Curtis Meats

Charred and Scruffed Menu: High Time for Grilling Beef, With New Potatoes Baby Chard and Strawberries

June 14, 2017 / / Uncategorized

Finally, it’s high grilling season as the summer bounty trickles in to markets after our prolonged wet and chilly spring.  I was in the Mid-Coast yesterday for a day trip and my first stop was Beth’s Farm Market where early strawberries were on magnificent display as well as the farm’s just-dug crop of new potatoes—the red variety, small, velvety and sweet. We probably won’t see those two crops in Portland until July 4th weekend.

Beth’s market in Warren with early strawberries and new potatoes are plentiful now

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Spring Interrupted: garlicky winter pork chops on a Snowy Spring Eve

April 27, 2016 / / Mains, Recipes

Had the weather been more seasonally spring like rather than my barbecue station being covered with a few inches of snow I would have grilled these two beautiful pork chops for dinner. That, at least, was the plan several days ago when I took the chops out of the freezer to defrost and put in an overnight brine.

Instead I changed course and went to one of my favorite “winter” recipes for pork chops.  I came across this method in one of my favorite regional cookbooks, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken by Ronni Lundy, a book filled with the cooking of the Mountain South–hearty, delicious fare indeed.

Baked pork chops with onions and potatoes

Baked pork chops with onions and potatoes

The center cut loin chops on the bone were from that great butcher shop in Warren, Maine, Curtis Meats, the country butcher who cuts everything into great big slabs.  These chops (from Canada) were nearly 2 inches thick. To get them to emerge tender they need either quick cooking at high heat or slow and steady such as how these baked chops were prepared.

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Where’s the beef? The glorious cuts for the perfect roast beef and the master butchers who make the cut

October 7, 2015 / / Mains, Recipes

Nowadays the new popularity of the classic neighborhood butcher shop offers a vital methodology of quality that can include locally farm-raised meats.  And such catchall phrases as natural, grass-fed, pastured, organic, sustainably raised farm meats are part of the vocabulary.

The sirloin roast from Bisson's

The sirloin roast from Bisson’s

Throughout Maine the tradition of butcher shops has remained fairly constant abetted by the strength of Maine’s farmers’ markets where farmers go to sell their bounty of farm-raised beef, lamb, poultry and pork.

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