Butchering as Theater. No, really.

I wanted to cook lamb chops for dinner on Valentine's Day, but I hadn't shopped on Wednesday and I didn't really want to have to get into the car when I got home from work to go to Whole Foods where I might or might not find what I wanted. So I poked around the web and realized that the butcher in the North End wasn't really very far out of my way on my commute home. I decided to give them a try.

Sulmona on Parmenter Street turned out to be one of those intimidating shops in the North End. I'm easily intimidated by shops. Silly really, but there it is. But really, I looked through the windows down into this butcher shop, and there's NO meat in the cases. None. Not a speck. And no one in sight, although they are clearly open for business.

"Be brave," I told myself. I walked in. There's one man at the back of the storefront butchering a large piece of beef. I recognize a hip joint emerging from the meat, though I couldn't tell you what cuts he was working on. A second, older man emerges from the back. I ask if I can get some lamb chops. He nods, turns, and enters the cooler. He emerges with a rack of about 6 lamb loin chops which he puts on the huge butcher block table to cut.

"How thick?" "That looks good. 4 please."

I wouldn't have thought I could be so fascinated by watching someone cut meat. He scored the fat. Then four quick whacks with his butcher knife separated the chops from the rack. I'm thinking "Cool. What pretty meat." and thinking he'll wrap them for me. But no, not yet. Lamb is fatty, and it's tasty fat, but you don't want too much of it. He switches to a long boning knife and carefully cuts away the tiniest scrap where the rack has been ink-stamped. This goes in the trash. Then he carves away the fat leaving only the perfect amount on the outside of each chop. Lamb loin chops have this funny little bit of meat attached to the chop by the fat (sometimes referred to as the "tail"). He left just enough fat to keep the meat. Then when all that was left was meat and the perfect amount of fat, he wrapped the tails around the chops, lined them up on a sheet of parchment paper, and wrapped them up. The fat he's cut away is all in a neat pile---perhaps destined for some of the sausages soon to be hanging in the window of the cooler?

While he's cutting, someone else has come in behind me. I could just about hear her jaw drop as she watched him, so it wasn't just me.

It was worth $15 just to watch him work. And the lamb chops were fabulous, if I do say so myself. Next time I have to steel myself to ask what's in the sausage.