How a pork filet mignon reminded me to sacrifice quantity for quality
Yesterday evening I cooked a special meal, from ingredients provided by a food delivery company: roasted pork filet mignon. I dried the two large cubes of meat with kitchen paper, before sprinkling salt and pepper on the surfaces. Then, I cooked chopped shallots and garlic (two cloves) with a spoonful of olive oil in a frying pan. Once golden, I added the meat and browned the surfaces for 3 minutes on each side. The meat is then removed, put in an oven plate and baked at 200 degrees Celsius for 8 minutes. In the meantime, I added some vegetable broth, two spoonfuls of dry white wine and a tea spoon of Dijon mustard in the frying pan, with the cooked shallots and garlic. I kept cooking on medium fire, stirring, until the liquid reduced to a half. Salt and pepper. Finally, I served the meat cubes with the sauce, and a side of vegetables of choice (I had purée of potatoes and carrots, and boiled mange-tout). In a bit more than half an hour, my dinner was ready. And it was marvellous, the best pork meat I have ever tasted so far!
How can three simple ingredients, shallot, garlic and pork filet, make such a delicious dinner? We are so used to buy cheap and easily available ingredients at supermarkets, that we pay little attention to the taste of the food we eat. The lack of taste can always be compensated by a savoury sauce, so why bother? I also thought so, before tasting my own dish last night. It’s good to have abundant resources, and cheap, and readily available, so that we can have a “good” meal any time, during our busy lives. Sauces, spices and tasty pre-cooked food are also inexpensive and readily available. How was yesterday’s meal different?
The secret is simply the quality of the ingredients. The meat was tender and savoury, perfectly aged, coming from a local pig raised free range in a farm. This is what changes the final taste of the cooked dish. And it’s not only the taste that improves, wanting better quality in our plates also brings many benefits to our own lives, to our community, and to the whole planet.
1) Quality means local. Wanting fresh and high quality ingredients usually points toward local producers. Vegetables are more delicious when they are in season, and the fresher the better. Same goes for meat, which can be delivered to the local stores without the need for freezing or long trips in a refrigerator. Rather intuitive, ain’t it?
Focusing on local production is also beneficial for the whole community we are part of, as there will be more jobs, and people will care more for the local environment and support more environmental friendly producers. There is another aspect that was painfully brought to my attention a while back, when I watched a documentary on the TV channel Arte. They showed how intensive farming in Europe brought huge difficulty for the local economy in North Africa. In fact, part of the chicken we are not very fond of (wings, for example) in Europe, were (and maybe still are) shipped to North African countries, where they are sold in local markets at a very low price. The fact is that this price is too low compared to the cost of raising chickens locally, so people end up eating European farmed wings instead of the local chickens. This produced a huge stress on the local economy. So, intensive farming in Europe can be very dangerous for other countries too, as a by-product. I don’t know what is the situation now.
2) It’s more expensive, but healthier. Surely, the price of good quality and local ingredients is much higher than mass-produced ones. But we can turn this into a benefit. Let’s eat less meat, reserving it to only 2–3 meals a week instead of everyday, but prefer high quality. The cost on a person or family can basically remain the same. We can then prefer healthier and simpler foods, or just eat less. Obesity is a huge problem in the developed countries.
In practice, this sounds hard to do. On the one hand, we cannot simply reduce the intake of food, we need to feed ourselves. And the production of food gives jobs and supports the life of many people. On the other hand, not everybody has the resources to pay higher prices for food.
The simple solution is a change in our habits and diet. In simple terms, intensive farming needs a lot of food for raising large numbers of animals: this often comes from cultivation of soy beans and/or corn, which is then fed to the animals. How about we eat directly the corn and soy products? Let me tell you a secret: tofu is not tasteless nor boring. In China, where it comes from, “tofu” is not one thing, it’s an array of products derived from soy, with a huge variety of formats and flavours. You can find fermented black tofu that has nothing to envy to a good Rochefort blue cheese, and “tofu skin” that is eaten like a thin and savoury pasta.
3) It’s better for our planet. Have you heard that between one third and a half of the food in the developed countries goes to waste? And cows and other livestock contribute to the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere? Do I need to say more?
Eating less and better can really help saving our planet. And here I’m not talking about saving the Nature, I’m talking about saving ourselves and improve our own life standards.
4) It tastes d*** good! Last but not the least, increasing the quality of the ingredients also improves the taste of what we eat. The best chicken I ever ate was in a small restaurant in downtown Hanoi, Vietnam. The chicken leg was thin and hard, the meat lean and full of fibre, as the chicken was raised free in the courtyard behind the restaurant. Simply steamed and served with a soy and vinegar sauce, the flavour of the meat alone was superb. Now I find it hard to eat chicken in Europe… it’s simply a flavourless piece of bread to me.
I also recall reading an article about the best beef steak. The reporter gave himself the mission of finding the best one in the world. He found it in a small mountain town in Spain. The meat comes from adult bulls, left free to roam in a forest and feed on whatever they can find. The bulls are then slaughtered only when they are 8–9 year old. To put this in perspective, the beef meat we usually buy in supermarkets are from 6 to 8 month old young animals, often overfed and “cured” so that they can grow large fast.
I’m aware that sacrificing quantity for quality may sound like a utopia. However, all the issues I mentioned in the article are real ones, with real solutions that we need to start implementing in our own lives. The whole food supply chain will slowly change and adapt if we change our own requests from them first. Also, we cannot switch the whole production, because there will always be the need for cheaper and more available food. But this is not an excuse for inaction. The world is already changing and calling us to change as well (COVID-19 is the latest dramatic call), to change our habit for a good cause… and with a delicious reward.
