American Kid

I’m certain sausage making and music go hand in hand.

When working with meat, I’m always jammin’. In the Italian macellerias, Dario Cecchini's butchers preferred  AC/DC while carving up their massive steaks. When I arrived in Denmark, David Bowie populated everyone's playlists, so I decided to give them a taste of Texas Country music while we toiled in the kitchen – surprisingly, they liked it.  The next day the Danes returned and followed up my playlist with one loaded with Garth Brooks tunes.

I can dig it.

One day, I noticed an Instagram follower of mine, Rich O’Toole, played Texas Country. The next morning in the kitchen, I mixed in a few of his songs into the rotation. They were catchy. I felt like I had heard his tune “Robert E. Lee” before, or maybe that was just was just the history major in me. Eventually, Rich was my go-to artist.  I'd throw on my headphones and go to work - singing and screaming about Robert E. Lee or "Uncle Hank." Eventually, the Danes started asking questions about this Robert E. Lee fellow, so I had to give them a history lesson.

Flash forward a couple of months…

I’m helping throw an event just outside College Station, Texas and needed a band. I was to do a sausage making workshop, and it was to be followed up with BYOB and a band. Something clicked in the brain and the next thing you know, Rich O’Toole is lined up to play an acoustic show after my sausage demo at Jake’s Saloon in Calvert, Texas.

On the day of the event, everyone was digging in and getting their hands dirty making sausage. Rich and Matt (his guitar player) rolled up their sleeves and jumped right in. 

Rich O’Toole is a liar.

The man said he had never made sausage, but honestly, I think he’s been moonlighting as a butcher while rockin' the Texas Country Music scene.  He and Matt turned out some nice consistent links – Rich even tackled a second batch of meat and produced a killer sausage coil! 

Rich and his guitar player, Matt, cranking out some links.

After some fresh-cooked links and some libations, Rich and Matt pulled out their guitars and plugged in their amps to put on a stellar acoustic performance.  We had a blast.

Sausage Slingers

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Brother Rich just released his new album, American Kid. It’s taken over my car radio and headphones for the past week. Check it out here. 

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. 

Another Open Door

Throughout my travels, I continuously ask the Lord to open and close doors for me. Every time I think I’m in control and have my next step planned out, He gives that door a kick shut and nudges me in another direction. Each time, His door is more than I could have envisioned - without fail.

 As I sat at the table in our Copenhagen Air BnB with my friend and charcuterie teacher, Kate Hill, one of those doors slammed shut and another slowly opened.  By chance, I had heard about a prestigious butchery position opening up in Portland, OR.  Kate thought I had a good chance at it.  I thought I was a shoe-in.  I was by now imagining myself in a clean white apron working under a top chef, in a private club, and ordering the day's meat. 
DOOR SLAM.

Earlier in the day, I was asked if I would consider staying back in Denmark. I could work in Copenhagen at Folkets Madhus, with the possibility of apprenticing on a self-sustaining farm on the island of Funen.  I would have the chance to work in a "seed to sausage" environment, where the animal is taken through the complete life cycle in one place - The farmer, the butcher, and the chef all sitting at the same table.

OPEN DOOR.

After talking it over with Kate and saying a little prayer, I turned the doorknob.

Yoakum Man Learns Old World Butchery

Jack Matusek and his French companions share a glass of wine

YOAKUM - A self-professed carnivore, Jack Matusek, has traveled around the world to learn the craft of butchery.

Matusek grew up outside Yoakum and graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth before bucking corporate culture for the life of a craft butcher.

He began his meat mission at a packing house in Hallettsville. Then he headed to New York City to a three-month butcher training program.

"I was raised here in South Texas. I'm used to the $2 pork chop," he said. "It was kind of eye-opening to go to New York where they have pasture raised pork that's like $7.50 a pound. It's like, what's so special about it? Why am I paying $7.50 for a pork chop?"

Matusek soon learned that for craft butchers to get the taste they sought they were working more closely with farmers.

"You have to taste it. You have to eat it. You have to experience it," he said. "There's been a lot of tender love and care that's gone into this meat."

From a fellow classmate in New York City, Matusek learned about a cooking school in France led by Kate Hill.

"We all are interested in touching our customer base and teaching them more about the food. It's not just good for business," Hill said. "The consumer has to appreciate what goes into it, not just the work but the joyfulness."

Craft butchers are a movement of meat producers returning to the small, local butchery that was once the norm. Part of the movement is a kind of radical transparency, where meat eaters are invited to witness butchers break down an animal.

"First, it was chefs that were the rockstars in the food world," Hill said. "Now, it's the butchers. And we're trying to pass it on to the farmer."

Hill's model for bringing attention to the farmer came from Dominique Chapolard, who has about 100 acres in France that he farms with his family. Chapolard and his family craft their meat from field to the local market, where they share with their customers the best ways to cook their product.

"It begins when you put the seed in the soil, and when you finish, the customer eats," Chapolard said.

Dominique Chopolard examines his new cowboy boots

While studying overseas, Matusek ate traditional French dishes, such as blood sausage, pate, and beef tartar. But he understands that the French palate and Texan palate are very different. He plans to open up a butcher shop and supper club in the Dallas- Fort Worth area with hopes to eventually have a pig farm and slaughterhouse on his family ranch near Yoakum.

His dishes will be more traditionally Texan because he is Texan and is proud of what the state's landscape has to offer.

"You can't just go full bore and say, 'Here's blood sausage, eat it,'" he said. "I need to Tex-ify a little bit of everything I learned over in Europe. I can't bring over a French pate, but maybe throw in some jalapenos, maybe some pecans. Making it more similar to what Texans are used to eating."

A classic French lunch: Ham and butter sandwiches and French wine

From the Victoria Advocate

Jan. 24, 2017

By Sara Sneath

Great Day Houston

In case you missed it, your favorite parapatdetic butcher made bacon on "Great Day Houston" with Debra Duncan. Check it out below.

Three, two, one and ACTION.