On this Pentecost weekend, veal remains a culinary tradition, especially since the meat is excellent at this time.
In France, it is customary to serve veal to celebrate Pentecost. However, if the Christmas turkey or the Easter lamb are linked to religion, this is not the case here. Simply, calves are born in winter, their meat is very present on the stalls at the beginning of spring, with as a consequence a sometimes lower price.
So much so that the following saying was once circulating among breeders and butchers: “At Pentecost, the calf loses a rib”, hence the idea of promoting it at that time, just before summer. Since then, the Pentecost veal has become popular.
There is still a part of symbol in the calf, according to Thierry Marx: “This meat must be tasty, tasty, white and pure, it was in its time the dish of the rich. I have the fond memory of calves under the mother, in Corrèze, which are fed by bottle. As it is raised under the mother, which it must recognize and vice versa, it produces a film of very white fat. It is delicious.”
Choose labeled meat
When they talk about veal, some remember the 1980s, and their hormonal calves that bring back very bad memories. For an animal that drinks milk and eats grass, it was heresy to feed it anything and everything to fatten it up faster. It was already the theory of low-cost: produce quickly and inexpensively. “And we made people sick!” storm our two-star chef.
“Fortunately all of that is far behind usreassures Thierry Marx. Hormones are completely prohibited, and this whole food chain is very closely monitored by the state. But can we close the borders hermetically? I am not convinced, and it is unfortunately quite possible that undesirable products still linger in some cattle.”
Hence the importance of carefully choosing the origin of the meat you buy. Calves labeled Rouge or labeled Bleu-Blanc-Cœur should be preferred.