Wine Braised Beef Shanks with Goat Cheese Polenta

Last night we ate beef shanks, a cut of beef I never knew existed until our steers were slaughtered here at the ranch and transported to the Matanza butcher shop in Taos. Marlene, the traveling Matanza Unit butcher, gave us a cut sheet listing the various ways we could have our beef butchered and wrapped, and Greg, the butcher at the Taos Food Center, called me after the sides of beef had dry aged for 21 days, an optimal amount of time to age beef. As a point of comparison, supermarket beef is not aged, or it's wet aged, which doesn't contribute to the flavor of the beef. It costs money to have carcasses sitting around in the cooler, aging, and big beef factories are all about profits rather than flavor.

 From the cut sheet I ordered what we wanted, and Greg let me know right then if the combinations I asked for would work. For instance, I didn't order porterhouse or t-bone steaks because if I got those big steaks, there would be no New York strip or filets mignon, since they are the large and small parts of a porterhouse. To help me visualize what we would be getting, I printed out a diagram of a beef, just like in the cartoons when the farmer looks at his cow and sees the steaks and roasts superimposed on the cow's body. (Unlike the cartoons, a sharp knife and fork did not immediately appear in my hands and my eyes didn't bulge out in a gluttonous frenzy.)

Beef Shanks

So the shank is the steer's leg, cut crosswise, meat surrounding a round bone in each one inch slice. This is a tough cut of meat, since the steer walks on it all the time, but with slow, careful braising, beef shanks can be moist and flavorful. Low and and slow is the name of the game, and I am not talking about classic low rider cars, homies!

Suzanne Tucker / Shutterstock.com

 Last night was the second time I cooked this recipe, and it was perfect. I used this Emiril Lagasse recipe, Red Wine Braised Beef Shanks. Because my range doesn't have a low enough simmer, I used the oven at 250 degrees for 4 hours instead of simmering it on top of the stove. You might want to test at 3 hours since our elevation is 7200 feet so stuff has to cook longer.

I served the beef shanks on a puddle of polenta, using this recipe, Creamy Goat Cheese Polenta, from The Pioneer Woman's website.

The photo above is the first time I cooked polenta, and you can see how it spread on the plate. I should have cooked it a little longer to thicken. On the second attempt I added 5 minutes, with more lava bubbles (check out the photo below so you understand what I mean) and lots of galooping sounds as the bubbles burst. Cooking polenta, which is essentially a corn meal version of Cream of Wheat cereal or rice grits, is easy if you remember to slowly pour the cornmeal into the boiling water, whisking, whisking, whisking. If you pour it all in at once, it may be lumpy, and you want smooth.

The beef shanks recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of red wine. Don't use your expensive fancy stuff for this, but use an everyday dry red table wine, like 3 Buck Chuck, which we purchase by the case at Trader Joe's.

This is Three Buck Chuck, aka Charles Shaw. In California I think it's still Two Bucks.

Beef shanks requires some long, slow cooking, so I suggest it as a Sunday dinner when you have some time to futz around in the kitchen. All in all, the beef shanks recipe is amazing with just the right ratio of veggies, sauce and meat. The polenta is dreamycreamy and even good for breakfast the next day with a fried egg on top.

Enjoy, and have an excellent weekend! I have some sewing to do! Yay!

The Deaths of Two Buddies

ANIMALS ARE KILLED IN THIS BLOG POST. THERE ARE PHOTOS OF THE SLAUGHTERING AND BUTCHERING PROCESS. DON'T READ FURTHER IF THIS WILL UPSET YOU.

Last week two of The Angus Boys met their maker. We built a corral for their demise, and they walked right into its confines, waiting calmly.  They didn't know the end of their lives was about to happen, and that was fine with us.

But let me back up this story and tell you how this all came about: After reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Pollan's other book, In Defense of Food, I became more aware of what we were eating (ask Tom about my food lectures), and when we moved to this Northern New Mexico ranch, we decided to buy foods from as close to where we live as possible.

The Omnivore's Dilemma follows the food trails for four different meals. One food trail Pollan travels is the industrial food chain, based mainly on corn. His visit to a feedlot should be read by every meat-eater in order to understand where our industrialized meat comes from.

He contrasts this with a pastoral way of producing food, visiting small, local farms where animals are humanely raised and slaughtered. There, the consumers know their farmers.  Pollan calls it “relationship marketing,” in which customers' personal relationships with the farmer from whom they purchase their food will cause farmers to possess greater integrity and produce higher quality products.

 Enter The Angus Boys:

April 2011

 We bought our steers mainly to keep the grass on our property down, which would protect the house from wildfires. The break we received on the property tax (for grazing animals) was an added bonus. I considered the steers a mowing squad with benefits.

All along, though, I reminded myself that these steers would be meat someday. That didn't stop me from naming the first steers we bought: Mignon and Sir Loin. The Black Angus fellows came a few weeks later and were identified with ear tags, so they were called by their numbers.

Mignon and #31 were the personality kids: curious and friendly. They were the leaders of the Boys, and that's why we decided to kill them first. They got the axe first not to punish them, because to me, punishing them would be to put them in a truck and take them to an auction, after which they would probably end up at a feedlot eating corn (which cattle are not evolved to eat), getting a stomach ache, diarrhea and infected eyes and wondering what the heck they did to deserve such treatment. I wanted them to have a humane death. That sounds like an oxymoron, but read Pollan's book and you will understand what I mean.

So the Mobile Matanza truck came last week from Taos. It's run through a federal grant in cooperation with the Taos Economic Development Corporation. The Matanza Unit provides jobs for the butchers and inspectors and allows farmers to go direct to market, eliminating the middlemen and making small farming more profitable and more attractive to folks living in the area. Many ranchers out here are "land rich" and "cash poor, " so any way they can save on transportation and intermediary costs is a good thing for them.

On the left is Marlene, one of the butchers. Right: USDA Inspector Philip

The Mascot, who had a skinny figure even though he travels with a butcher shop

 Philip, the USDA inspector who travels with the unit, says there are sixteen mobile slaughter units operating in the United States. Nine of those are USDA-inspected. Throughout the entire process, the inspector watched and sometimes took notes. He monitored the outside temperature, checked the welfare of the cattle, watched to ensure that the killing was humane and monitored the cleanliness of the butchering.

His professional watchfulness over only two cattle made me realize that at a large meat facility, this kind of thoroughness probably doesn't happen. And that's why there are all those e-coli watchoutforthemeat! recalls.

The steers were waiting. Their buddies were hanging out, herd animals to the end.

They were shot using a .22 Magnum rifle and immediately went down. Mignon's legs twitched a little, but the inspector said that sometimes happened. He was brain-dead as soon as the bullet hit. Their jugular veins were cut and there was lots of blood. I didn't think you would like that part, so there are no photos. Chains were attached to the legs and the carcass was winched into the truck.

Now here's the part that surprised me: As soon as they were dead, I was not as sad for them. Their spirits had left their bodies, and from that point on, Mignon and Number 31 were just meat. When I die, I will leave the same way, and only my shell will be left.

A steer is in the truck now

Then the butchers went to work, removing the hooves, head, hide, and guts. Those they left at the ranch and we had to decide what to do with them. We took the cheeks off the heads to marinate for an upcoming dinner. Everything else was left for the coyotes, ravens, magpies and crows. And the vultures.

MBB and I took a look into the butchering process. MBB said, "Dexter." I heard the "Sweeney Todd" song over and over in my head.

The butchers carefully sawed the carcass in two and moved it into the refrigerated room just behind them. There it was cleaned with organic apple cider and will be transported to the cut and wrap facility in Taos. I have a "cut sheet" to order the steaks, roasts, and other stuff we want cut to order. We will keep a half beef and I've sold three quarters so far.

Marlene, one of the butchers, had me sign some paperwork when they arrived and asked me how I was doing. I confessed to being sad and she said that was normal. But she told me to keep this in mind: "These steers had a good life here," she said. "You saw to their welfare and took good care of them. Now they will be taking care of you."

Thanks, Mignon and Number 31.