When I venture from the house, I am usually in the mood for some social interaction. But not that day. All I wanted to do was sit it the sun, sip some tea, and read The Economist.
I have come to the conclusion that some people are terrible at reading body language. Despite my obvious introverted posture at the table, the fellow sitting at the next table took it upon himself to save me from my obvious isolation.
He just start talking at me, telling me his name and where he was from. Neither of which I can recall. Not because I didn't care (a writer always cares about any detail that can add veracity to a story), but because I was still half-engaged in a story about the presumptive prime minister succession in Malaysia.
He was two sentences into his next paragraph before I caught up with him. Something about beef. Ah. He was not happy with the quality of beef in Mexico. It sounded as if he had traveled a bit in the country.
"You know what really bugs me?"
I didn't.
"The butchers here don't know anything about cuts of beef. They don't even know their proper names."
I chuckled at that. It took me years to figure out what some cuts meat were here. The shape gave me no clue where it had once resided on a steer carcass.
I responded that he had the question backward. We should be asking why we do not know enough to recognize Mexican cuts of beef.
Jose at El Tunco has taught me a lot about both pork and beef. I have ended up using my body as the equivalent of a Chinese medicine doll to modestly point to the same portions I want off of a pig -- or a steer. Fortunately for all of us, my meat choices are not too exotic.
A lot of the mystery about Mexican meat disappeared when I ran across a very informative article by Karen Hursh Graber over at Mexconnect. Her Choice Cut or Mystery Meat? is now a regular resource whenever I am about to sally forth on a meat hunt.
The drawing at the top of this essay is hers. Or from her blog. I carry a copy whenever I am out. It makes my shopping easier.
In the past, I knew what type of meat I wanted, but 9 out of 10 times I could not find that particular cut. I should have known, just like butcher shops the world over, there is much more meat stowed in freezers than there is in the meat case.
My practice now is to ask for a cut from a region of the steer and then get the cut I want from the larger piece. When I tried buying a prime rib roast, I just received blank stares. I now know to ask for "entrecot," and we can work from there.
Omar introduced me to "bola" -- extremely tender beef. From his description, I thought it was the same cut as baseball steaks. Baseball. "Bola." You can see my strained connection. But I was wrong.
Because of Karen Hursh Graber's research and writing, I can now order beef (she also writes about pork and lamb) with the confidence of a Wichita cattleman.
Of course, I have far more hat than cattle. But, isn't that true of most of us?
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