Abercrombie & Feast

One of the nicest things about living in a big city like Sydney is having access to all kinds of stuff. Book stores full of foreign language books, bars where everything is made of ice, outdoor movie theatres, and butchers where all the meat is organic.

I grew up in a very small town. If we wanted stuff, we had to drive about 30 minutes away (and no amount of driving would get us to a bar made of ice). All of our meat came from the Piggly Wiggly. So, having a totally organic butcher just a 20 minute walk from our apartment feels like a luxury to me.

Last Sunday, was bright and sunny. We had brunch at an outdoor cafe near our place, then went for a long walk around our neighbourhood.

On the way home we popped into the lovely organic butchers to pick up some supplies for the evening. I didn’t want to go with a recipe already planned. I wanted to see what looked good and base our meal around that. Well, everything looked good! We decided on 2 veal cutlets for our Sunday night dinner.

Now, here’s the cool part. As the butcher was preparing the cutlets, I casually said to him, “How should I cook these?” And y’all… he knew exactly what to do. “Put these in a frying pan with a little bit of butter and olive oil. Cook them until they are brown on both sides and pink in the middle. Then take them out, deglaze the pan with some white wine, add some cream and some dijion mustard and reduce it to make your sauce. It will be great!”

And it was great! It was one of the nicest meals I’ve cooked in months. Restaurant quality. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. This man clearly knew just how to bring out the best qualities in his products.

And isn’t that exactly what we want from someone selling us something? We expect a car-salesman to know about the cars he’s selling, we expect the real estate agent to know about the house she’s selling. But if you asked a typical employee at a big grocery store a question about how you should prepare the meat that they sell, they probably couldn’t answer you. Call me crazy (and you know you want to) but I want the people who sell me my food to actually know something about food.

So there’s no recipe here. Instead, I encourage you to ask questions and get recommendations from the people who know the products. The answer could be very tasty!