There is an extraordinary nature to something that is one of a kind, and the allure to uniqueness is undeniable. There are certain qualities that can set our senses in motion unlike anything else and there may be no better way to engage all the senses than through food.
Harvesting food from soil is exactly that: the preservation of a moment. Vegetables that reflect a region, weather, the soil they thrived in; animals that roam freely, subsist on the flora around them, and contain traces of it all in their flesh. There is a beautiful realisation when one stops trying to replicate a flavour and so experiences authentic terroir - the taste of place - through food.
In the culinary world, uniqueness is a conundrum. The quest for consistency underpins success in every facet of Food and Agriculture. Industrialised meat is produced in a manner so that each carcase conforms and is processed exactly like the one that came before it. Variation, both in genetics and flavour, is the enemy to the bottom line of high volume meat processing. The struggle to shape nature for commercial expectations seeking year round consistency in availability and systems for producing meat and other produce is manifesting in disastrous ways when it comes to our physical and mental well-being. Food sustains us and if it cannot flourish neither will we. Industrial food systems are not nourishing regardless of how “much” food is produced.
The dramatic shifts in the food system toward automation volume and speed have transpired almost without notice to most of the masses. In meat tenderness has beat out flavour as the winning characteristic of a wonderful cut animals are being slaughtered at younger ages as carcass growth increases by unnatural forces through sub therapeutic antibiotics sadly animal confinement facilitates tenderness in meat but feedlots and grain based diets produce a diluted and considerably less dynamic flavour than can come from pasture based operations. These are the conditions that expedite industrial meat production and provide melting your mouth meats. Few people realise that the growing conditions that promote tenderness in meat or in complete opposition to those that produce flavour.
Flavour is produced during the animal's life i.e what it eats, how it was raised etc tenderness we can deal with during preparation. You can never reverse engineer flavour into a cut. Flavour comes from muscles that are active animals that roam, route, and forage for their food. Animals on pasture eat what's around them, and diversity of flavour comes from diversity in diet. Allowing animals to mature provides opportunities for more compounds to develop in their tissue, equating to a greater flavour profile on our plates. Suddenly you are tasting an expression of the environment that animal lived in.
Comments