There is an interesting article over on Michael Ruhlman’s site called Artisan Butchers that got me thinking about the folks who I had the privileged of watching break down a pig last winter. I’m pretty sure they don’t call themselves artisans, although the word comes from the Italian artigiano, I’m told.
Ruhlman says:
Artisan means: a worker skilled in a trade; craftsman (this from my Webster). It does not mean artist. I love the idea that a sign painter is an artisan. I hate the idea that any butcher would call himself or herself “an artisan butcher.”
Ok, so it’s true: it’s darn pretentious for someone to call himself an artisan. The guy up there to the right is just doing what he does, running various hand tools (and his hands) over a pig until it’s broken into the parts that make meat and salumi.
It’s not an automatic process you do like a factory worker. Adjustments are made on the fly.
Pig Owner (Armando): “The chops need more fat. Last year they didn’t have enough fat around them.”
Butcher: “You won’t get as much lardo you know!” (remember that lardo is one of Armando’s specialties.)
Armando: “Yeah, I know. More fat on the chops.”
The butcher straightens up, then slides an evilly sharp knife into the soft and pillowy white flesh and carves out the rack of chops lickety split. If there ever was an artisan moment that went by in a flash, this was it. Amazing accuracy, the line of fat surrounding the chops was as uniform as you could wish for.
As I watched I saw every last bit of the pig sliced and cleaned for use later, like the intestines you see over there—casings for Armando’s Lunigiana mortadella and the salame Toscana.
Which brings me to the next point about “artisan.” We, the consumer, need a signifier to clue us in to where we might find a butcher like this, one who doesn’t just run everything through a band saw and put the cubes of it into Styrofoam trays. We have chosen to use the word “artisan” for that. (Or at least I have—and I’ve watched as a local Californian “butcher” sawed my rack of ribs in half, not by cutting between the middle bones, but by running the saw over the bones lengthwise. He was not an artisan.)
According to Ruhlman:
Artisan and artisanal are indeed over used to the point that they’ve been co-opted by big business and turned into marketing terms.
I disagree, not with the outcome, but with the idea that it takes overuse for big business to co-opt a concept that will make them ever more money. This is a process that’s been going on for a long time (the Christians did it to the Pagans, remember) and has simply been happening faster and faster as industrial crap food gets ever more dangerous and tasteless.
I watched the guys on the right work in an unheated garage on marble slabs. And I still trust what comes out of the garage more than I’d trust an American industrial egg that you have to fry for an hour and a half so it doesn’t kill you. They didn’t taste the salami they were making by frying a little up and trying it, then adjusting the seasonings—they just pinched some of the raw mix off and down it went.
They’re still alive.
So let’s stop blaming ourselves when the sign hanging over the pimply-faced kid’s head at the Safeway says “Artisan Butcher”. Just smile and back off—and promise you’ll use the meaningful version of the word when you pass on to other discerning folks the name of the artisan butcher you find in your area. (Although I also like the term “master butcher” as suggested by Judy Witts Francini, too.)
Anyway, read Ruhlman’s blog. There’s some good stuff in there about food and how to put it together without all that fuss that’s collected over the years in American kitchens.