June 12th in Food
Today is National Beef Jerky Day.
You may use it for a protein boost hiking or camping, or you may give it as a gift, or you may just like to snack on it yourself. Beef jerky is part of the wider dried snack universe called jerky, which is any type of meat cured with salt and dried until there is less than 50% moisture in it. Definitely not just for cowboys anymore, jerky is kind of a hip food.There are plenty of online places to just order it, and even some specialty jerky outlets locally, but if you are looking for the really good homemade, or" house made" stuff, we have a good one that's pretty cheap, and a gourmet version that is not.
Cochon Butcher in the Warehouse District has an enormous selection of house made specialty meats for purchase by the pound. On that list is beef jerky, at $28/lb, and duck jerky, at $32. A little more mainstream, try Chris's Specialty Meats on West End at Harrison. Theirs is $5.99/lb.
Also today, we celebrate Seafood Au Gratin.
The crabmeat is big and fat right now, and that means this is the time of year to eat the rich casserole of crabmeat, cream, a small amount of cheese, garlic, (if you're lucky), cayenne, and a sprinkling of breadcrumbs on top - baked till bubbly.
We see more crabmeat au gratin these days, mainly because of the availability of cheaper pasteurized crabmeat.Used to be that you could get the essential jumbo lump crabmeat only this time of year; now it comes from all over. It's sad that you can sometimes see this in even some of the most expensive restaurants in town. So it's a mixed blessing: we get less flavorful crabmeat, but we can get crabmeat au gratin all the time.
But in Crabmeat Au Gratin it makes less of a difference than in a cold crabmeat appetizer. The sauce is so rich that the fine points of the crabmeat's flavor are, if not lost, hidden. The best versions are at the Bon Ton, Galatoire's, Antoine's, and Vincent's. It doesn't have to be expensive: at Fury's, they give you a tub of white (not lump) crabmeat whose only flaw is that there's too much cheese. Ask them to leave off the two slices they melt on top.
