by Kate Hill on November 30, 2009
The white blackboard read: Project- “dans le cochon tout est bon” . And so it was.
This week, twenty-four French lycée students between 16-20 years old and their professors M. Franck LAPIERRE and M. Jean Marc BOUILLY allowed three American kitchen-crashers to look over their shoulders as Dominique Chapolard, artisan butcher and pork producer, demonstrated in the expansive school kitchen that “in the pig, all is good!”
The attentive white-clad chefs-in-training crowded around as M. Chapolard reconstructed the whole pig carcass, piece by piece, organ by organ. Silence reigned as Dominique, our master butcher mentor here at Camont, explained what goes into making good pork from field to table.
Only when he split the skull to reveal the tiny brain did squeamish teenage yelps erupt. Quickly silenced by Chef Lapierre, he teased them that they see more blood on the horror films they watch. After the initial hour of dissection, as the muscle groups began to resemble familiar meat cuts, this next generation of France’s good cooks began to chop and grind, season and taste, while the scent of Gascony’s prized pork filled the kitchen. A hind leg became a Jambon, a shoulder a Roti de Porc. The large rib cage transformed into ventreche, poitrine and travers. Legs broke down into jarret and pied de porc while the caul fat was washed and leaf lard rendered out before grattons were drained and pressed into a terrine.
This fine piggy day was a part of “Cooking at the Source-Gascony“, a collaboration between Robert Reynold’s Chef’s Studio in Portland, Oregon and my own Kitchen-at-Camont. We spent the morning with our good friend and farmer/butcher Dominique Chapolard as he did a day long demonstration for the students of the Lycee Jacques-de-Romas in neraby Nerac. For upcoming Duck workshops in the U.S. and France consult our program pages.
by Kate Hill on October 29, 2009
The Agen market is full of surprises on a perfect fall morning.
Today, shopping for quince, cress, and cilantro I ran into a drove of pigs.
Free-range, pasture-raised French pigs.
Like a stage setting, simplicity itself- one knife, a cleaver, a wooden block,
& a smile.
Julien Veyrac
of Tournon d’Agenais
No one was more surprised than me to meet the new butcher boy on the block
and discover some damn good looking charcuterie and fresh pork.
Merci, Julien for taking over the family farm.
See you next Wednesday for your andouillette-
my secret ingredient for an onctuous cassoulet.
Wednesdays- Agen Central Market
by Kate Hill on October 25, 2009
I love it when I feel I am in the middle of something. It doesn’t happen often being a bit of a “living on the edge” sort of person- in all senses. But when it does, I feel that delicious “a-ha!” moment welling up out of my back brain and jumping out of my mouth onto The Keyboard.
- A-ha! Locavorism is my way of being a lazy bum- what’s growing outside the door? dandelions? rosemary? rosehips?
- A-ha! Organic Gardening is also wonderfully lazy, no schedules to follow for spraying or bottles of poison to sort out by use by date.
- A-ha! Canning & Preserving in small batches is fast and easy. 4 jars of quince here, 5 jars of salsa there; faster than going to the supermarket.
- A-ha! Butchering & Charcuterie making on the farm with artisan French butchers is part of the yearly cycle here.
- a-ha! Farm-to-table does work when you live surrounded by fertile fields in a wealth agriculturally based society. “France” in a word.
- A-ha! Urban farming works as long as you have Wi-Fi and can Google “mysterious chicken diseases”.
- A-ha! The Back-to-the-Land movement I joined in the 70’s on Lopez Island, WA never went away, it just got better music.
So when the I see this big kahuna wave swelling around me, I’ve been sitting on my long French board for about 20 years, it makes me want to start paddling faster and faster. Catch that wave now! And at last, I can be the #1 Surfer French Farm Queen-Dudette in town.
This week’s wave is all over the web on blogs and news sites. Kim Severson writes an article at the NYT about some of the of the problems people are having raising chickens in an urban environment. And today, Alex Williams writes about the new “do-it-yourself butchery” taking place around the country in shops, cooking schools and well as bars. Like preaching to the choir, I want to join in and shout Amen! or Hallelujah! After all, I learn by doing, too. And while I want to encourage and applaud these Good Food neophytes, I want to bang them on the head, too.
Like parents that think Easter chicks are cute- for a week, I imagine those chickens abandoned by someone who found out that a living breathing animal eats, poops and needs attention just like we do. I think about the wasted meat not cooked from that lovingly raised porker by someone whose stomach was turned by the smell of too much raw meat or the serial killer smell of fresh blood. I know some of that good meat will end up in the garbage uncooked. I know what happens not just because I see it when fresh students and interns show up in France all starry-eyed or because I have years of experience of sheltering the delicate Gourmet-reading gourmand from knowing too ‘much ado about foie gras’, or the ‘truth behind truffles’. I know what happens because I, too, have been there. And I am willing to admit it.
I’ve learned a lot these two decades of eating France. Yet, I still have a lot to learn. About Charcuterie- did you know that the age of the pig (minimum 12 months) affects the acid level produced in the meat muscle and thus affecting the quality and curing of the jambons, saucissons and chorizo? I didn’t either until this summer when Camas D., Jonathon K. and I sat down at teh lunch table with the Brothers Chapolard for a Q&A about their pig farm and artisan charcuterie operation. About Chickens- after a year with my own layers (11 hens- 1 rooster) and losing a couple to neighbor dogs (including Bacon the teenage gangsta pack member), I am soooo glad I have chicken-raising neighbors who coached me through my first crisis (one too many rooster) and told JK and me exactly where to stick the knife. The Coq au Vin was as good as any I have cooked and eaten.
Interested to learn more? Not on the web but live and in person with people who love their food and make it too. It’s easy this winter. Come to France (air fares are looking good, children!) this November (read about it here) or meet me in the North West this New Year 2010 as I pack my Gascon bags with lots of ideas and tons of experience on making cassoulet, rendering duck fat, confit and natural foie gras with Neal Foley on his Podchef Island and Robert Reynolds at his wonderful Chef’s Studio in Portland.
Now about that wave… let’s keep it swelling. There are a lot of delicious rides ahead.
by Kate Hill on September 18, 2009
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Making confit de canard or preserved duck is a Gascon winter kitchen game of duck, duck, goose. Although I posted these pix on my old blog now referred to as ‘The Archives’, I wanted to share these again as a step-by-step slideshow and appeteaser for this winters confit making workshops. For more information click here- DUCK+.
by Kate Hill on August 17, 2009
This is the pig that roots in the woods then lives in the barn that eats the grain that becomes the bacon that I bought in the market that came from the house that Jill built.
Jill is really called Marie-Helène but she did indeed plant the corn that she feeds her long-snouted pigs that she takes to the abattoir that she turns into fine traditional charcuterie that she sells at the weekend markets in the Tarn department about 2 hours from here.
Marie-Helene defies the beret-wearing burly butcher stereotype here in France. She is a feminine and soft-but outspoken butcher/pig farmer who singularly raises and processes her own pigs before selling them to a small but loyal group of farmer market goers. She tells me that she sells a relationship as well as the fresh pork and cured meats, one based on trust and confidence in her everyday hard work. Her week is long, like most farmers, but she has learned how to maximize the time spent in the ‘laboratoire‘ to slaughter, cure and pack just enough pork each week to sell out. And she does it alone. Yup! All by herself. single-handed. Alone. She raises, slaughters, butchers and cures two to three pigs a week, every week, all year long. She is my new hero.
The bacon made with these pigs tastes and smells of that earthy farm perfume that distinguishes ’small-batch’ farm-raised charcuterie from the sanitized version of pork products that Americans have come to know and love. It only happens when the farmer is the cook and in this case, the butcher and charcutière as well. I call it ‘close-to-the-earth’ gastronomy.
What do you know about pigs and pork? Think again. Think France. Think 5 generations of raising pigs.
This could be your new teacher.
(Fergus Henderson admonished us years ago to ‘hug our butchers’ and today Ed Bruske inspired to me hug my teachers. Hugs to the garden teachers here at Slow Cook.)
Photography by Eugene Frerichs while at the Kitchen-at-Camont this summer. To see more of her work while in residence here, click here.
Merci!
