Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper
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Email this PostIn celebration of Foodbuzz’s offical launch – if you haven’t checked them out do so now and tell them the nourished kitchen sent you – I’m taking part in their global blogging event. The event, dubbed “24, 24, 24″ honors 24 food bloggers all across the globe posting about 24 meals within 24 hours. I’m delighted to participate in this event.
So … onto the food!
Criminal Chicken and Criminally Dressed Vegetables
The leaves are turning in Crested Butte and nothing heralds Autumn quite like Vinotok – a harvest festival that ends in eccentric and near-naked revelry around a bonfire. I could think of nothing more apt than first celebrating the festival with our own eccentric celebration of the autumnal harvest.
But, you see, this autumnal supper is special. Indeed, every dish I served to my guests harbored a criminal secret – illegal ingredients. Ludicrous as it sounds, many foods simply cannot be purchased in their simplest and most natural state. Farmers can’t sell their eggs without special licensing. Ranchers can raise their animals, assist in their birth, but can’t participate in their slaughter.
Fresh milk from healthy cows – unadulterated by pasteurization – cannot be purchased where I live. Some of the most beautiful cheeses produced by some of the most skillful artisans cannot be sold in the United States because they were made from fresh, raw milk and aged fewer than two months time. Many farmers cannot sell their eggs without first procuring license to do so from the state. Beyond that, an animal can live its entire life on a ranch but must then be transported to be slaughtered. Just ask Joel Salatin; everything he wants to do is illegal
Illegal Cheeses but Perfectly Legal Fruit
So for this special meal, and in celebration of our farmers who find ways to skirt the laws and still provide the public with such delicious and healthful options as raw milk or fresh eggs from unlicensed hens pecking surreptitiously on native grass, our menu includes these wonderful, delicious and criminal foods.
Beet Terrine Filling Featuring Raw Milk Goat Cheese
Tonight with friends and family, we joked about the FDA or the state Department of Health knocking at our door as we dined on the following menu:
- Beet and Chèvre Terrine featuring a homemade raw milk cheese aged only a few weeks.
- Fruit and Artisan Cheese Plate featuring illegaly, but deliciously, imported French raw milk cheeses and a homemade raw milk cheese.
- Simple Green Salad topped with with boiled eggs from those dangerously unlicensed hens I warned you about earlier (recipe here).
- Beef Consommé with Autumn Vegetables made featuring stock made from the bones of an animal slaughtered by the farmer on his own farm (recipe here).
- Roasted Chicken with Prosciutto & Herbs starring an unfortunate chicken who had been fortunate enough to live outside in grass and peck at grubs before being processed on the farm instead of a processing plant hundreds of miles from home (recipe here).
- Braised Fennel with Basil created with raw butter (recipe here).
- Honey-glazed Carrots also created with that pesky raw butter and illegal chicken bones (recipe here).
- Radishes Sauteed in Butter with Parsley featuring what else but that butter again (recipe here).
- Salt Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with raw butter (recipe here).
- Apple Clafoutis created with both raw cream and unlicensed eggs – yes, we’re getting really felonious now.
- Honeyed Panna Cotta with Fresh Berries made with delicious raw cream from grass-fed cows (recipe here).
- Fresh Raw Milk to drink.
- Homemade Hard Cider Oh yes. We like moonshine here, but only for the beneficial bacteria. I swear.
Criminally Delicious Panna Cotta
We enjoyed the meal–in all its skirting of the law–but it’s important to note that many people may view these laws as a way to ensure that the public limit exposure to potential pathogens. Yet, the laws favor industrial agriculture and interfere with both the small farmers’ ability to making farming economically viable and the consumers’ ability to make an informed choice.
Indeed, though I consistently choose to include these foods that skirt the law and bend health codes, they’ve never made me sick; rather, my health has improved with the inclusion of pasture-fed chicken, grass-fed meats and raw milk. Consider that spinach, tomatoes, lettuce, beef and a slew of other legal, industrial foods have made people across the US sick due to contamination with pathogens like e. coli and salmonella.
There is a great deal more accountability when you can look the person who produces your food straight in the eye. We should trust our farmers and ourselves without relying on the state to determine what we can and cannot enjoy.
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Great Post and fantastic food!
One of the oldest memories I have is going hand to hand with my grandmother walking through the fields to pick up our milk at the village farmer’s Masia (catalan country house). Mmmmmmm… the cows had been recently milked… no glass, cardboard, plastic recipients!
Núria’s last post: Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24. A Spanish Menu – My gift to the Winners of the Olympic Games..
Great post! This menu reminds me of going to countryside. You can still find all of this food regularly on the farmers markets here in Serbia (especially in small villages). Those eggs actually have yellow (not yellowish) yolk and the cheese and milk has taste!
Marija’s last post: Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Medieval Cuisine Of Serbia.
Congratulations on your post! I was exhausted at the end of mine but it was well worth it! I LOVE raw cheese – I must try making it myself one day and that raw butter sounds really good too. Great illegal feast!
Wow! What a meal you had there. I live in Greece, where most of what you describe as illegal is perfectly normal and I feel for you guys. I mean, who can live without unpasturised milk cheeses????
FoodJunkie’s last post: 24, 24, 24: Hot Weather Lunch.
How naughty – and delicious!
Haley W.’s last post: Yumbo Gumbo!.
Oooh how delicious!!! Yours is an inspiring (and deliciously dangerous!) entry.
Cakespy’s last post: Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: A Sweet Trompe l’oeil.
Great post! I love the originality of your theme
Cooking with the freshest ingredients (hard to attain it may be) sounds delightfully wicked! congrats!
How wonderful…I love this criminal illegality. Cmon…how much better can food taste…this is fabulous!! Thankfully we live in a country where half the stuff would still count as illegal…LOL! nothing to beat fresh cream, butter etc. WAY TO GO!! Congrats on being part of the 24!!
Deeba’s last post: Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: EAT LIKE A KING; FEAST FOR A MAHARAJA.
I love this concept! I’d be delighted to indulge in some raw cream and butter. Plus a few glasses of hard cider to round it out. Congrats on being chosen – great post!
Bravo! You pulled off your illegal affair with gusto and beauty! I’m jealous of your criminal supper – it’s so hard to find things like raw cheese or milk when you live on an island that does not produce it’s own milk (…though I think there must be someone here with a cow that might be willing to bend the rules…just need to get to know them well enough!)! Congratulations!!
michelle’s last post: Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: `Aha`aina – Recapturing the Global Flavors of the Luau.
Rock on my illegal friend! I must procure some of these ingredients myself.
colleen’s last post: Mega Local Dinner.
funny how several of us all went with panna cotta, and such interesting, different versions too. Congrats on your 24 post — I’m sure it was an enormous amount of work, but it looks like you had fun going criminally natural
Just looking at your photos is making me hungry!
Lando’s last post: Special Thanks to AsianWeek.
Your photo of the (garlic clove covered?) Beet and Chèvre Terrine is making me *extremely* hungry!
When we used to live in Upstate NY, we used to find some amazing local goat cheeses at the farmer’s market…good times!
good site fdislh
Great article! I just read “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal.” I am so glad that there are scofflaws like you out there. Keep up the delicious and dangerous work.
Thanks for all the positive feedback! It sure was a fun dinner to prepare.
Doug – those are actually pinenuts in the beet terrine, though I’m sure garlic would have been incredible too. Everything’s better with garlic.
OMG! I am truly inspired. I am from a rural area where, when I was a kid, family members had cows and chickens. In addition, my parents, grandparents, and great aunts and uncles had gardens and fruit trees and some family members hunted game and trapped turtles.
Nowadays, I live in a city, where all I have is my little backyard garden. I want to connect with some farmers out there in my area and see if I can cook something up with them!
Thanks for the beautiful, beautiful post!
Gumbeaux Gal
gumbeaux gal’s last post: Slaw with Pistachios and Hummus-Chive-Yogurt Dressing.
love it!!! wish I had access to all those raw unpasteurized foods too.
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