Polcyn's book was the one book that really got many of the young chefs interested in charcuterie." 

You could also head to Austin and visit Salt & Time, a butcher shop and restaurant, for classes on meat curing basics and sausage-making. 

Coryanne Ettiene is a McKinney freelance writer. / Dallas Morning News / June 6, 2017

Cochon555 Houston

We carried the full Swabian Hall on our shoulders into Hughes Manor where the pop-up butcher shop would take place.  The Houston Cochon555 crowd had just finished the chefs' competition where Manabu Horiuchi from Kata Robata took home the "W" for his six-course presentation highlighting Chubby Dog Farm's Mangalista Red Wattle Cross.

For those of you not familiar with Cochon555, this is a movement to preserve and promote heritage breeds of pork and family farming by hosting culinary events and chef competitions in the major cities across the US.

Preparing for the demo - all knives got a new edge and the cleaver made an appearance.

Time to cut!

The pig was gently set down on the two joined Boos cutting tables which gave way to an eruption of iPhone cameras flashing and clicking - I’m sure not many of the onlookers had ever seen a full pig carcass before. To be honest, I’d never seen a pig carcass like this either so the first few cuts were a bit foreign to me. Most of the time, carcasses are split symmetrically down the backbone – making transport, storage, and butchery easier. To truly show the crowd of food enthusiasts what butchery is all about, I started with a complete eviscerated (minus the insides) pig carcass. I would also be without the use of a band saw – an extraordinarily precise tool when cutting through bones. In its place, a 27-inch bone saw would have to work through the bones manually. As a backup, I brought my vintage cleaver as well.

Brady Lowe, the founder of Cochon555,  started the demo by telling a bit about the Piggy Bank, the focal point of all the fundraising that weekend. Piggy Bank has one simple goal in mind - helping family farmers. The organization is a dedicated to current or prospective farmers to help them get a kickstart: breeding stock, business plans, and other valuable business information  - anything a pig farmer needs to get going.  

After a quick summary of my travels, I handed the mic back over to Brady and started cutting.

Brady offered me the mic, I gave my short elevator pitch, and then dove in. Splitting a whole carcass manually wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be – I took off the hind legs first, split them, then did the same with the shoulders. The loin gave me a bit of trouble – it was long, and my saw blade only gave me about three to four inches to move. 

Let me stop here to tell you about Houston's climate. If you haven't been there in the summertime, believe me when I say the heat and humidity are unbearable. Just before I took the stage, Houston received a summer shower followed by intense sunshine. The humidity ramped up and was so thick; I could have cut it with my cleaver. I was soaked in sweat. My shirt was sticking to my body, and little sweat beads covered my face. I had to step away several times to wipe my brow and get a swig of water.

But, back to my story... I was relieved the carcass breakdown was behind me, but quickly realized I would need a lot more help to break the primals down into shop cuts in the allotted time.  Luckily, good friends, Catherine and Tito Manterola were waiting and jumped right in to help.  Over the next hour, we cut, wrapped, and tagged the entire Swabian Hall for retail sale. Everything was on display: bones for stock, ears for dog treats, skin for soups - even the brains were snapped up for a saute. 

A big thanks to Catherine and Tito Manterola for setting up to the butcher's block and getting dirty with me. I couldn't have done it without y'all!

A bottom round roast just before being wrapped up and taken home.

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A sold pork coppa.

I’m honored to have been apart of this year’s Cochon555 Houston. Brady and his amazing staff created an enjoyable gastronomic gathering. A special shoutout to:

Allegra - who personally helped coordinate the pop-up butcher shop. She was on her A game, and everything ran flawlessly. 

Calvin and Karyn Medders - owners of Chubby Dog Farm, a Mangalista-heritage cross pork farm in Grapeland, Texas. I always enjoy the opportunity to talk to producers and learn so much from their stories and their passion for providing excellent quality food. 

Jeff Weinstock - owner of Cake & Bacon, a small wholesale bakehouse and butchery commissary that delivers no-less-than-perfect breads, pastries, pies, charcuterie, sausage, pasture-raised products to restaurants and retailers throughout Houston. His display was covered in a wide variety of cured meats - the spiced coppa being my favorite. 

Geoffrey and Renee Barry -  of The Barry Farm in Needville, Texas who raise heritage Red Wattle. It was my pleasure to have met another passionate farmer here in South Texas.   

Catherine -  my publicist, my partner in crime for any culinary adventure, and the ultimate networker.  She knows everybody and if she doesn't she will before the day is done!

Morgan Weber - A BIG shout out to Morgan Webber of Agricole Hospitality who got me hooked up with this sweet gig. I also had the chance to check out one of his Houston establishments, Coltivare, and it was an absolute blast. If you live in Houston and haven't eaten here, you need to rethink your life.

Folkets Madhus

Copenhagen is an expensive town. The Butchers’ Manifesto week did some real damage to my wallet.

Trying to keep up with the butchers and chefs and their penchant for fine-dining, left this student financially strapped.  Luckily, Michael Museth opened a door and offered me an opportunity to work for him at Folkets Madhus. Remember, Folkets Madhus (People's Food House in Danish) is a catering house and butcher shop. I would be assisting Michael with his catering events and meat experimentations. 

A new adventure in meat means a new adventure in accommodations.  The staff at Folkets Madhus lost their conference room to me, my small wooden frame, and mattress.  It wasn't bad, my new sleeping quarters had a killer view of the garden and bomb shelter, and after a couple of nights, it felt like home. 

My Danish digs.

Showering, on the other hand, was a different ordeal. Folkets Madhus didn’t have shower facilities - after all, they are a butcher shop. However, the city of Copenhagen rented the floor below the shop and used it as a locker room for their sanitation workers. The first few times I tried to shower there, I got chased out by garbage men shouting obscenities in Danish. The only chance to use these facilities verbally unscathed was when it was unoccupied: between the hours of 1-4am. 

Did I mention the lights were usually working on a timer? 

Yeah, I showered in the dark a lot.

My shower facilities.

One of the reasons Michael asked me to stay back in Copenhagen was to assist him with some approaching catering events. In just three days, he was expected to feed 175 people at a food festival in Copenhagen's meatpacking district. While Michael recouped from the Butchers’ Manifesto, I dove into the kitchen and began prepping for our first event. 

On the morning of the event, Michael assigned tasks. We started with the most exotic ingredients first – wheat worms and crickets. Neo-Nordic cuisine integrates insects into the food – something I was not familiar with.

Frozen organic wheat worms.

Michael got the worms and bugs smoking in an outdoor shed he had converted into a makeshift oven. While they smoked, I watched them from the kitchen window as I peeled 50 kilos of potatoes.  After a half hour into the potato peeling, I glanced out the window – puffs of smoke gingerly curled out of the shed’s exhaust pipes, signaling what I thought was a good smokin’. Another 15 minutes, and this time I saw large clouds of smoke billowing out the pipes.  

“Fire- Fire!” 

We scrambled down the stairway and out to the shed. Flames leaped as we opened the shed doors. After extinguishing eight fire extinguishers, the fire calmed enough to make easy work for the local fire department once they arrived. 

Gustav and Jonas sprang into action and went through 7 fire extinguishers before the Copenhagen Fire Department showed up.

While we were being checked out by the medical crew for smoke inhalation, the professionals extinguished the last of the flames.

In total, our fire brought over three firetrucks and an ambulance.

Those Danish firefighters sure got a kick out of us smoking bugs! 

It was this firefighter's last fight - he was retiring the following day, so he ask for pictures with one of the worms - before jokingly gesturing he was going to swallow the burnt one.

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The outcome of the catering event?  

Michael quickly procured another batch of bugs.  Gustav, a fellow butcher, and I began built a new smoke oven, and a few hours later,  we rolled into the Meat Packing District with a car loaded down with Neo-Nordic cuisine.

Views from the Food Festival in the Meatpacking District. This table stretched on for what seemed like three quarters of a mile. Each caterer was assigned a 12 table section so there was a ton of kitchen staff running around!

Michael Museth and I with our "Smoked Honey Bug Salad." Those smoked wheat worms and crickets turned out to be pretty good. I will forever be indebted to Michael for the opportunity he gave me in Denmark.