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.

 

 

 

A bit nipsville

We’ve had a fortnight of serious cold, which as I sit down to write about warming food, appears to have abruptly ended. The beautifully odd frozen fountain on the 18^th century square where we live has melted without me having got round to taking a photo. It grew, splash by splash, as the cold days passed, to a spectacle of ogreish deformity. It was a sight to see... Sorry.

Red cabbage has helped keep us warm. Always cheeringly colourful, it can do sharp, spicy and crisp as a counterpoint to a calm, warming stew; or still spicy but less sour, sweet with apples and a tickle of muscovado – warming on its own, but at its best with the magnificence that is a confit duck leg; or enriched with duck fat and onions, and simmered with wine or beer. Served in a great steaming mound with smoked sausage, spuds and bacon, all cooked in the same pot. A dish to warm like a bonfire on even the most nippy of nights.

The latter is a choucroute for people who don’t like choucroute or sauerkraut, as the germans call it. It is my way of not needing to buy the perfectly white, fermented cabbage from Alsace, which is a strange taste I’ve only recently, gradually, acquired. I served it with some great cheap bits of confit duck at my last cave soirée. Still flavoured with juniper and cloves, it is sweet where the proper choucroute is sour. And, whereas the cooking liquor is traditionally strained off, I like mine, so I include it as a thin but rich and tasty gravy. It's almost garbure, the  thick stew/soup from the Bearn region, made from duck and cabbage. Whatever you call it, it'll warm the cockles of your heart!

Red Choucroute

½ to 1 whole red cabbage, depending on the size and how many you want to feed), thinly shredded

3 or 5 onions

A couple of cloves of garlic

An extremely large dollop of duck fat

1 bottle of cheap, very dry white wine. Or continental-type lager, 750ml.

Some kind of stock, homemade is best, obviously, but a cube will do. Failing that, a bit of water.

A teaspoon of juniper berries, crushed up

A couple of whole cloves

A tablespoon of coriander seeds (if you have them – you can do without)

A bay leaf

Salt and pepper

A firm-fleshed potato per person

3 or 4 carrots

Some or all of the following including at least one smokey thing:

A chunk of smoked or unsmoked pork belly (streaky bacon)

Smoked sausages

A ham hock (simmered separately for an hour or so – in water with a bay leaf, onion, carrot, peppercorns, a few fennel seeds and a bit of garlic. This will make great stock. You can use some of it below, and make soup from the rest)

Confit duck (I use wings and neck -cheap-, but leg is great, gizzards wouldn’t go amiss...)

Just make sure there is enough meat for everyone to have some of everything. Bearing in mind that this is a meal for greedy people.

The long bit is shredding the cabbage. Try to slice as thin as you can, but don’t chop your fingers off... It’s a good exercise in knife skills, actually. If you’re including the ham hock, get it cooking before you attack the cabbage.  Slice the onions similarly, chop up the garlic a bit and gently fry these two in a large, deep pan (with a lid) in much more duck fat than you think is necessary.

When the onions have softened, add the juniper, bay leaf, cloves, coriander and lots of pepper. Give a stir and add the red cabbage. Mix it all thoroughly so that the duck fat has coated all the cabbage. Turn the heat up. Try the wine/beer. If it’s nasty put it all in the pot. If it’s drinkable pour yourself a glass, the cabbage will have to cope with what’s left.

Add stock to nearly cover the cabbage. Nestle in your bacon and ham hock if you are having one, add a little bit of salt if you’re not. Cover with a snug lid, bring to a simmer, lower the heat and cook, ploof... piffle... plip, for half an hour.

Take off the lid and have a nose. Make sure there is still some liquid. Push your remaining meat into the cabbage. Lie spuds on top of the lot, to cook in the steam. Replace the lid and simmer for another hour or so, adding the carrots on top of the potatoes with half an hour to go.

Open up the pot and have a taste. Is it salty enough? The juices should be sweet, spicy and delicious. The cabbage still a deep purple. Remove all the meat and veg to one side. Pile the cabbage onto a giant serving dish, add a bit of the gravy and arrange the garnish on top. Bring to the table still steaming hot and munch, slurp and sloop with plenty of crusty bread and prodigious quantities of wine*.

*Interestingly, both red and white are good. For our wine and food evening we had:
Rully 1er cru La Pucelle 2009 Domaine Jacqueson (white Bourgogne)
Trousseau Grands Vergers 2009 Domaine Gahier (Red Jura).
Faugères Tradition 2010 Domaine Binet Jacquet (Red Languedoc), The Borgogne won for me, hands down, bringing out the corriander and complimenting the sweetness of the duck and cabbage brilliantly. The reds were quite different, the Languedoc rich and round, with a bit of spice, which complimented the meat and the smokey flavours nicely, whereas the Jura was in direct contrast to the sweetness of the dish, supplying a sharp side to cut through all the richness, and, let’s face it, fat... Anyway, plenty of good choices on the booze front!!