Gastro-Art

There has been quite a bit about the combining of art and restaurants recently. In the spirit of New Years trend spotting we predict, and hope, that these experiments with dining and art continue with full force, especially here in NYC. It feels exciting to be on the forefront of these gastro-art endeavors, with our partner Flatbread Affair. We have been truly inspired by all of the different models of combining art making and food making.

One of the things that seemed to stir the most attention recently was Marina Abramovic (one of our heroes) and Creative Times partnering with the seasonally organized, and design heavy restaurant Park Avenue Winter. Abramovic worked alongside chef Kevin Lasko to create a dessert, Volcano Flambe, which is eaten accompanied by an MP3 player playing Abramovic;s voice guiding you through the sensual experience of eating dessert, other artist are following- including another favorite of ours- Janine Antoni. Artinfo has a good (and fuller) description.

Then there is the pop-restaurant What Happens When that Frank Bruni wrote about recently, which opens this week! We think this is a really fascinating model for creating a dining experience. We cant wait to go and see how it works. Also covered by the NYTimes recently was the trend in Berlin restaurant/gallery spaces. The descriptions of some of these places are amazing, especially Zagerus Projekt, pictured above. Maybe it is time to plan  a trip to Berlin, it sounds like an amazing city to be an artist.
There also seems to be a small resurgence of interest in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, one our biggest inspirations and hero. There is show at David Zwirner right now of his work that grew out the experimental art space 112 Greene St, which is reviewed in The New Yorker. Matta-Clark explored food and eating in various ways including at his artist run SoHo restaurant Food, which was located at 127 Prince, hence the name of the new online art journal where we were recently interviewed. FEAST Brooklyn comes to mind as another great example of projects inspired by Matta-Clark and Food. 
We hope that more places/projects like these develop in NYC. Where things like these have been happening in the West Coast and in Europe for sometime, it seems New York is on the cusp of embracing the gastro-art world, again.  We are as always especially excited to see what happen with Flatbread Affair as these ideas gain more currency here.

The New Year

It is mind-blowing that Sourced Material has only been around for half a year. We emerged out of this summer while Jake Levin sat anxiously surrounded by raw wool in a dirty metal shop at the MFA program at Bard College. Since then so much has happened. We have launched a gorgeous website developed and designed by Sourced Material co founder Silka Glanzman (along with diving head on into the world of social-media/web 2.0). We have exhibited Sourced Material: Wool at Bard and in Brooklyn at Flatbreadaffair, for their inaugural show. We have hosted several lamb-based feasts (with the help of Flatbreadaffair partner/chef Leah Rinaldi). Jake was interviewed about Sourced Material by Sierra Radio and by David Horvitz for 127Prince. We have successfully exchanged all of our wool products thanks to the overwhelmingly eager response from participants from all over the US. Jake apprenticed at Fleishers Meats for three months learning the craft of whole animal butchery from some master butchers. Now he and Sourced Material are ready to explore the whole animal! And now it is almost a new year.

Here are some of our thoughts, plans, and resolutions for the new year. We are definitely going to do some whole animal butchery demos/feasts this year! We are going to have a small show of all the objects made through the Wool exchange program. We want to explore making paper. KNIVES! We want to start looking into the possibilities of pop-up stores. We are always looking for new people to participate and explore with. We are interested in the idea of Sourced Material exploring a region rather than  a specific material- maybe the Southern Berkshire Hills. We are excited to see what surprises 2011 brings for us!
Mostly we want to wish you a happy New Years and thank everyone for supporting us!!!

Steer Slaughter

We attended our second slaughter this weekend. This time we came to witness a steer be slaughtered. It was less shockling to watch this time. For one I knew, more or less, what to expect. Als,o Hans Sebold (the one who did the killing and dressing and a master butcher) had us stand much further back when he shot it. It was also freezing out, so we were already uncomfortable and slightly distracted.

But there were some real differences in the process that had their own effect. One, maybe obviously, is that steer are much larger (1500 lbs vs 300 lbs.).  Another difference is that the steer must be skinned after it has bled out and before evisceration. Due to the large size- once the cow is shot in the brain, falls to the ground, and has bled out of the cuts made in its neck- the steer is propped up on its back (using large cement blocks) to start skinning process. Hans began removing the hide at the legs,  and then he slit the hide down the middle of the belly, from the hind-legs to the base of the skull. He then carefully removed the hide, in on large piece, by lightly cutting the layer of fat that connects the hide to the body. It is a surreal sight. There is little blood as it has led out and the heart is no longer pumping. Te hide is removed like a jacket. With confident movements Hans slowly had the hide removed fro the bottom half of the steer, and it was beginning to resemble what we see in the walk in of the shop.

It was, then, time to hang it from the gantry and remove the rest of the hide as well as the head, and guts. Hans removed the rest of the hide from the steers body and then removed its head. It was at this point that we were looking at beef and not a steer. Hans went on to split its gut open letting the them spill out on pasture below it. We still can not get used to how abstractly beautiful the guts are when they spill out. 

Hans cut the steer into manageable quarters (front and hind), so that they could hang for at least a week before being further broken-down into cook-friendly cuts and proportions. It was once again a profound experience and we are grateful for the opportunity to have participated in it.

For more photos click here:

steer slaughter

Pig to Pork

This weekend, thanks to Fleisher's, we had a profound experience. We participated in our first slaughter. There is no real way to prepare for such an event. So, we arrived- anxious and excited- on a perfect autumn day, at a gorgeous small family farm. After some coffee and muffins, we walked through an idyllic Hudson Valley pasture to get to the pig and to start the slaughter process.

Leading us through the process were the Smother Bros. of butchery- Joshua Applestone and Tom Schneller. As we stood at the edge of the pasture one couldn't help thinking- "this is how every slaughter should be conducted." The temperature was cool enough so that one didn't have to worry about spoilage, the sun was bathing us in warm light so no one was uncomfortable, and Tom (the one doing the acutall killing) stood there confidently (a twinge of apprehension on his face) talking us through the process, while Josh threw in jokes here and there, easing the tension we all held.

The first two steps were, one- to make sure the cauldron of water was hot enough to scald the hair of the animal but not hot enough to par-boil it. And, two-  to get the pulley and gantry ready- the metal bar from which the pig is lifted off the ground and hung upside down, making the bleeding-out and eviscerating easier and quicker. As the water reached the correct temperature we all walked over, apprehensively, to where the pig lazily lay. Tom walked over to it, .22 in hand, gave it some food, held the rifle to its forehead and pulled the trigger. Knocked out- the pig rolled over, and with precision Tom stuck his 5" blade into the jugular allowing the animal to bleed out as quickly as possible. The animal's unconscious body spasmed for a few minutes and then stopped. Four of us picked up the still warm body of the pig, put it in the pack of ATV and brought it over to the cauldron and tree where it would be scalded, hung and eviscerated.

 For us, that was the most intense moment. The actually killing was not as upsetting as we thought it might be. This was due to Tom's skill and poise as well, as the evidence that surrounded us attesting the wonderful life that this pig had led. But during the journey from the kill spot to the gantry we watched the pig go from being an animal to being a large piece of meat.

Once the pig had been scalded in the 150˚ f water  we all took turn scraping off the hair. Scraped clean, we raised the gantry, a metal bar which is hooked into the tendons in the pigs feet, and Tom eviscerated it. As he slit the underside of the belly steam poured out and the organs easily slipped into the bucket below. We saw evidence of how humade the kill was as the bladder of the pig was full (under stress the pig would have expelled it bowels).

The 300 lbs pig was now about 270 lbs of pork.

For more images go here:

Pig Slaughter

Consumer Edu.

Wednesday is one of our favorite days for the NYTimes because it has the Dining section. Our favorite food related article today was about celebrating the butcher and offal.  It was particulalry fun to read as Jake was breaking down and lamb and pig and working on some head cheese!

But the aricle that made us start talking was about  candy and a Samira Kawash, PhD aka the Candy Professor. Its not just that we love chocolate and candy corn, but it was the ways in which the article and  Kawash talk about the strange contradictions, misconceptions, dogmatic rule people have about food. Somehow somewhere we got it our mind that sugar is bad for us, especially children, and thus candy is bad. While it is true too much sugar is and for anyone, candy is not inherently bad.

What is even more interesting to us is that people will vehemently oppose candy for their children and then feed their children Tyson chicken, Gatorade, and Nature Valley Organic Granola bars with out blinking an eye. These things have as much if not more chemicals and sugars as most candies. People now are insisting more and more on organically labeled products, which is a good impulse. But few people really ask what that means, and whether it is what they think it is.

Contradictions in Meat

One of things that we have found ourselves thinking and talking about a lot recently is the relationship people have to meat (flesh). Because of the diverse crowd of consumers at Fleisher's we are exposed many different conceptions and receptions of meat. People want, expect, or believe strange and often contradictory things in terms of the meat products they consume.

Here are just some of the things we have seen:
-People think they want 100% grass-fed meat but they would be outraged at the idea of buying an animal that has been frozen four eight-months. 100% grass-fed animals have a three month period when those animals are ready to slaughter, right after summer, when they have been eating fresh grass all day and gaining wight. The animals eat hay, which has no real nutritional value, all winter and don't put on weight, which means the meat wont be as good. If you want to have grass-fed meat all year long that means the animals must be slaughtered Sept, Oct, and Nov, and be frozen for the year.
-People want to buy high-quality meat- full of flavor, fresh, and tender. But people are freaked out by the fleshiness of meat and cook it till there is no remnants of life, and thus no flavor. Than they are angry that they paid good money for what they think is bad quality meat.
-People want pasture-raised meat, but they expect to see heavy marbling. The kind of marbling we are used to seeing comes from inactive muscles, the result of a penned in animal in factory farming.
-People want to buy sustainably but they expect that every cut of meat should be available to them at all of times. Nose-to-tail butchering is sustainable butchering. It means no parts are wasted, what can't be sold as a cut of meat (for whatever reason) is in to sausage or dog food. It also means that every animal you breakdown that week must sold that week, meat does not ahve a long shelf life. Yet, every animal only has so much of each cut (you must choose between your tenderloins and porterhouses and there is only one skirt per steer).

NYTimes Magazine Food Issue(s)

There is a great article, by Christine Muhlke, in this last Sunday's NYTimes Magazine (the annual food issue), titled "Growing Together". The article is all about the way in which food and the current food movement in particular have created different kinds of communities, it is also very honest about the limits of those communities. Everyone should read it, really, it is worth reading the whole issue. Rob Walker describes 'kitchen incubators' in his column 'Consumed'. Michael Pollan, a hero of ours, has a great piece about a 36 hour local food party, we wish we could have been there. Pollan describes the building, the use of, and the symbolic meaning of the communal hearth, an idea that we think and talk about a lot (probably a future SM project). Another short little piece of interest is 'The Cow-munity' about a community of people who buy shares in a pasture raised local steer. It is an example of a good option for those who don't have a Fleisher's nearby, and also of how food can create unusual communities.  Also read Pie + Design = Change an article about food, community, art and social intervention!!! It describes a design collective, very much like us, called Project M, we look forward to learning more about them. Finally, is the the west coast that much cooler than us? Certainly the Bay Area seems to be a few steps ahead of us North Easterners: Food Groups.

Many Meats

The first week of training at Fleisher's Grass-fed and Organic Meats is over. The week really flew by. Fleishers is a unique place for a lot of reasons: the personalities that work there and shop there, the love of food (meat in particular) and the dedication to sustainability. There is a lot to talk about and a lot more time (at least 7 more weeks) to experience and learn new tings.

Obviously, when in a butcher shop that has distinguished itself by its dedication to both sustainability and high quality, it brings lots of different kinds of consumers. Customers come to Fleisher's because it is the best butcher-shop in the area, both in quality of meat and also range in product. Some come because of its cult status in the food world. Some come because of its distinctive and marked political position. Some come and buy that rare and luxurious dry aged porterhouse as a celebration, others come on an almost daily basis and buy hamburger meat or chicken wings. Hipsters, bubbies, New Yorkers, Hedge-funders, Woodstockers who never left, and locals all shop here (as well as many of the most trendy restaurants in NYC). All of this is remarkable, the diversity of consumers and there needs are astounding. This diversity is due to Josh and Jess's commitment to high quality product, sustainability, health, and local economy. It is rare to see all this balanced and the success of that balance is what opens itself up to such a wide range of consumers.

Last Night's Dinner

Last night was the Sourced Material: Wool Artist's Fete at flatbreadaffair. The dinner was amazing. All of the food was prepared by flatbreadaffair's chef Leah Rinaldi (except for the lamb's neck which was braised for 10 hrs by Sourced Material chef Jake Levin). Leah combined raw food techniques, traditional North-east American recipes, and haute cuisine, to turn all locally sourced food products into a gorgeous and delicious 8-course meal.

The conversation was rich and exciting- touching on topics like: farming, urban gardening, the relationship between curator and artist, the local artist community and of course food. It was a wonderful salon atmosphere and we can't imagine it having gone any better. We were particularly excited to have the artist Anne Lise Jensen there. We instantly hit it off. She told us about her practice and the difficulties she has experience doing social intervention art here in NYC (as opposed to the West Coast or Europe). Again we want to thank flatbreadaffair for an amazing job and for all of there support and of course we want to thank all of you who came to eat and talk with us!

Bread!

We don't know if we have ever had as much and many different kinds of bread as we have in Sweden. The organic farmer we are staying with, Frans Brozén, grows dinkel (old wheat or spelt). Dinkel (seen above) is used for various things here- from ground flour for cakes and bread, to whole grains for hearty dishes made with ground-meat and cabbage. They use rye flour for knäckebrod, buckwheat for gallete, and on and on. Right now Silka is getting a demonstration in traditional Swedish baking from Gunilla, Frans' wife.

Jake's parents always joke that when they first moved up to New Marlborough, you could only get sliced white bread. Now, because the Bekrhsires is such a local-food rich place, there are an amazing variety of breads to chose from, like Richard Bourdon's (who you can see pouring flour above) Berkshire Mountain Bakery. But in most places there no such choices. This morning in the NYTimes there was another exciting local-food article- this one about bread baking and grains- titled Their Daily Bread Is a Local Call Away

In the News

There have been quite a few exciting articles in the NYTimes recently that we wanted to share with you. One article is about Jake Levin's home community, the Berkshires, and the array of local food producers there. Many of his friends and colleagues are mentioned, like our good friend Susan Selew, seen below!


On another food note, we enjoy all of the great food trucks that exist in NYC and often fantasize about what our food truck would be like. There was an article the other day about a new and exciting food truck that made us excited and jealous, but mostly just hungry.

A little over a month ago there was an article about the designer Peter Buchanan-Smith and his company Best Made Company that caught my attention. While we think the idea behind the product is wonderful (hand crafted and locally sourced), it raised a lot of interesting questions. The price and marketing of the product ruled out most people who would every really use an axe on a regular basis. We also couldn't help but wonder, who are the people making the axe heads- it was all very vague in the article.

Related to both issues of food and pricing issues was an article about 'artisanal' ice cream.

Finally, there is an article about design, crafts, and the rural. It mentions some really interesting artists and designers, raises some great questions, and describes a book, "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennet, which has been important to our thinking.