And that's just one reason the shaggy Scotch Highland cattle that rancher Ted Fuller is raising on 205 hilly acres near Vacaville never hit the commercial big time in this country and, like hundreds of other heritage livestock breeds, veered toward extinction.

Ditto Fuller's Tamworth hogs and Dorset lambs, which graze freely among the huge Highland cattle, fattening up on rye grass, sour dock and five kinds of clover.

Fuller's critters, raised for their meat, are part of a new trend that's just beginning to take hold. Like heirloom tomatoes before them, heritage animal breeds are making a comeback.

Because of ranchers and farmers like Fuller and the efforts of animal conservationists, sustainable food groups and like-minded chefs, breed- specific heritage meats are beginning to work their way into the nation's artisanal and sustainable food chain.

In the Bay Area, Fuller sells his Highland Hills Farm rib-eyes and roasts, lamb shanks and pork chops at San Francisco and Berkeley farmers' markets. Chefs at Chez Panisse and Cafe Rouge in Berkeley; Boulevard, Quince and A16 in San Francisco; and the new Press in St. Helena are experimenting with Barred Plymouth Rock chickens and Red Wattle pork. At Oliveto in Oakland, chef Paul Canales is trying out the ample, well-streaked bellies of Red Wattle and Berkshire hogs for his pancetta.

New York superstar Mario Batali recently placed a standing order for 20 heritage pork shoulders a week, for the rich braises and ragus he serves at Lupa.

Chefs say the heritage meats fit their sustainable, know-your-producer food ethic -- and bring exciting, old-time flavors and textures back to the table.

"It's the meat equivalent of artisanal cheese. And it's a cool idea," says A16 chef Christophe Hille, who received his first shipment of Barred Plymouth Rock chickens last Friday and planned to have them on his weekend menu. He's also sampling heritage country pork ribs and spare ribs.

It's also a way to stand out, he says, now that chain restaurants like Chipotle are using prestige meats like Niman Ranch.

Heritage turkeys came first, squawking their way to consumers' notice in 2002, largely because a Kansas turkey man named Frank Reese Jr. was willing to bet his Good Shepherd Ranch on a Slow Food gamble.

Reese raised 800 heritage turkeys that Slow Food USA founder Patrick Martins FedExed to chefs and Slow Food members around the country. Martins figured giving them a taste of heritage Bourbon Reds as an alternative to the bred-for-breast-size American mass market birds was the way to create demand and save family farmers like Reese along with disappearing breeds.

The bold move worked, and the number of family farms raising heritage turkeys jumped from six to 65 the next year.

Now Martins is trying to build the same kind of demand for heritage pork, chicken, lamb and some beef, through an online and catalog business called Heritage Foods USA. He co-founded it as the marketing and sales arm of Slow Food, the international movement to bring back traditional food values.

Prices are daunting -- including shipping, one chicken from the catalog will set you back $49.

But restaurants can buy wholesale, and Martins is getting more chefs to try heritage meats on for size.

Just last month, for example, Chez Panisse chef David Tanis worked with Heritage Foods USA to come up with an all-heritage menu, with Tomahawk oysters, Red Wattle sausages and Katahdin beef tartare as starters before spit-roasted Barred Plymouth Rock chicken. Cafe Rouge owner Marsha McBride was there, loved the rich taste of the chicken and placed a standing order for 20 to sell in her meat market and cafe.

For now, most of the meats and poultry come from the Midwest, but the hope is that, as with the turkeys, more local producers will begin raising the heritage animals. The idea is to restore vanishing breeds and the nation's livestock gene pool, which has been drastically reduced by breeding for the mass market.

In Vacaville, Ted Fuller picked Scotch Highland cattle to raise not because they're a heritage breed, but because they were the right animals for what he wanted to do. About 10 years ago, he was building houses for a living and realized he wasn't enjoying meat anymore, largely because of health, sustainability and environmental problems he saw arising from the way beef cattle were being raised. He decided to create a different model.

"I wanted to prove a small sustainable farm could also be economically sustainable," he said. "I came in on the backside to heritage breeds. I was just looking for what would function the way I wanted to function."

Scotch Highland cattle suited him because the breed evolved in cold, rocky northern Scotland into hardy eating machines that rarely get sick, don't need antibiotics and fatten naturally to 1,300 pounds on Fuller's pasture, where he's sowed 17 kinds of grasses, legumes and brassicas.

"They're particularly good at foraging and converting natural range into the product," Fuller explains as he strides across his farm, occasionally introducing a visitor to the cows and bulls who are its permanent residents.

"This is Caitlin. She's my best cow," he says, showing off a pretty, reddish-brown bovine who chews slowly under a fringe of reddish bangs. Caitlin, whose picture is on Highland Hills Farm's logo, reliably produces a calf a year for Fuller's growing beef herd.

This breed, like many others, wasn't useful to the American meat industry, which relies on Black Angus and Hereford crosses that are bred for industrial efficiency. Fed a rich diet of grain, they'll fatten up to slaughter weight in a little over a year, and can tolerate the antibiotics, dehorning and hormones that come with a feedlot existence.

Fuller's cattle take 24 to 36 months to reach slaughter weight naturally; the meat industry doesn't invest that kind of time or money.

"Feedlot cattle are like taking a 16-year-old teenager and putting him on a crash obesity program," he says. They look big, but it's all fat hanging on a teen's frame. Fuller lets his cattle grow into their adult muscle.

"It's the difference between a high school athlete and a pro athlete -- they've filled out," he says.

Fuller is mainly a cattle rancher, but he's also raising Tamworth hogs, Icelandic and Dorset sheep, goats and a few Maran chickens and Black Spanish and Rio Grande Wild turkeys. The hogs clean up whatever the cattle don't eat in the pasture; the sheep were picked not just for their meat, but for their milk and wool. Eventually, he wants to make cheese, and feed the whey to his hogs.

His herd is growing, with some cattle now grazing on land near the Sonoma- Mendocino coast.

"So far we're still alive, and it seems to be on the path to success," he says.

Fuller spends Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in Berkeley and San Francisco, selling his meat directly to consumers at the farmers' markets. It's not cheap. His rib-eye costs $16.99 a pound, and stew meat goes for $6.49 a pound. Lamb chops are $17.90. His bacon is $10.99.

But even so, he's built a following and has no trouble selling the meat from three steers a month, two to three lambs a week and one hog a month.

In The Chronicle's test kitchen, we cooked some of his meats, as well as chickens and pork from Heritage Foods USA , and discovered flavors and textures we'd never run across in mass-market meats (see accompanying story).

The booming popularity of succulent, fatty and full-flavored Berkshire pork has shown the potential for breed-specific meats. But other heritage meats still have to prove themselves to chefs and consumers.

"It actually does all come down to taste," says Chez Panisse chef Tanis. "Just because a heritage breed is a heritage breed doesn't make it taste delicious."

How the animals are raised is just as important to the quality of their meat. Tanis and other chefs trying out the heritage breeds all seek hand- crafted products -- whether it's meat, fruit or vegetables -- from small farms.

But they're excited about what they're tasting so far.

The Plymouth Rock chicken, with long legs and a narrow breast, "has some texture and really good flavor," Tanis says. Heritage pork like the Red Wattle and breeds he tasted on British Prince Charles' farm "taste awfully good."

At Boulevard in San Francisco, chef Nancy Oakes has cooked some of the Plymouth Rock chickens (see recipe) and says they were "definitely more flavorful" than regular chickens, with a slightly chewy texture -- not that they were tough.

"American people are used to very tender, thick-breasted, soft chicken," she says, adding that it will take some doing to get them to accept a chicken they have to chew.

Pork and chicken with new flavors and textures may go over easier with the public than leaner, grass-fed heritage beef, she says. Like many who love a good steak, she's reluctant to give up the sweet taste and fat of corn-fed beef.

Oakes has ordered heritage pork to put on her menu, pairing slow-roasted belly with a la minute loin.

At Oliveto in Oakland, Canales has used heritage turkeys and plans to showcase heritage chickens in a pair of dinners in October. Right now, he's trying different kinds of heritage pork for his house-cured pancetta.

Oliveto already gets excellent pork from the Paul Willis farm in Iowa, where it's raised the old-fashioned way. Heritage pork would have to offer something extra to supplant his regular supply, he says. But bellies are a good example of how different breeds might work into his operation -- he uses a lot of them, and the Red Wattle and Berkshire hogs have big ones with just the right proportion of meat to fat.

Different breeds also offer distinctive tastes -- the Red Wattle and Berkshire have more porcine flavor than his other pork.

Keeping heritage breeds alive, supporting small farmers and diversifying the gene pool of meat animals in this country are all important goals that need to be supported, Canales says. It's up to him as a chef to figure out how to use them.

And it's up to the people who sit down to eat them. Canales, who plays jazz guitar, puts it this way, offering up a quote from trumpeter Miles Davis that he often asks his sous chefs when they come up with a new dish.

Davis, after listening to Ornette Coleman talk about all his new avant- garde stylings, finally leaned in and asked, "Yeah, man, but does it swing?"

-- Highland Hills Farm, Pleasant Valley Road, Vacaville. Scotch Highland beef, Tamworth pork, Icelandic and Dorset lamb. Sold only at San Francisco Ferry Plaza market on Saturday, and at Berkeley's Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday farmers' markets. Information at highlandhillsfarm.com.

-- Heritage Foods USA. Online and catalog sales. Many breeds of pork, chicken, turkey, lamb and bison, as well as native dry goods like beans and wild rice. (212) 980-6603 or heritagefoodsusa.com.

-- Cafe Rouge, 1782 Fourth St. (at Delaware), Berkeley. Starting this weekend, whole, uncooked Barred Plymouth Rock chickens should be in stock at the meat market. (510) 525-2707.

A Barred Plymouth Rock chicken from Heritage Foods USA, plucked and ready to cook, looks nothing like your basic all-American roaster.

At a little over 3 pounds each, the two birds we cooked in The Chronicle's test kitchen looked like long-distance runners, not couch potatoes.

Instead of a broad plump breast and short legs, these chickens had long, narrow breasts, and startlingly long legs. One leg weighed 10 ounces; the drumstick stretched to a full 6 inches.

We worried that grilling or roasting would produce tough, dry meat -- especially in roasting, where it can be a challenge to keep even a large breast from drying out while the leg cooks through. But our worry turned out to be unfounded.

In roasting, we abandoned our high-temperature Best Way method. Instead, we stuffed thyme butter under the skin to protect the breast, and salted the chicken inside and out. In a 425° oven, we roasted the chicken for 10 minutes to dry and crisp the skin. Then we turned the oven down to 325°. The bird cooked in under an hour; we took it out when the thickest part of the thigh registered 165° on an instant-read meat thermometer.

The white meat turned out juicy and full flavored, with more a little more texture than a regular chicken. The dark meat was robust and chewier, but in a good way.

We cut up the other chicken and marinated it briefly (see recipe), then tossed it on the grill, where it performed like any other chicken.

Boulevard chef Nancy Oakes thinks moist heat methods like braising and pot roasting will guarantee a tender, juicy chicken, no matter what the breed (see recipe).

We also cooked:

Beef: A Scotch Highland rib-eye from Highland Hills Farm was very dark red, with less marbling than a classic rib-eye and a good layer of fat around the edge. As with most grass-fed beef, the flavor lacked the sweetness of corn fed -- which some of us preferred, but others didn't. The texture was nice and chewy.

Pork: We grilled Tamworth and Red Wattle pork chops, seasoned with just salt and pepper. The Tamworth chops, from Highland Hills, were leaner but burst with flavor. The Red Wattle from Heritage Foods USA were juicy, with lots of flavor, and firm, a little chewy yet still tender.

Lamb: We grilled four two-bite Icelandic loin chops from Highland Hills, which were tender, sweet and very lamb-y; an Icelandic lamb shank, braised in wine and herbs, came out tender, with great flavor. A whole Katahdin leg of lamb from a Tennessee farm via Heritage Foods USA, tiny at just 5 pounds, roasted nicely at 325°; the meat was lean, but very tender and juicy, with a mild taste.

-- C.N.

Adapted from Nancy Oakes' forthcoming "Boulevard, the Cookbook," due out in October from Ten Speed Press. Her recipe calls for guinea fowl, served with twice-cooked potatoes and warm arugula salad. Slow, moist cooking is also good for heritage breeds of chicken such as the Barred Plymouth Rock.

INGREDIENTS:

One 3-4 pound heritage chicken

1/3 cup olive oil

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

2 celery ribs, coarsely chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled

2-3 thyme sprigs

3 cups dry white wine

2 cups chicken stock

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 400°. Cut off the first two joints of the wings and reserve. Truss the chicken with kitchen twine.

On top of the stove, heat the olive oil in a lidded ovenproof pan that is large enough to hold the chicken and its liquid, over high heat. Lower the heat to medium-high and brown the chicken on all sides; turn with tongs but be careful not to tear the skin, about 8 minutes total.

When the chicken is browned, discard the fat in the pan and add the onion, celery, garlic, thyme sprigs and reserved wing tips. Lower the heat to medium- low and saute the vegetables and wing tips for about 6 minutes, or until the vegetables have softened and are beginning to color. Add the wine, increase the heat to high, and reduce the liquid to 1 1/2 cups. Add the chicken stock and chicken and cover the pan.

Roast for 30 minutes. Uncover and increase the oven temperature to 500°. Roast for 15 minutes more, then check the internal temperature of the chicken in the thickest part of the leg with an instant-read thermometer; it should be 150° to 155°.

Transfer the chicken to a cutting board or platter and let rest for 10 minutes.

Strain the liquid in the pot through a fine-mesh sieve into a saucepan. Skim off the fat and reduce over high heat until syrupy and about 1 cup of liquid remains, approximately 20 minutes. Season the sauce with salt and pepper and whisk in the butter to give it a silky texture and rich flavor.

To serve, slice the chicken and ladle some of the sauce over each portion.

Serves 4

Nutritional analysis not possible because of the general nature of the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

6 dark-meat chicken quarters or chicken breast halves, bone in, skin on

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

1 tablespoon light soy sauce or 2 teaspoons soybean paste

2 tablespoons sherry or Madeira

About 1 tablespoon sriracha sauce, or other hot pepper sauce, to taste

2 teaspoons honey

1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS:

Score the chicken at the leg-thigh joint without cutting through. If using chicken breasts, cut 1/2-inch slits into the thickest part of the breast.

In a stainless steel or glass work bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Place chicken in the sauce and make sure every piece is coated well. Leave for up to 30 minutes.

Preheat grill to hot. Place the chicken pieces skin-side down on the grill and cook for about 2 minutes, or long enough just to mark the skin. Reserve marinating juices. Turn the chicken pieces skin-side up, reduce heat to low to medium-low, cover and grill for 10 to 15 minutes. Check temperature. Pour or brush the remaining marinade over the chicken. Check temperature in the thickest part of the chicken. Cover and cook another 5 to 10 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 155°. Remove the chicken. Cover loosely with foil. Serve within 10 minutes.

Serves 6

The calories and other nutrients absorbed from marinades vary and are difficult to estimate. Variables include the type of food, marinating time and amount of surface area. Therefore, this recipe contains no analysis.

E-mail Carol Ness at cness@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle