Friday, August 21, 2009

A Good Steer

Butcher Joe Rabutino at Martin’s Quality Meats & Sausage works on a blue-ribbon steer. Owner Martin Giunta, a long-time supporter of 4-H clubs in South Jersey, purchased this winner at the Salem County Fair in Woodstown earlier this month. Giunta also made hog purchases from the Gloucester County 4-H fair this year.

I asked Joe and fellow butcher Ben Ambrosini if they could cut me a nice rib steak from the prize steer, but they said Martin had already taken that cut home for his own consumption. When I mentioned that to Charles Giunta of Giunta’s Prime Shop, he said he’d have to call his brother and get invited to dinner.

Martin’s also displayed some very meaty pork belly today — identified as Fresh Pork Bacon, City Dressed — for $2.99, pricier than I’d pay at one of the Asian supermarkets, but considerably meatier. Lamb ribs (breast) were $3.29, leg on the bone $4.59.

Brother Charles had a full range of steaks for the grill today. Porterhouse and Delmonico steaks were $9.95, T-bone, New York strips and skirts $8.95, flat irons $7.99, hangers $6.99, boneless sirloins $4.95. Big hunks of boneless leg of lamb were $6,99.

If red meat isn’t your thing, you could wander over to John Yi’s where Spanish mackeral was $2.99 whole, bluefish $2.99, sea bass $5.99. Porgies were $3.99; if you called porgies by the name of their European cousins, bream or dorade, they’d be much more expensive. Among the fileted white fish, haddock was $7.99, fluke $11.99, flounder $.8.99, halibut $16.99, cod $9.99.

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