In a nutshell, farmers are encouraged to select one of their less-than perfect female specimens — a cow just shy of being over the hill, say — and turn her out to pasture with three or four male calves, including one of her own. (She needs to be a nursing mother.) Mama cow is encouraged to feed the calves her milk and teach them to eat grass and feast on other yummy cow delights. When the calves are sufficiently mature, they go to their destiny without having lived a sorry day. “This is pasture- raised veal, natural and organic, and it lets the cows and the calves do what they were born to do,” says Stowell. It’s still a pilot program, having raised only a few hundred animals this year, but the plan has true promise to create a profitable revenue stream for small farming communities in New England. The veal is “rosy — not bright red like beef, but it’s not stark white like the classical Italian veal,” Stowell says. “It’s a meat that people can feel good about eating and chefs can feel good about serving.”
At a recent lunch at Oleana, chef Ana Sortun cooked an all-Azuluna meal for several other local chefs — Tony Susi, Chris Douglass, Chris Schlesinger, Paul Sussman, Marc Orfaly — who’d heard about the product but hadn’t yet had a chance to taste it. The verdict was positive and powerful. “It’s exactly the kind of product my Cambridge customers would love,” Chez Henri’s Paul O’Connell says. Everyone agreed that the flavor was wonderful yet unique — without the blandness of traditional veal that is a foil for any sauce, but not strong enough to fight with any classic recipe.
In the future, Dole & Bailey’s Stowell would like to see the names of the individual farms and farmers listed on Azuluna’s Web site (www.azulunabrands.com), as a reminder that real people are behind every meal we eat. For now, look for Azuluna veal to start appearing on local restaurant menus — at least at the kind of restaurants where you know who harvested the greens, caught the fish, cured the cheese, and picked the berries. It’ll cost a smidge more than ordinary commercial veal — and it probably should. We are what we eat, and I like to think we’re worth it.
