Living High on the Cow

There are some great buys in the meat market these days, but you’ve got to be smart. If you’re not careful, your beef bargain will stick you with a steamy kitchen and a meal no one will eat.

It’s all a matter of timing. When the weather is hot, people want to barbecue. And the best cuts for grilling are the tender, pricey ones from the sirloin. These are dream steaks--season with salt and pepper, throw them on the grill and 10 minutes later you’ve got a great meal.

To meet the demand for these tender cuts, more beef is slaughtered in summer than in winter. This produces more steaks (still not enough, though, to keep prices down)--as well as a wide array of less-tender “stew cuts.”

Although some of these sound like barbecue material--round steaks, Swiss steaks, blade steaks--this meat requires long, slow, moist cooking. Tough sells even in the winter, they turn into white elephants in the summer. Who wants to make stew when it’s 100 degrees?

There are two ways around the problem. First, you can learn how to cook the tough cuts. Marination is the answer, but be sure to cut the meat into pieces small enough to allow the acidic marinade a chance to penetrate. Then string them on skewers and barbecue them. For big cuts, try three-quarter inch cubes, as in kebabs. The flat cuts can be trimmed into thin slices that are then threaded on skewers, satay-style.

On the other hand, you can avoid the problem altogether by shopping around. In order to pull people into meat departments, many stores offer “loss-leader” specials on steak cuts. They probably won’t be quite as cheap as they are in the winter, but they are delicious . . . and easy.

EGGS

Eggs have been a bit high for the last couple of years, but they’re a good buy now. In fact, they’re a good buy now because they’ve been a bit high. “When farmers make a little money, they invest in what they know best,” says an egg marketer, “and that’s production.” And when production exceeds demand, prices go down. On top of that, summer is one of the egg market’s annual downturns. Peaks traditionally are the start of school through New Year’s and then right around Easter. But, as one farmer put it, “you can’t stop chickens from laying eggs.”

FISH

The long-awaited El Nino tuna have finally arrived. Problem is, at this point, if you want to eat one, you have to have a friend who’s a sportfisherman or get a little lucky. Party boats from San Diego and San Pedro report substantial catches of the fish as far north as San Clemente Island. There still aren’t enough for commercial fishermen, though. Only the occasional Southern California tuna is likely to make it to market as an “incidental catch” brought in by a fisherman looking for something else.

TOMATOES

Fully flavored, deep-red tomatoes are plentiful in growers markets and neighbor’s back yards. But if you don’t have access to either, here’s a tip: Buy Romas. Because of their thick, meaty walls, these plum-shaped tomatoes are almost always vine-ripened. If you want the same quality in round tomatoes, you’ll have to pay a premium price since it takes special handling to get the ripe tomatoes from the fields to the markets.

It’s mid-season for the California tomato harvest right now. The spring crop out of Brawley was troubled by poor quality caused by rain and whiteflies. Now that the harvest has moved to the upper San Joaquin Valley, roughly within 100 miles of Modesto, quality is better and prices are higher.

LETTUCE

Wholesale prices for lettuces--iceberg, romaine and mixed lettuces--have almost tripled in the last week. This is because very hot weather in the Salinas Valley, the largest lettuce-producing region in the country, has caused quality problems and uneven maturing, forcing growers to pick the fields in stages rather than all at once. That’s the bad news. But, thanks to the twisted logic of grocery-store pricing, there is good news: Many grocers didn’t pass on the savings of last week’s extremely low wholesale prices, which means consumers are not likely to notice a big price increase at the check-out counter.