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A Q&A with Pete Balistreri of Tender Greens
by Candice Woo
Pete Balistreri of Tender Greens
Photo by Dhanraj Emanuel
Toque Talk: Chatting with Pete Balistreri of Tender Greens
CW: You are featured in a new meat-centric cookbook called Primal Cuts, alongside forty-nine other well-known renowned butchers, chefs and ranchers including Chris Cosentino of Incanto, Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. How did the opportunity find you?
PB: It all goes to back an event I did last October at the Little Italy Mercato with another author, Douglas Gayeton (who wrote Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town about the local food movement in Italy). That event went really well; Douglas and I stayed connected and I began to send him some of my salumi. One day I had sent him some guanciale and Marissa Gugianna, his friend and the author of Primal Cuts, happened to be over there and she contacted me after that.
CW: Have you seen the finished book? How did your section come together?
PB: Marissa and I sat down for a few hours and talked about Tender Greens and what we do here and I showed her our salumi in the curing chamber. We talked about how I work with whole animals, which started back in San Francisco when I was working at restaurant called Rose Pistola. Everyone in the book also shared a few recipes.
CW: What are your recipes?
PB: She asked me to do something unique with lamb shanks so I did a potted lamb shank in the style of a terrine with a fava bean puree and shaved pecorino – it’s something like we would do here in the restaurant. Marissa also wanted our bacon recipe, because she really liked it, so we made lamb bacon. We also did a kind of butcher’s Cobb salad with slow-roasted guinea hen, the lamb bacon, heirloom tomatoes. There are also some really cool photos of our curing chamber in the book; I’m just super honored to be part of it.
CW: Are you currently serving anything from the book in your restaurant?
PB: We always have a house made charcuterie board - right now we’re making speck, coppa, different kinds of salami, prosciutto, a flat pancetta called tesa, headcheese, lots of guanciale and all kinds of paté. I have lonzino, a pork loin, curing now too.
CW: Some chefs I’ve talked to say they would give up cooking if they could just make charcuterie all day – what is the appeal of the craft?
PB: I kind of feel the same way. It’s a hands-on artisan technique that takes time to learn how to do but it’s an old world cooking technique that’s very appealing. Not everyone that’s serving charcuterie is making it themselves in-house, I would love to make it for chefs that don’t have the space for it. I have such a great staff and support system so I’m able to spend more time on the charcuterie, but it’s a team effort.
CW: Can you tell me about the meat you use?
PB: We use Vande Rose Farms which is all natural with no antibiotics and no hormones. We get a lot of whole animals in all the time, hundred pound pigs and whole lambs. Every part gets used.
CW: Is the cookbook, Primal Cuts, available now?
PB: Yes, I’ll have copies of it in the restaurant soon. It’s such a great book, I hope it’ll be one of those classics that’s in every kitchen.
CW: Do you have plans to open more Tender Greens in San Diego?
PB: We’ve been looking for a year and a half for the right location. As soon as we find the right place, we’ll open, and it’ll definitely have a place for making salumi too.
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