Dinner entrée looks familiar

Chefs host a meal for members of the 4-H livestock program

When you're used to meat coming pre-sliced and prepackaged at the supermarket, it's easy to disconnect the act of eating from a live animal.

Not so for the kids who participate in the 4-H livestock program. As part of their training in agriculture, they raise animals from calf to steer, piglet to hog, then take them to the Hawaii State Farm Fair, where the animals are auctioned to become someone else's dinner.

A few of these future farmers had the chance to close the cycle on Saturday night, when two chefs, Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong, invited them to a dinner at Yamaguchi's Hawaii Loa Ridge home. On the menu were two of the lambs raised through the program.

The chefs bid on the lambs at the Farm Fair auction last month. Yamaguchi said he's done this for three years, going to the fair to examine the animals and choosing either a lamb or a pig. He said it's the only time he's able to see the live animals that become his key ingredients.

The chefs talked to the 4-H-ers about how the animals were grown and how feed affects the taste of the meat. Ranging in age from 8 to 18, many of the kids are growing up on ranches and are well familiar with animal husbandry, from rabbits and hens to beef steers and dairy heifers.

The younger ones might get attached to their animals, "but in the end they know what they're doing it for," said Joshua Eguires, who started raising 4-H animals when he was 8 years old. At 23, he now volunteers with the program and helps out on his family's farm in Pupukea.

They'll keep the animals for three months (lambs) to eight (steer), Eguires said, but the aim is always "the ending."

Once the animal is slaughtered, they are able to see the results of their work in the quality of the meat, the goal being to have it graded choice. "If it's too fat, it's not going to grade right, if it's too lean, it's not going to grade right."

Yamaguchi prepared his lamb four ways: the shoulder as curry, the racks with a sweet-sour rub, and the legs char-grilled with both Vietnamese- and Greek-style flavorings.

"I want them to taste what they've grown," Yamaguchi said. "If they're interested in being farmers, it's a good opportunity to get an understanding of what happens to the animals."