D4| Saturday/Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Total Time20 minutes
Serves 44 Spanish mackerel fillets
(about 1^1 / 2 pounds total)
Kosher salt and freshly
ground black pepper
11 / 2 tablespoons minced
shallots
Juice of^1 / 2 lemon, plus
1 whole lemon
2 large oranges
1 lime
1 large fennel bulb, thinly
sliced, plus fronds(^1) / 4 cup olive oil, plus more for
brushing pan
2 tablespoons minced
parsley or chives
Pinch fennel pollen, optional
1.Pat fish dry with a paper
towel and season with salt.
Set aside for at least 20
minutes. In a small bowl,
cover shallots with juice of
½ lemon.
2.Supreme whole lemon, or-
anges and lime: Use a knife to
trim top and bottom from
fruit. Set fruit on end and
slice from top to bottom, fol-
lowing curve of fruit, to cut
away peeland pith. Release
whole segments by inserting
blade between membrane
and flesh on either side, then
removing loosened flesh.
Catch segments in a large
bowl as you go.
3.Add sliced fennel, ¼ cup
olive oil and pickled shallots
with lemon juice to bowl
with citrus segments. Toss
gently to combine. Fold in
herbs and fennel fronds.
Season with salt and pepper.
4.Lightly brush a large
sauté pan with oil and set
over medium-high heat.
Once hot, add fish, skin-side
down, and cook until skin
browns and crisps, about 3
minutes. Carefully flip and
continue cooking until flesh
is just cooked through,
about 1 minute more. Trans-
fer fillets to a large serving
platter and top with fennel-
citrus salad. Garnish with
fennel pollen, if using.
SLOW FOOD FAST/SATISFYING AND SEASONAL FOOD IN ABOUT 30 MINUTES
SALINE SOLUTIONGiving the mackerel fillets a good salting and
letting them sit for 20 minutes before cooking concentrates their flavor.
AS OF LAST WEEK, everything was going
according to plan for the grand reopening of
Gage & Tollner, the storied, long-shuttered
Brooklyn chop house. Chef Sohui Kim al-
ready owns Brooklyn restaurants Insa and
the Good Fork with her husband, Ben Schnei-
der. With partner St. John Frizell, owner of
Brooklyn bar Fort Defiance, they’ve worked
for three years to revive Gage & Tollner. But
like restaurateurs around the world, they’ve
had to recalibrate in the face of a pandemic.
On Saturday they decided to postpone the
opening. But Ms. Kim remains resolutely
hopeful. “We’re going to be OK. I don’t think
that’s wishful thinking, either,” she said. “For
125 years Gage survived. And when this
thing is over, and there’s calm again, it will
be the best opening of the decade.”
In the meantime, for all of us hunkered
down at home, she’s sharing this recipe for
pan-seared mackerel with a fennel, orange,
lemon and lime salad, her first Slow Food
Fast contribution. It’s a blessedly low-
stress recipe. The most challenging part is
supreming the citrus—freeing the individ-
ual segments from their membrane—and
all you really need for that is a sharp
knife. Your reward is a bright, healthy dish
to enjoy now, and a preview of good things
to come from Ms. Kim.—Kitty Greenwald
Pan-Seared Mackerel With Citrus and Fennel Salad
ALEX LAU FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, FOOD STYLING BY PEARL JONES, PROP STYLING BY VANESSA VAZQUEZ; MICHAEL HOEWELER (PORTAIT)
EATING & DRINKING
Plenty of online butchers advertise top-quality cuts
of meat, delivered direct to your door. But which of
these outfits can you really trust—or afford?
I
N RECENTyears, a slew
of new online ventures
have emerged to compete
with the supermarket
butcher case. There were
precedents, certainly; Omaha
Steaks has been in the mail-order
game since 1953. But the new
wave is making notable headway:
19% of shoppers had purchased
meat online as of 2018, the Foun-
dation for Meat & Poultry Re-
search & Education found, up
from just 4% in 2015.
Today’s direct-to-consumer of-
ferings are mostly geared toward
feeding a growing demand for what
Joe Heitzeberg, co-founder of on-
line meat marketplace Crowd Cow,
called “craft meat”: products that
are sustainably raised, traceable
and of higher quality than the com-
modity cuts that make up the bulk
of supermarket offerings. “Grocery
stores are not that well suited to
craft beef,” Mr. Heitzeberg said.
BYELIZABETHG.DUNN
TASTE DRIVE
The online arm of the Nashville butcher shop of
the same name sells 100% pasture-raised beef,
pork, lamb and chicken from a handful of farms
in Kentucky and Tennessee, slaughtered and
hand-cut in Porter Road’s facility. Most online
outfits ship frozen, but Porter Road sends most
meat fresh, which they say preserves texture
and flavor. The pork chops I got were indeed ex-
ceptionally perky. Meat arrives in eco-friendly
cornstarch foam insulation, which you can dis-
solve and rinse down the drain or use to light a
grill. An easy-to-navigate website, subscription
options ranging from a $70 Grill Master Box to
$127 for 10 pounds of beef and pork, and prices
competitive with premium grocery-store alter-
natives make Porter Road a compelling option
for your everyday meat needs.porterroad.com
This Georgia farm is the gold-standard in sus-
tainable, regenerative animal agriculture. White
Oak Pastures raises cows, pigs, chickens, lambs
and more in a zero-waste system that the farm
says stores more carbon in the soil than it pro-
duces; it is also one of the few farms in America
to slaughter and butcher meat on site. White
Oak’s website lacks the slickness of some oth-
ers, and most orders carry a shipping charge, but
the farm’s impeccable reputation makes up for
the hassle, especially as a source for special-oc-
casion meats. Pork from the farm’s Iberico pigs,
a breed famed for its tender, full-flavored meat,
rarely found outside Spain, is a must-try. One
notable downside: The meat ships in Styrofoam
coolers, unless you shell out extra for a com-
postable one.whiteoakpastures.com
Startup veterans Ethan Lowry and Joe Heitze-
berg began by getting consumers to crowdfund
cows (hence the name). Their business has
since expanded to become an à la carte and
subscription source for beef, lamb, pork, poultry
and seafood. Crowd Cow works with a national
network of farms, all identified by name; the
website’s “shop by farm” option makes it easy
to purchase from a favorite source again and
again. The specialty here is still beef, with a
wide range of options available, from grass-fed
to grain-fed to ultra-premium Japanese A5
wagyu that can set you back $170 per pound.
Shipping is free on all subscriptions (starting at
$89) and individual orders over $149, and Crowd
Cow uses packaging that is 100% recyclable and
compostable.crowdcow.com
JUICY DEALThe Butcher’s Choice Box from Porter Road delivers a generous quantity of cuts and sausages.
There’s limited room in a meat case
for niche alternatives, and few gro-
cers employ in-house butchers ca-
pable of educating shoppers on the
farming practices that might ac-
count for, say, a $10 price tag on a
pork chop. Selling online offers bet-
ter opportunities for storytelling,
Mr. Heitzeberg said, and greater
farm-to-table transparency.
But the online landscape can
be tricky to navigate, too, with
dozens of outfits touting their su-
perior sourcing. Your best bet is
to look for opportunities to buy
directly from a farm, or, failing
that, a butcher that can tell you
exactly where, and how, each ani-
mal was raised. Below, a few ex-
cellent options.
Your best bet is to look
for opportunities to buy
directly from a farm.
FRESH AND BUDGET-FRIENDLY
Porter Road
FEAST FARE
White Oak Pastures
FOR MEAT GEEKS
Crowd Cow
Carnivores,
Click Here
If price is no object, it’s hard to top Belcampo
Meat Co.’s offerings. My family loved the or-
ganic free-range whole chicken ($8.80 a pound),
and a juicy grass-fed ribeye ($36 a pound) was
among the best steaks I’ve ever cooked. The 7-
year-old company is fully integrated from farm
to plate: All the beef, pork, poultry and lamb is
pasture-raised on Belcampo’s 25,000-acre or-
ganic-certified ranch in Northern California,
slaughtered and butchered in-house, and sold
through the company’s own restaurants,
butcher shops and website. Two steaks and a
few packs of frozen bone broth will get you
over the site’s $100 free shipping hurdle. Bel-
campo’s shipping materials are mostly recycla-
ble, though a bubble liner the company uses
winds up in the trash.belcampo.com
PLATINUM PRODUCT
Belcampo Meat Co.
CUTS ABOVE/OUR FAVORITE PLACES TO BUY MEAT ONLINE
The Chef
Sohui Kim
Her Restaurants
The Good Fork, Insa
and Gage & Tollner,
all in Brooklyn, N.Y.
What She’s
Known For
Cooking that deftly
marries classic Ko-
rean and American
flavors. Building
neighborhood res-
taurants where joy
is top priority.