brown sugar + rosemary crusted bison sirloin
I first became aware of bison as a food source in the early 90s. It was a time when many young adults were looking to the 60s for inspiration. Bohemian ideals, art and music were quite prominent and everyone was searching for some form of peace and identity. Free-spirited teenagers were listening to post-Grateful Dead bands like Phish and the neo-hippie hip-hop stylings of De La Soul. The popular watering hole in town was a little café/crystal shop called Cosmic Connection. Street beat poetry was ascendant and everyone was trying to find enlightenment by ingesting copious amounts of ganja and popping blotter acid like jelly beans. It was in this environment that I truly became open to all things new and exciting, including cuisine.
This was when I first saw the epic movie Dances with Wolves. Like most people my age I was enthralled by the grandiose depiction of the serene lifestyle of the Lakota Sioux. The way they existed in perfect harmony with their surroundings, and their crunchy ethos were extremely alluring to an impressionable youth such as myself in those days. In the movie there was a scene where the Sioux and Lieutenant Dunbar were throwing down a magnificent shindig following an exhilarating buffalo (or “tatanka”) hunt and they were gorging themselves on succulent looking meat. Their dewy faces were smeared with grease from their hard-earned quarry. The images were seared into my brain and stirred a hunger in me every time I thought about them. Bison however, was pretty much impossible to find in South Florida at that time.
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