The Foire au Jambon in the colorful Basque port of Bayonne.

A memory of a Bayonne surfaces from a long ago road trip looking for marine goods along the Atlantic coast for my barge, the Julia Hoyt. Rope, cord, and lines I was searching. I drove along the river port of the Adour outside of Bayonne in the very southwest of  Southwest France looking for some fishermen, a working boat or chandlery.  The newly fitted nose of wooden fishing boat peeked out of an over-sized hanger; I braked for a quick look inside. Yes. Men working with wood and fiber glass, paint and canvas. Ocean going small fishing boats. Sturdy, serious and hard-working. The boats and the men. I knew they would know. I have a nose for these things.

I thanked them for the directions to the Co-op Maritime in St. Jean de Luz, I turned to say au revoir  and stopped dead in my foodie tracks. Although the Captain in me was looking for cord, the Cook in me spotted a treasure trove of maturing hams hanging from every square foot of rafter space. A boat yard/charcuterie shed? Welcome to Baiona!

The image remained for years locked in my barge memories until this weekend when I dragged my petite soeur down the long diagonal chemin des vacances to the Basque coast for some ‘fun with ham’. Those crazy Basque jambonneurs know how to throw a fête!

First you need ham. Lots of it! Not your every day made-in-a-factory and way too salty ham… but smooth as salty silk, sweet and nutty, melt in your mouth, slow grown, properly-cured Jambon de Bayonne- a world-recognized mark of terroir. More than 25+ artisan charcutiers and salaisonniers were on hand to fête and share their wares especially the traditional salt rubbed, air cured, slightly piment d’espeletted Jambon de Bayonne. R&D here I come!

I was letting my nose lead me to the people I needed to meet through the ever increasing crowd of young, old and party goers. I stumbled and grabbed first a cornet of ham slices, then a sandwich of epic baquette and thick sliced chorizo, a plastic cup of red wine, then a taloak- a corn cake rolled out with a wine bottle, slapped on a dry griddle and rolled up with nutty Pyrenees cheese slices. The crowd grew louder, Basque songs erupting from crowded bars spilling out from the stone arcades along the quai of the Nive. It was a PARTY. A Ham Party!  The dark sky broke open, the drinking set smashed into already packed bars and we ducked into the inviting Au Bon Coin Les Pied de Cochon (the little red trimmed building in the middle  below!) where a happy marriage of good pork and fresh seafood, Madiran and Jurançon wines consoled our sodden spirits.

The next morning before the Easter bunny made his rounds, I was back at the fair set up along the Nive. Alone with a convivial group of producers setting up for the last day of ham madness- before the ham mass, the ham dancing and the ham parade. There were lots of slices, shavings and sandwiches to produce. My strategy was to arrive too early, grab some pics, some names, and buy some large pieces of the best ham I could find. I hit pay dirt, ham motherload, pink gold.

I met the man. The Ham Man. Eric Ospital. Son of Louis. Smiling here with his mentor and kitchen godfather- Gabriel  Biscay on the left- one of France’s Meilleur Ouvrier de Cuisine ( in other words- a Chef’s Chef) I got the inside scoop of all things ham. It was no surprise that he and two other young elite producers, Christian Montauzer and  Eric Mayté, were the second generation continuum who produced the exceptional Ibaïona mark of distinction. “We’re the inner circle, like Romanée Conté… in ham.”

Just these three producers work to a credo established by their fathers. Ibaïona  branded hams are only made from pigs grown slowly on quality barley, wheat and corn, achieving a minimum weight of 150-180 kilos, and then cured and air dried in the four winds of the Basque Country for a minimum of 15-20 months. Branded on the rind and draped in a medallion, these fine hams and the fresh pork from the pigs are earmarked for the best restaurants and houses in Europe from the French Presidential Palace to top Parisian restaurants- la crème de la crème de Jambon.

After a coffee and another few slices of ham with Eric, Gabby and Christian, I loaded my basket with samples to bring back to Camont and taste with friends and professionals- a Noix de Montauzer Ibaiona ham, slices of Ospital Ibaiona, and the dried beret saucission of Maison Mayté. The Ham Party in Bayonne might be over for this year, but the Ham Chronicles-at-Camont are surely just beginning…

Friday roars with Thunderstorms that strip the Cherry Tree and carpets the grass in pale petals.

Bacon left his latest love bunny out in the storm.

The Easter Pig heralds ham for chocolate and the four coqs crow a rainy morning.

Saturday south we drive to Bayonne and the fresh salt breeze that dries mountain hams.

Sunday will be sunny and warming through Espelette and the Pyrenees homelands.

Spring beginnings for new month long Charcuterie-at-Camont courses, limited spaces available for October.

This is what the days look like through my i-phone- subtly altered states of deliciousness as we tackle the cassoulet kind of season.

It begins with a bean.

Not just any bean, but a fresh from the pod, first pick of the season, plump pillow of a bean we call Coco, Coco de Paimpol.  (for more info about this sweet bean from Brittany- http://www.cookipedia.co.uk/wiki/index.php/White_bean) . These beans are sold in large netted bags by the 20 kilograms and they are one of my favorites for making Cassoulet. Since they are not completely dried when sold in their pods, they take a scant 30-40 minutes to cook with no pre-soaking.

It doesn’t take long for our energetic group to shell the 2  kilos we bought yesterday at the market. The large thumbnail sized pearls fill the bowl.

As the beans cook in a broth of their own making w/ leeks, carrots, thyme, bay, peppercorns & a bit of bacon the crew starts work on sorting out the pork rillettes we started yesterday.

 Hand work is good work and the piece of charnu or coppa that we simmered for 4 hours yesterday falls apart and mixes with the gelée and fat from the confit.

Once seasoned, tasted and potted in a group of little bowls, we covered the rillettes with a layer of duck fat before storing in the fridge.

While we worked, we stopped for a simple mid-day snack- fresh tomatoes, more rillettes, and a salad of green beans dressed with Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s gift- Pistachio Oil!

Fatally delicious, with a sweet nutty taste, the haricots verts bath in this green glory accompanied by a slice or two of freshly cured pork tenderloin.

The Chapolard’s latest’s pig offering to the Grrl’s Meat Camp crew was the source for the 18-inch long tenderloin, salted, peppered and hung for 2 weeks in my Piggery Larder. This might be my newest, favorite muscle to cure and you Charcutepalooza’ers had better start sourcing your good mature pork now!

Next we teased out the bones from the duck legs we had confited, they make a much nicer presentation in the cassoulet. I’ll tell you more about that later this week.

We cooked the saucisse de toulouse, browned up some andouillettes, and assembled the whole savoury package in a Not brother’s cassole. The day ended around Camont’s table as a smattering of rain drops officially crowned this Cassoulet season. Let the beans begin!

Kate’s Official Camp Cassoulet Recipe here!

Pork Belly by Tim Clinch

I swim in a sea of charcuterie every week as I plow the waves of good food produced by the neighboring farms of the Lot-et-Garonne: salted hams, meaty saucisson, head cheese, terrines, patés, and other cured and confited parts of the fatted pig. As a cook, I began my sea trials in meat here as I discovered the extraordinary flavors of each cured piece of the pig. I started to learn my hind leg for jambon from my forward leg- shoulder for fresh saucisse de Toulouse. Then it was loins and chops, ribs and collar. Next came the innards…

Like all novices, I worked my way up and down the coast of liver, kidneys, brain, lung, and blood. I watched as pigs were slaughtered and butchered on family farms, one at a time, with care and respect for the ‘year of meat’ to come. Then I began to help- trimming meat, carrying ourt orders from the grand-mères as whole pigs were put up in jars- canned, sterilized in a water bath and stored, or salted, peppered, and hung to age in a corner of the barn.  But it wasn’t until I barged into the life of a small pig farm that I learned the most important past of this ocean of charcuterie. It’s the pig. Just simply the PIG.

Imagine the first visit to the Chapolard farm in 1997 with my good friend Elaine Tin Nyo. She wanted to do a series of photographs and videos for one of her edibly inspired art exhibits. I had already begun cooking my way through the pig with the market advice of Marc Chapolard, who selling me a piece of pork a week talked me through the process of cooking boudin, salting a tail, or roasting a collar. There is an image of that first visit to Baradieu- Marc holding out his hands full of ground grains- grain that they grew on the farm to feed their pigs.

Oh, Pigs eat too. I want to know what I am eating eats. What? What do pigs eat?

lil'pig by Tim Clinch

My brain was moving slowly forward. These pigs eat wheat, barley, corn, oats, sunflowers, favabeans, soy… How big are they? Oh, big. Very big as these meat growing pigs are intended for charcuterie as well as fresh meat. Twelve months old, 400 lbs+ of solid red meat and firm flavorful fat. The Chapolards know that their mature pigs’ meat is fully developed in both flavor and structure. Here in Gascony, we believe that the best charcuterie is not just from certain types of breeds finished on fancy diets, but rather from a well balanced diet fed its entire life and a ‘grownup’, fully mature animal. Oh, this pork meat is like beef. Not veal. Can you imagine making corned veal, veal jerky, or veal bresaola? The meat cells must develop sufficiently to be able to cure properly both in flavor and in texture.

There are technical reasons behind all this, but for us amateurs of good meat our best chance to getting good pork is to ken your pork producer or artisan butcher and learn as much as you can, piece by piece. I have the luxury of, after 14 years, knowing the Chapolards well.  Baradieu is not a pigshit-free showcase farm; but they raise their Large White/Pietrai/Duroc pigs with the sort of care over 12 months from birth to slaughter that produces delicious and tasty meat. Like this slab of pork belly I used for my ventrèche géante.

“THE PRESENCE OF A BUTCHER IN A DISTRICT SAYS AS MUCH FOR ITS INTELLIGENCE AS FOR ITS WEALTH. THE WORKER FEEDS HIMSELF, AND A MAN WHO FEEDS HIMSELF THINKS.”

H. De Balzac- “The Country Doctor”

Ventrèche is bacon.

A sort of fresher, peppery, meaty, and naturally porkier bacon.

Almost all the Gascon recipes I know start with a little this- duck fat, a little that- thyme and bay, and a handful of lardons…usually cut from a thick slab of ventrèche. Salted just overnight,  the ventrèche (ventre means belly in French) is covered liberally with fine fresh ground pepper then rolled tightly and tied before gently smoking overnight. It flies off the market stall chez Chapolard at Nerac in large pieces, thick slabs or sliced thinly. This is cooking charcuterie that adds flavor to civets, daubes, and cassoulets; or cooked and served as part of a main course, on a meaty salad, or with a couple golden-yolked, fresh farm eggs.  Tim Clinch makes these meat portraits look so delicious!

This particular piece of ventrèche is made from a 12 month old Yorkshire/Landrace/Duroc cross, fed on home grown grains (wheat, barley, sunflower, corn, soy and feverol) and slaughtered, butchered, cured and sold- all within a 20 mile radius. I call  it Seed-to-Sausage. You can read more about the Chapolard farm here. Tim photographed it as part of a Natural Light/Natural Food photography workshop. on my terrace table, outside under the vines.

Our Artisan Butchery & Charcuterie students usually work wrapped in white at the

Chapolard’s Baradieu farm in the cold stainless steel and white tiled cutting room build inside one of the old wine barns or chais. It’s not fancy, but it’s modern and meets the EU norms for hygiene. This is Marjorie, a French apprentice butcher in the cutting room.  She’s attacking a ham to be cut into chucks for making saucisson.

But when real hand-to-hand patience is needed, we sometimes take a field trip over to the centuries old house where Madame and Monsieur Chapolard live- grand-pere and grand-mere to us. This day they were teaching Sarah Wong, Chef Educator at the Seattle Culinary Academy how to roll and tie the ventréche that are sold at the Saturday Morning market at Nerac. I shot some video on my Canon G11 without a thought of editing, sounds track etc. Now with Charcutepalooza at hand and the February challenge being salt curing, I thought I’d share how we do it …down on the Gascon farm.

The ventreches are salted overnight, sprinkled liberally with fresh ground pepper, then rolled and smoked over night. They are sold the next day at the market. Fast and delicious!

So for all my Charcutepalooza friends, here’s a taste of Gascony and some some Gascon/Basque music by Xarnege to discover and enjoy!

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.

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

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/29/could-this-be-your-perfect-pig-on-an-october-morning/feed/ 0 http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/25/sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/25/sunday-grasse-matinee-hatching-ideas/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:33:27 +0000 Kate Hill http://kitchen-at-camont.com/?p=970

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.

How a cook’s mind works. Not recipe development, but a ramble through past experience as it teaches the present.

That perfect  dark gooey figgy filling has been resting a couple days and I have some time between classes and visitors. I am going to figure out how to make those ‘piggy rolls’ that Miles offered me the other day. I’ve had all sorts of ideas on how to make them from baking them like brownies- fig bars, to making a tube like ravioli and filling it, to rolling up a long strip and cutting them in finger lengths when done. In the end, the bar idea won out over being too fidgety. I am an impatient cook.

But first to come up with the a crunchy chewy cookie/pastry to wrap around the filling. (Careful- dangerous segue about to occur) I’ve been thinking about my grandmother Julia all month. She would have been 102 this year. Which means she was about my age now when she came to stay with us that summer that I was 11. She was my own personal Julia- Julia DiPietrantonio  from Portland, Maine.  Over the years, she visited us all the way from Portland to Hawaii, and later to Arizona or Washington. Long trips in those days on prop-driven airplanes and long days on buses. Widowed young,  footloose and fancy free,  she’d come for  a few months, staying long enough to tell us all her stories, and managed to teach me some of her practical magic- cooking.

Sorry Mrs. Child,  but my Julia taught me to cook. I remember the tastes, the smells and her hand-to-hand method of how much flour to egg to make macaroni (it was never called pasta!); always three different kinds of meat to make tomato sauce- beef, pork and a chicken; a favorite Christmas dish was something we called ‘weed soup’ made with chicken and curly endive and served with a big bowl of over-sized eggy croutons, fried in olive oil and dusted with Parmesan cheese. I never wrote any of these ‘recipes’ down. But I cooked them, again and again. Over the years, I learned them by heart, like a song. My grandmother’s voice in my kitchen always.

When Grandma (my cousins called her Nona- odd to our westerner ears) didn’t visit, she still would send boxes of biscotti at Christmas. Long before UPS and overnight delivery, these hefty boxes would arrive some weeks after she had baked the anise scented cookies- pizelles and biscotti. The biscotti were tender and toasted, not hard as a brick, and half were  spiked with cherries, walnuts, and anise seeds- my favorites. Except for the anise seeds. These biscotti were nothing like the rock hard, fat free yuppie imitations that are served in coffee joints and urban bakeries. Julia’s biscotti would first crack under your teeth and then crumble in lardy tenderness. Her secret, lard, was used by everyone then- for pie crusts, cakes and biscuits. I still sing Julia’s biscotti song every Christmas as I make a few batches to give to friends- “a dozen eggs, a pound of lard, a handful of sugar, enough flour to make the dough…”

Yes, a pound of lard.

(Quick return from familial revery) My Piggy Fig Bars are a tribute to the way we stitch a life together… or a recipe. A long ramblin’ song of friends, family and good food. Here, I played on my basic Gateau Basque recipe, a rich fresh egg pastry  then in another piggy nod I used half lard and half butter. I grabbed the wholewheat flour for the nutty toasted tasty I like and flavored it with a splash of  ” Le Secret”, a Gascon… well, secret.  Rolled, patted it, market it with a B and put in a pan and baked in the oven for you and me!

Kate’s Piggy Fig Bars.

ingredients:

• 100 gr lard
• 100 gr butter
• 200 gr sugar
• 300 gr whole wheat flour
• pinch of salt
• 4 whole eggs
• splash of flavoring: vanilla, almond, etc

Cream the fat and sugar together, whisk in the eggs, add flour, salt and flavoring. Mix well into a ball. Cut in half  and pat one half into a brownie pan 9×12″, about 1/4 ” thick.   Spoon a layer of figgy jam filling over the pastry. Then pat out the second half of dough on a pastry sheet, mat or parchment and cover jam filling, making a cookie sandwich. Back in a moderate oven, for 30-35 min. Mine were a little dark on the edges, but still chewy inside. Cut into bars while still warm. Pour glass of milk.  Burn tongue on hot filling. Smile back at Julia. Yikes, I have turned into my grandmother.

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!