Many Portland Meat Collective Students have requested that I post a link to the latest article I wrote: An essay about the time I spent in France learning how to butcher.
Here it is: http://edibleportland.com/content/currentissue/
(You have to flip through the pages until you get to page 40.
Also, by request, a link to the story I wrote about Levi Cole, one of Portland Meat Collective’s instructors, who butchers his own pig every year for his birthday: http://www.oregonlive.com/mix/index.ssf/food-trends/locavore-learns-to-slaughter-and-butcher-his-own-p.html
-Camas
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I’ve been excited to hear about other people–pastry chefs, chicken farmers, veal producers and others–who are starting to think about incorporating a CSA-style model into their businesses. I just received this announcement today and hope to go visit the farm and see if it might not be a good source of live chickens for the Portland Meat Collective’s chicken slaughter and butchery classes. If not, it’ll be a great way to get freshly-slaughtered chickens to eat. I haven’t tasted the chickens yet, so can’t vouch for their quality, but I like to think that they’ll be good. And I definitely think this model is a good one.
Wobbly Cart Farming Collective Pastured Poultry
We grow a small flock of slow growing (not Cornish Cross) broiler chickens. They are the Freedom Ranger broiler breed. They come from the same genetic stock as the heritage chicken breeds grown in France for the Label Rouge free range program.
Our chickens are pasture raised. They forage on green grass, dandelions, clover and bugs in the sunshine on the edge of our vegetable fields. We feed them certified organic feed from a small, family-owned mill in British Columbia. They are fed no GMO feed.
Our chickens are brooded, pastured and slaughtered on the farm. We use low stress and humane slaughtering methods. Our priorities are to ensure the highest animal welfare for our birds and provide you with a high quality, healthy, alternative to factory farmed meat.
Whole chickens available for $4/lb, averaging 4 lbs.
Our chicken is available for our customers the same day as slaughter to ensure quality and freshness. Pick up on the farm between 4-6pm on September 18th.
(Delivery to Portland can be arranged on Sept 18th or 19th)
Contact me if you’d like to place an order. Please pass this email along to anyone you think would be interested.
Thanks,
Liza
EMAIL: liza.judge@gmail.com
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(PHOTO BY JOHN VALLS)
In April, my French butchery mentor Dominique Chapolard arrived in Portland, armed with a lifetime of butchery and charcuterie knowledge to share. I’d convinced him to come during the International Association of Culinary Professionals so that he could bring French seam butchery to an American crowd. On April 24 Dominique, Adam Sappington (chef and owner of Country
Cat, and PMC instructor), Kate Hill (owner of the Gascon Kitchen who originally introduced me to Dominique), Michael Ruhlman (co -author of Charcuterie ) and I put on a three hour butchery and charcuterie demonstration for a crowd of 40 IACP attendees.
Here’s what Michael Ruhlman had to say about it on his blog: “Three hours of intense interaction with people who truly care about this world, the earth and the animals, who care about cooking, about serving people, who do it the hard way, the long way, these grounded, wonderful, big, big souls. When I walked out of there, I felt as if I’d come out of a world that was impossibly good, could-never-happen good, and yet there they had
been, cutting up that miracle creature raised by a farmer who sat three chairs in. . . I swear to god, I wanted to collapse right there at NW 8th and Burnside and weep.”
(PHOTO BY TRAY SATTERFIELD)
Scott Givot, immediate past president of the IACP later wrote to my PMC associate Tray Satterfield, who had helped us organize a French and American charcuterie tasting at the end of the workshop: “The experience literally brought tears to my eyes. I never wanted it to end.”
One woman in the audience even told us that the workshop was the best Saturday of her life, aside from the Saturday she gave birth to her first child.
Really? I thought. Really? After all, butchery is butchery, right? What’s the big deal? Are Americans really that sentimental and nostalgic? Are we really that hungry for the raw and the real? But I’m learning that there is something to this butchery thing, at least in this particular moment, and in this particular place, with the particular people who choose to take part in it. And it’s definitely not all just about the bacon.
A lot of our students tell us that they haven’t stopped talking about the class they took. There’s something they’ve just taken part in that seems intrinsically worth describing to someone else. And so what is that something? I think it’s a couple of things.
It’s the fact that they just attempted to cut apart a whole pig, not alone, but with their friends and neighbors, with farmers and chefs, and single moms, and bike messengers, and lawyers, and politicians, and students—a true community experience that’s quite rare these days.
It’s also that, for most people taking our classes, this is the very first time they’ve done this. The experience runs extraordinary to their daily lives. And while none of us become masters overnight, there’s a process of “demystification,” as one of my students recently said, that transforms this normally opaque, mysterious, and utterly removed portion of our food system, into something utterly accessible. I’m reminded of a phrase that Joel Salatin, the American farmer, lecturer, and author who is so vocal in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. Salatin calls what he’s trying to create a “relational economy.” I like to think that it’s that very relationality both with our food and our community that makes the PMC classes worth it for all of us involved.
Which is why I’m excited to announce the PMC’s summer class schedule and to give you some hints about what’s in store later this fall. We’re continuing our basic pig butchery courses this summer, and we’ll also be offering a couple of chicken slaughtering and butchering courses, in addition to a sausage-making course. While Adam Sappington, Tray Satterfield, Levi Cole and I will continue to organize and teach most of the
classes, we’ll also have a couple of special guest teachers: Bob Dickson, who headed up the Clark Meat Science Center at Oregon State University for 25 years before taking over day-to-day operations at Dayton Natural Meats, which, so far, has served as the main slaughterhouse for the pigs we use in our classes; and
Gabriel Claycamp, owner of Swinery Meats, a truly sustainablewhole animal butchery shop in Seattle. We’re very excited for both of them to bring their set of skills to the table.
We’ve been lucky enough to sell out just about all of our classes, which means sign up sooner rather than later if you want to avoid the waiting list game!
As for things we’ll be announcing down the road: think communal pig kills on the farm, think a class series in which you can focus on learning all the ways to cut up, cook and cure just one portion of the animal, think lamb, beef, and goat. We’ll keep you all posted!
-Camas Davis, Portland Meat Collective
UPCOMING PMC CLASSES
June 12, July 10, or August 21, 2010
Basic Pig Butchery
TIME: 1pm-5pm
LOCATION: TBA
Learn the lost art of home butchery from Adam Sappington, owner of
Country Cat Dinnerhouse and Bar, Portland Meat Collective’s
Camas Davis and Pastaworks butcher Tray Satterfield. Learn how
to split two sides of pork into primals, and how to cut those
primals into cookable cuts like ribs, tenderloins, ham roasts
and shoulder roasts. The class will also include tips on how to
cook various cuts, and everyone will go home with their share of
meat.
COST: $225
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
June 26, 2010
Basic Pig Butchery with Bob Dickson
TIME: 1pm-5pm
LOCATION: TBA
Bob Dickson is a seasoned animal scientist and meat expert who
taught at the Clark Meat Science Center at Oregon State University
for 25 years before taking over day-to-day operations at Dayton Natural
Meats, the PMC’s favored slaughterhouse and processing facility in Dayton,
Oregon. He’s also been a great mentor to PMC instructor and
Pastaworks butcher Tray Satterfield as well as a helpful advisor
to Camas Davis. Bob brings detailed retail, industrial, and home
butchery expertise to the table and teaches students how to
think about an animal from multiple perspectives. Not only will
students learn how to split two sides of pork into primals, and
how to cut those primals into cookable cuts like ribs,
tenderloins, ham roasts and shoulder roasts, they’ll learn
unique techniques and industry secrets, and they’ll be able to
discuss the current system of meat production and processing in
America with someone who is still shaping that system today.
Students will go home with their share of meat at the end of the
class.
COST: $225
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
August 28, 2010
Basic Pig Butchering for Home Charcuterie
TIME: 1am-5pm
LOCATION: TBA
When PMC instructor and Pastaworks butcher Tray Satterfield met
Gabriel Claycamp, owner of Swinery Meats in Seattle this May, she
was just a tad excited. Previous owner of the renegade Culinary
Communion cooking school in Seattle, Claycamp is dedicated to solely
practicing whole animal butchery in his butcher shop–a rarity
in America. Not to mention he makes a mean prosciutto, among
other fleshy delicacies. When Tray told him about our classes,
explaining that we provided both a restaurant and a retail
perspective when it came to butchery, he reminded her there was
a third way to butcher a pig: the charcuterie method. We were
exhilerated when he agreed to teach a class incorporating that
method this August. For those of you who are interested in
making your own pancetta and coppa, salami and prosciutto, this
is the class for you. Gabriel will teach you how to cut up a pig
so that you can utilize all the muscle groups to produce just
about any cured pork specialty you can imagine. Students will go
home with their share of meat and lots of salting and brining
recipes to help them along their way.
COST: $225
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
June 24 or July 8, 2010
Real Coq au Vin
TIME: 5pm-9pm
LOCATION: TBA
In this course, each student will learn how
to kill their own rooster, and how to butcher it in preparation
for making coq au vin. Once they have acquired these skills,
they’ll learn how to cook coq au vin using this kind of rooster
versus the more conventional organic chickens that are sold at
retail butchers around town. At end of the course, the class
will sit down to a meal of good red wine, coq au vin, and other
homemade French treats. *Portland Meat Collective Instructors:
Levi Cole and Camas Davis*
COST: $75
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
August 5, 2010
Sausage Making
TIME: 5pm-9pm
LOCATION: TBA
Learn the art of preparing merguez and chorizo,
florentines and weisswurst. Pastaworks butcher Tray Satterfield
and self-taught butcher and charcuterie master Levi Cole teach
students how to make their own sausage: from selecting the right
meat and trimming the appropriate muscle groups, to grinding,
flavoring, and stuffing their sausage of choice. Students will
go home with more than enough links for their end-of-summer
barbecues.
COST: $100
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
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SPRING 2010
A little over a month ago, the PMC offered its first
Basic Pig Butchery class to a sold-out audience. And this past
Saturday, the PMC threw it’s first Real Coq Au Vin workshop,
which entailed 10 students each learning to kill and butcher
their own rooster or hen. It also entailed a delicious pot of
coq au vin, homemade charcuterie, butter lettuce salad with
green goddess dressing, and several bottles of wine. In the next
two months the PMC will be offering five more classes, with the
possibility of a few extra ones thrown in (demand for another
rooster class is so high that we’ll likely organize another one
or two). We’ll be holding these classes in a variety of
community settings from restaurants to cooking schools, urban
farm, art galleries and music studios. I hope to see you all
there. Sign up fast. The French Butchery class sold out in 24
hours!
April 10, 2010
Basic Pig Butchery
TIME: 1pm-5pm
LOCATION: Robert Reynolds Chef Studio
Learn the lost artof home butchery from Adam Sappington, owner of
Country Cat Dinnerhouse and Bar, who will be assisted by the
Portland Meat Collective’s Camas Davis and Pastaworks butcher,
Tray Satterfield. Learn how to split two sides of pork into
primals, and how to cut those primals into cookable cuts like
ribs, tenderloins, ham roasts and shoulder roasts. The class
will also include tips on how to cook various cuts, and
everyone will go home with their share of meat.
COST: $200
CLASS SIZE:Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
April 24, 2010
Easy Home Curing
TIME: 2pm-5pm
LOCATION: Zenger Farm
Learn how to make your own pancetta and corned beef. Students
will find out which cuts of meat are bestto use for each curing
process, where to source such cuts, which spices and smoking
techniques to use, how dry versus wet curing works, and how to
ensure your cured meat comes out tasting good. Each student will
go home with a sizeable portion of tied and spiced pancetta that’s
ready to be aged at home. They will also go home with their own
cured beef, which will need to be aged in their refrigerator for
a few weeks before its final preparation. The class will end
with a meal of corned beef and cabbage,
pancetta-spiked salad, and good wine.
COST: $75
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: www.zengerfarm.com
April 25, 2010
French Pig
TIME: 10am-2pm
LOCATION: Robert Reynolds Chef Studio
On a small farm in southwest France, Dominique Chapolard and his
three brothers grow their own grain to feed their own pigs, eight
to ten of which they prepare every week for five local markets.
At market, they sell their fresh French cuts, like roti, cotelettes,
and longe, along with their housemade charcuterie like saucisson
sec, jambon, and fromage de tete. Together with the Chapolard family,
Kate Hill, culinary teacher and owner of the Gascon Kitchen, a cooking
school located just a short drive away from the Chapolard farm,
offers butchery apprenticeships and other learning programs in
France. In April, Kate and Dominique will travel to the United
States to share their cooking and butchery knowledge. While in
Portland, they’ll join forces with meat CSA and traveling
butchery school, the Portland Meat Collective—Camas Davis, PMC’s
founder, learned butchery from the Chapolards last summer—to
offer a one-day, hands-on master class. In this workshop,
Dominique teaches students how to transform a pig into premium
French cuts, using seam butchery, a traditional European method
of breaking down animals according to their muscle seams, as
opposed to cutting through muscle as is often done in many
American butchery shops. As Dominique guides the students, Kate
teaches them how to transform basic cuts into traditional French
recipes. The class will finish with a charcuterie tasting and
discussion of full-circle farming methods in France, and
students will go home with meat they have butchered themselves.
COST: $250
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: http://frenchpig.eventbrite.com
WORKSHOP FULL!
May 15, 2010
Basic Pig Butchery
TIME: 1pm-5pm
LOCATION: International
Culinary School, Art Institute of Portland
Learn the lost art of home butchery from Adam Sappington,
owner of Country Cat Dinnerhouse and Bar, assisted by the
Portland Meat Collective’s Camas Davis and Pastaworks butcher,
Tray Satterfield. Learn how to split two sides of pork into
primals, and how to cut those primals into cookable cuts like
ribs, tenderloins, ham roasts and shoulder roasts. The class
will also include tips on how to cook various cuts, and everyone
will go home with their share of meat.
COST: $200
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
May 29, 2010
Basic Pig Butchery
TIME: 1pm-5pm
LOCATION: Park Kitchen
Learn the lost art of home butchery from David Padberg, chef de
cuisine at Park Kitchen restaurant, assisted by the Portland Meat
Collective’s Camas Davis and Pastaworks butcher, Tray Satterfield.
Learn how to split two sides of pork into primals, and how to
cut those primals into cookable cuts like ribs, tenderloins, ham
roasts and shoulderroasts. The class will also include tips on how
to cook various cuts, and everyone will go home with their share
of meat.
COST: $200
CLASS SIZE: Limited to 10 people
REGISTRATION: info@pdxmeat.com
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Last week, Leslie Cole’s story about the PMC, and also about the Ethical Butcher, came out in the Oregonian’s Food Day section. The story brought a lot of attention to PMC, and I’m impressed by the amount of people who have contacted me for more information, to take butchery classes, or two take part in the meat csa. I’ve had a few minor personal set backs in the past few weeks that have found me a little behind with PMC progress, but things should still be launching in the spring, including the website, which will be an integral part of the PMC, as it will be where members go to check out farms, sign up for CSAs and butchery classes, and to get more information about butchery, custom-exempt laws, meat quality, and more.
In addition, a story that I wrote for the Oregonian’s food and drink magazine, MIX, came out. I wrote this story about a good friend of mine, Levi Cole, who kills and grows most of his own food. He kills a pig or two each fall and the story traces that process. As it turns out, I’ve recruited Levi Cole to be a part of the PMC in the form of teacher, among other roles.
Meanwhile I have scheduled three trial PMC classes at Zenger Farm. They are as follows:
Basic Butchery with the Portland Meat Collective
Saturday, February 20th, 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Cost: $200
Learn the lost art of home butchery from the one of Portland Meat Collective’s butchery experts. Learn how to split two sides of pork into primals, and how to cut those primals into cookable cuts like ribs, tenderloins, ham roasts and shoulder roasts. The class will also include tips on how to cook various cuts, and everyone will go home with $100 worth of meat! Portland Meat Collective Instructors: Adam Sappington and Camas Davis
Real Coq au Vin (Chicken slaughter and butchering)
March 27th 2:00 – 6:00pm
Cost: $75
In this course, each student will learn how to kill their own rooster, and how to butcher it in preparation for making coq au vin. Once they have acquired these skills, they’ll learn how to cook coq au vin using this kind of rooster versus the more conventional organic chickens that are sold at retail butchers around town. At end of the course, the class will sit down to a meal of good red wine, coq au vin, and other homemade French treats. *Portland Meat Collective Instructors: Levi Cole and Camas Davis*
Portland Meat Collective’s Easy Home Curing
April 24th: 2:00 – 6:00pm
Cost: $75
Learn how to make your own pancetta and corned beef. Students will learn which cuts of meat are best to use for each curing process, where to find such cuts, which spices and smoking techniques to use, how dry versus wet curing works, and how to ensure you cured meat comes out tasting good. Each student will go home with a sizable portion of tied and spiced pancetta that’s ready to be aged at home. They will also go home with their own cured corned beef, which will need to be aged in their refrigerator for a few weeks before its final preparation. The class will end with a meal of corned beef and cabbage, pancetta-spiked salad, and good wine. * Portland Meat Collective Instructors: Levi Cole and Camas Davis*
To register for any of these classes, visit the Zenger Farm website.
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The “Eating Animals” Panel that was supposed to occur tomorrow night, has been postponed. It will now occur February 11, 2010. 7pm. Smith Student Union, PSU. Room TBA,
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Attention to all you philisophically-minded carnivores: I’ve been asked to take part in a panel discussion at Portland State University’s Portland Center for Humanities. The theme of the discussion will be “Eating Animals” and I’ll be joined by Kathy Hessler, from the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis and Clark, and Ramona Ilea, a professor of philosophy at Pacific University. We’ll each speak for 15 minutes or so, and then open up the room for discussion and questions. I think it should prove to be a lively event. I plan on bringing in a little of the literary, a little something philosophical, a little something anthropological, as well as my thoughts on how the system of meat production could potentially be transformed by small groups of local, ethical carnivores. No live butchery this time, but the conversation is an important one, and I’m honored to be a part of it.
Date: January 21
Time: 7 pm
Place: Room 298, Smith Memorial Union, Portland State University
Info: If you click on the link I have provided, scroll down a little bit, and click on the image that goes with the “Eating Animals” event.
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Today, yet another story in the local media about the Portland Meat Collective and the Livestock event, which debuts tonight to a sold-out crowd. I’m a little embarrassed that I used the words “hot shit” in my interview. You’d think I’d know, being a journalist and all, that when I say stuff like that it will get quoted. Right.
Check it out:
“Ethical Butchers Do It Better” in the Willamette Week
Also, the PMC website is now under construction, so there isn’t much on it yet, but anyone who wishes to check it out, or sign up for more information can go there: www.pdxmeat.com
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Photo by Malia Wollan, author of "Migration, on Ice: How globalization kills chickens for their parts," in the fourth issue of Meatpaper.
I’m a big fan of Meatpaper, a print magazine dedicated to art and ideas about meat. After a couple of days spent being whooped by some sort of cold-like-flu-like writhing on the couch, sipping broth, and watching bad movies, I figured I should turn my thoughts back to the Portland Meat Collective website and the words I wanted to use to describe the entire endeavor on the site. In a meandering search for relevant words and phrases that might inspire me, I came across this article in an old Meatpaper issue: “Migration, on Ice
How globalization kills chickens for their parts” by Malia Wollan. The story is about “leg quarter countries” versus “whole chicken countries,” some of which is determined by a culture’s taste preferences and cooking traditions, but much of which is determined in large part by economic preferences. Major poultry producers in America–like Tyson–have managed to find a way to get rid of the darker meat that consumers in western European countries and the United States tend not to want by selling the “other” parts to places like Ghana, Cuba, and Iraq. Getting protein to countries in need seems to be the party line of Tyson, but their global dark meat marketing scheme is putting local producers–you know the people raising chickens in the same town that Tyson is importing to–out of business all together. Wollan writes that inside the meat shops she visited in Ghana, Tyson leg quarters, per pound, were being sold for approximately one-sixth the price of Ghana-grown chicken.
“In a country where more than 30 percent of the population lives in poverty,” writes Wollan, “cheap protein is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it provides affordable nutrition. On the other, it eliminates livelihoods.”
Some choice pullquotes:
“A woman eating a salad at a Wendy’s in Maine could be ingesting the breast of the same chicken whose gizzard flavors a chicken stew in Togo and whose thigh is served with borscht in Moscow and whose excess fat will soon go to a ConocoPhillips refinery in Texas to make synthetic diesel fuel.”
“Globalization and the rising demand for animal protein have turned the chicken into the world’s most mobile and abundant migratory bird. This modern migration isn’t one of whole birds, but rather of dismembered parts — wings in one direction, breasts in another.”
“In America, poultry farmers get corn and soybeans for below the cost of production. Here, humans are competing with chickens for corn. How can Ghana possibly compete?”
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An impressive number of people have contacted me wanting to get on the Portland Meat Collective mailing list. For those of you who aren’t on the list, email me at info@pdxmeat.com. Several chefs and butchers have expressed interest in helping to teach classes, including Adam Sappington of Country Cat, Morgan Brownlow and Aaron Silverman of Tails & Trotters, David Padberg of Park Kitchen, and Jason Barwikowski and Elias Cairo of the soon to be opened charcuterie house and restaurant Olympic Provisions.
The local and national media has also expressed a lot of interest in the Portland Meat Collective. Check out Patrick Coleman’s article about Livestock, which also includes information about the PMC. I’ll let ya’ll in on other articles as they are published!
ABOUT PORTLAND MEAT COLLECTIVE
The Portland Meat Collective brings local meat to local people. It’s a network of Portland citizens who want a cost-effective way to buy meat directly from Oregon’s small ranchers. While PMC is modeled after traditional meat CSAs that are popping up around the country, it is also an up-close-and-personal traveling butchery school. Once PMC procures that whole cow, pig, or lamb, members can take part in master butchery and charcuterie classes with Portland meat masters. They’ll get to decide how they want their animal carved up. They’ll wield knives and bags of curing salts. And they’ll learn what to do with all those specialty cuts once they’re at home in the kitchen. PMC brings a dynamic, local, sustainable approach to buying and eating meat straight to the people.
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