Happy Cows

I've toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian lately, mostly because in the past few years I've read mounds of literature on the practices of factory farming and how detrimental factory farmed animals are to our health. While I find it hard to give up meat entirely, I absolutely adore the idea of eating only locally and humanely-raised animals.

Luckily Massachusetts abounds with family run farms providing just that.

Farmers market season started about a month ago here in the Boston area. I came across the Kendall Square market one Wednesday in late May and picked up a few pounds of grass-fed beef short ribs from Springdell Farms. The family farm in Littelton's  "Happy Cows Come From Littleton" sign was a major selling point.

After being on multiple vacations for a few weeks, Adam and I got a chance to make them last week.

Our Sunday dinner also coincided with our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share of the season from Red Fire Farm, so we went uber local.

We started out with scape pesto on flatbread. Scapes, which are the stalk part of a garlic bulb, are all over the place. They're only available for about a month in the early summer season. Pesto seemed like the best bet. Most scape pesto recipes advise a strait scape, oil, parmesan and nut mixture, but we through in a ton of basil because garlic scapes are strong. Even with basil I still tasted garlic for the next 24 hours.

As a side dish to our main course we used one of the unique items in our CSA share, Kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is a cross between a turnip and a cabbage, and it's sweet, crunchy and delicious. We sliced the sucker up into julienne sized sticks, mixed it with apples cut the same way, and tossed the sticks with a dressing made of yogurt, mustard and seasoning.

Once considered a second-class cut of beef, short ribs are experiencing quite a rise in popularity.  It seems that they are on every menu from pubs to upscale French bistros.  Even though we used the commonplace braising technique that makes the meat so tender and allows the high fat content and bone to make a rich, flavorful sauce, we used some out of place ingredients to make it unique.

The marinade consisted of freshly brewed coffee, honey, tomato paste and oregano (also from the CSA).  Just dipping a finger in and I knew we had a winner.  After browning the meat and deglazing with the marinade, we topped up the pot with beef stock, some chipotle peppers with adobo, then cooked it slow and low for a few hours.  The combination of earthy coffee, rich beef flavor and a spicy tomato kick worked awesome.  Each bite of the short rib was unbelievably juicy because of all the marbling throughout the meat (see above).    

Eating local has never looked and tasted this good.......

- A + K