Kill the Pig!

Friends have a couple of pigs. They’ve plunged into life in France head-first; a tumbledown, do-er-up-er farm house in the middle of nowhere; kids, chickens, veg plot, pigs. It’s good to have a challenge...

I’ve volunteered to help them dispose of the bodies – I’ve spent three years as a charcutier after all.

I don’t have a clue what I’m doing...

Tuer le cochon is an old fashioned winter tradition that is still prevalent in this neck of the woods – I dare say all over rural France – though it does appear to be on the wane. I come across plenty of people whose parents do it, or used to, but I’ve never yet found anyone in the position to show me the ropes. Hence my problem – what the fuck am I going to do with two whole dead pigs?!

Mercifully (perhaps not for the animals themselves) they’re not too big. Though not till arrival at the abattoir do I discover quite how youthful they are. There’s a queue of trailers waiting in line for the one day in the week allotted to amateurs like us. I’m shocked at the size of the other piggies. Not little. More like pink cows. The uncomfortable truth about meat eating is fairly unavoidable at a place like this, but I feel bad because our pigs are so small – though not much younger than a butcher’s cochon. It seems a shame to not let them carry on their happy life, scoffing acorns and chestnuts, rolling in mud, steering clear, with luck, of the neighbour’s petunias. Another six or eight months seems wisest...  

Reality bites; the decision is made. It’s the end of the winter and this year’s opportunity to butcher hygienically without a walk-in fridge is about to close. This, along with the pigs’ proclivity for escapology, plus the financial pressures of my friends’ growing family, means their time is nigh. They were bought to feed the family. They have to be killed sometime, and that’s dictated by what best suits man – not beast.

I collect them two days later. Here the disparity between my cargo and others is even more glaring. One man covers the entire floor of his van with a single carcass, split in two lengthways. My two piggies fit in the back of our Fiesta... The abattoir has done a sterling job: I take home meat.  The uncomfortableness of death fades with the familiar appearance of my load. I’m already looking forward to dinner.

 

There’s no rain so we work outside. Winter has kept its side of the bargain – though it’s hard to say the weather’s been kind. Working with bare hands at 2 degrees is more than a little nipsville. Healthy, mind. And the beer’s nicely chilled! Without the guiding hand of a butcher or experienced pig weekendeur, we turn to our only reliable alternative: youtube. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, or rather his butcher friend Ray Smith and their Pig in a Day video* do us proud. Not as romantic as a pinard-guzzling, be-bereted campagnard showing us his grandfather’s tricks, but you can’t have it all. Maybe next year...In spite of our lack of heritage, breaking the carcasses down into constituent parts is really quite straightforward. Well done us!

*Also available to buy, for those who are sufficiently organised. Well worth the money I’d say.

 

 

It did get a little nippy...

A lot of the meat is destined for the freezer, to feed my friends’ family for the best part of the year. Some goes into brine to make country-style boiling hams, or a dry cure for bacon. We judge the legs too small and lean to bother air drying. A pity, but also a relief. While undoubtedly spectacular, this is the most precarious means of preserving such a precious home-grown commodity*. The rest goes towards sausages, confit, paté and rather a mean pork pie! Not forgetting black pudding – I am not a completely useless charcutier and, if there is one thing I have learnt to love making above all others, it is this. Frugal, a bit stinky and very messy in the making (combining the head, the heart, the lungs and the blood and guts with some simple veg and spices), the Boudin Noir Béarnais is as glorious a tribute to the noble piggy-wig and his patient keeper as I could choose.

 
* Here in the South-West, there are systems in place to help out the one-weekend-a-year charcutier: you can pay a Jambon de Bayonne producer to salt and air-dry your own pork leg, and pick it up again, fully matured and guaranteed un-rotten, a year or more later. This strikes me as a nice compromise for those without the magic lieu de séchage on which success or failure seems to depend.

 

 

 

The Rock

I've given up the day job. Three years as a Charcutier and it's time for a new challenge. I'm a businessman now!

I’ve decided to launch myself as a cuisinier à domicile – a private chef. My plan is to cook for other people like I cook for myself. On a classy day. I’ve been doing it for a while, actually. My monthly soirées in the local wine shop have introduced me to a section of the foodist community of Pau, a small, posh town in South-West France. I have been gently developing a reputation; it’s now my actual job to dive in and tap it. Gulp...

I know that my blogging, from the start, has been dilatory at best, but recently my rigid schedule has gone a little mushy. Sorry folks. I’ve just had too much work. Plans to open a new business have coincided with The Wedding Season. We did a big one last week. 250 guests in a fancy chateau for four courses preceded by a two-hour apéritif (all sent from an unfurnished kitchen) equals a nineteen-hour day. Woohoo!... Uurgh... I enjoy these functions though, we’re good at them and it makes a pleasant change from the daily drudge. I stuck around just long enough to experience my boss’ latest toy: an old-school, hand-cranked, artisanally-made, insanely expensive, bugger-to-clean Berkel ham slicer. This thing is a work of art. I’d seen one once before in a restaurant in Paris, but to put this spanking-new machine through its paces was a pretty good leaving present. The novelty only slightly waned after two hours of spinning the back-bending wheel and politely placing jamón ibérico on guests’ plates whilst wearing a silly hat. It just works so well. The mechanic who perfected the design at the turn of last century may have justifiably died a very smug man. The blade is like a razor, of course, and it turns just fast enough to slice a bit of bellota to within an inch of its life. Crucially though, it doesn’t impart any heat on the slivers of champion meat, as would an electric slicer. I’ve always thought that Spanish ham should be cut with a knife, like the nice manfrom Toulouse market, but maybe not... Carving an entire ham by hand is no joke. For a served party like a wedding, there is always a queue a mile long for the delicious ham, cut (almost) expertly by the divvy English chef in the daft hat. While it’s absorbing work to gradually see how the various muscles in a ham look, taste and cut differently, it’s impossible to keep up with demand. A serving platter is redundant – the punters literally snaffle/snatch/pluck pieces off your knife.

The beast of Berkel*

It might be a little while before my business can afford such a beautiful behemoth, but then Rolls Royce isn’t really my style... The knife is an even more ancient elegant machine... Old-school is the New School!

*Berkel stopped production in the 60's, they're now exclusively made by a small producer in Italy, it seems Berkel then add a fancy insignia and price tag.



Boudin Noir

Every so often, on my trudge to work in the half light, I remember to look up. The looming panorama of Pyrenees never fails to give a little surge of pleasure which sits giddily with my early morning grumpiness. Sometimes I remember that I mustn’t miss the view of the Pic du Midi just around the corner only to forget by the time I get there – perhaps put off by a cunningly-placed poodle poo. Bof! Never mind. It’s Boudin Noir day today!

Making black pudding is brilliant. A gruesome, stinky celebration of the art, perfected over generations, of turning something unpleasant into pure gold. There are myriad variations of the blood sausage, and the version from the Béarn is a different beast to neat horseshoes of Bury breakfast pudding. Ours is bulging with meat and ugly as a badger’s bottom.

I’ve eaten lungs several times, a mistake, generally - with the obvious exception of the heroic haggis - but they go in our black pudding, along with hearts and some blubbery necks. No doubt, the splendid application which has been devoted over the years to finding good use for every last scrap of pig is scant consolation to the individual involved for a pneumatic bullet in the brain. However, I am heartened by such miserly wastelessness. The meat is perfumed and padded out with hearty proportions of stock veg and generous seasoning, and the lot is hubbled and bubbled for hours before being chopped and mixed with a gallon or three of blood.

“Delightful,” you might be thinking. And you’d be right. It’s beautiful. Even raw. I haven’t mentioned the stinky bit yet. A pig’s colon is about as unpromising as it gets. It smells really bad. It has a double skin, the interior of which has had a lifetime of odour-eating and so is beyond the pale, even for the French. This fatty, fetid stocking must be painstakingly separated from the useful and tasty outer layer, before the sausage making can begin. Frankly, even the cleaned boyaus have some odour issues, and they are often full of annoying holes, but for me they are indispensible to the glorious end product that is Boudin Noir Béarnais.

Even cleaning up is fun. Think of the waves of blood in The Shining and you’re not far off the mark. Not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps – but I love it.