Cochon & Charcuterie- a workshop with Gascon farmer/butcher Dominique Chapolard

and American cook/teacher Kate Hill of the Kitchen-at-Camont.

In Gascony where Chapolard farms and Hill teaches at her 18th century Kitchen-at-Camont, good pork, duck, lamb and beef provide the backbone of classic charcuterie. Kate and Dominique are bringing their savoir-faire and love for this good Gascon food on tour to America with Cochon & Charcuterie: a workshop from Gascony to demonstrate the intricate art of butchering traditional French pork cuts for the preparation of authentic charcuterie. Professionals, cooks, food lovers and Charcutepalooza’ers will learn the basics of traditional French seam butchery and authentic charcuterie from these two passionate teachers and their welcoming hosts.

Cochon & Charcuterie full day workshops are scheduled in two locations on the East Coast- Stonyman Gourmet Farmer near Little Washington, VA and Claddagh Farms Cookery School near Belfast Maine; two half-day workshops are scheduled at The Herbfarm in Woodenville WA near Seattle, an evening workshop at the Portland Meat Collective in PDX created by former student Camas Davis in Portland Oregon and a Special XL version 2 -day workshop at Woodberry Kitchens in Baltimore. Links to the individual workshops are posted below and links will be lit as they go live:

March  14 & 15 9:00 am -1:30 pm     The French PIG: the elegance of the cut- The Herbfarm Restaurant Woodenville WA.

March 16 4:00- 8:00 pm                       Working with the Master- Portland Meat Collective- Portland OR location TBA

March 18 9:30am -5:00 pm                 Seed to Sausage Charcuterie- Claddagh Farms Cookery School (aka Podchef Farms), Montville ME (Special 10% Discount available for official Charcutepalooza participants)

March 20 9:30 am-1:00 pm or 9 am – 5 pm                The French PIG: glorious Gascony comes to  Stonyman Gourmet Farmer Little Washington VA

March 21 & 22                                            Two day XL Workshop  Mon 2pm -9pm, Tues 9 am-4 pm  Woodberry Kitchens Baltimore MD

In the half day workshops, Dominique demonstrates, using seam butchery method, the breaking down of half of a pig, a farm-raised fully-mature animal, into premium French cuts. Kate and Dominique then transform some of these basic cuts using traditional recipes- a repertoire of authentic Gascon charcuterie recipes using only salt and pepper, curing, and storage techniques. In this workshop you will learn to make and cure: ventrèche (pancetta), coppa, noix de jambon (a specialty cut of the Chapolards) and other whole muscle charcuterie.

The full-day workshop begins in the morning focusing on seam butchery and a hands-on option devoted to learning  the important anatomy, knife skills, professional techniques, meat hygiene, and skills to safely butcher a whole farm-raised pig in the French manner. During the Tasting Lunch, prepared under Kate’s expert guidance, we’ll talk about French full-circle farming as the Chapolards practice in Gascony. We call it Seed-to-Sausage farming. The afternoon we will transform the charcuterie cuts into traditional terrines, patés, ventrèche, poitrine salée, coppa, jambon and filet sec. We will also prepare the head for tete de fromage and other cooked charcuterie. In the full day workshop we will explore the four corners of charcuterie: cooked, salted, cured and  dried.

photo By Ron Zimmerman- taken at The Herbfarm

“…As soon as he made the first cut, the whole class shut up. Not a word. After a couple of minutes I realized I had my mouth wide open. I wasn’t the only one. Dominique’s skill with a knife was honestly like nothing I had ever seen…” Matt Wright

Team Camont: From the Kitchen-at-Camont in Southwest France come two of our valued teachers. Kate Hill created the Kitchen at-Camont as a culinary retreat on the foundation of an 18^th century Gascon farm. She teaches and organizes year-round programs, writes and blogs about her “artisan life’. Dominique sells Kate great fresh pork and charcuterie every week at the market. Over 15 years of good pork, they became friends and now teach these travelling workshops to share their love of all things Gascon, especially its Cochon & Charcuterie.

Dominique Chapolard, along with his 3 farmer/butcherbrothers and their wives, prepare eight to ten of their own farm-raised Large White/Pietrain/Duroc pigs each week. Fifty-two weeks of the year. 500 pigs. That’s a lot of charcuterie. Dedicated to the l’Art du Cochon on their small farm near Mezin, France, the Chapolard family grows all the grain and seed that the pigs eat for their entire 12-month-old life. Each week the humanely killed pigs are transformed into fresh cuts (roti, cotelettes, jambon, jarret, etc.) and charcuterie cuts (jambon, coppa, filet, tete, saucisson etc.) to sell at four weekly markets. All their charcuterie is cured using the time-honored traditions of just salt & pepper, smoke and time.

Kate Hill is a great cook, a patient teacher, a lyrical writer and the founder of the Kitchen-at-Camont. Since 1990 Kate has moored her Dutch canal barge at the foot of this historic French farmhouse, while patiently transforming a nettle infested and bramble covered hectare into a trio of organic gardens. A towering pigeonnier became a guest house, its piggery transformed into a pantry, and the two meter wide fireplace defined the ultimate Gascon kitchen.

Kate acquired her deep knowledge of Gascon cuisine from her friends and neighbors in France- the artisan food producers. Today, when she’s not tending bees or chickens, or weeding her vegetable garden, she’s guiding a novice’s hand in the kitchen, rolling out a buttery pie crust for guests, or challenging visiting chefs to explore beyond the kitchen’s walls and into the fertile Gascon countryside. An accomplished cook and teacher Kate has studied traditional and authentic Gascon cooking, home butchery and charcuterie for over two decades.

Kitchen-at-Camont presents Cochon & Charcuterie, a workshop in traditional French techniques and savoir-faire.

What others say:

Michael Ruhlman: http://ruhlman.com/2010/04/the-saving-graces-of-pigs-and-charcuterie.html/comment-page-1

Matt Wright: http://mattikaarts.com/blog/charcuterie/the-pork-pate-the-french-butcher-the-pig/

Hank Shaw: http://honest-food.net/2010/04/26/humbling-win-humbling-experience/

Camas Davis of Portland Meat Collective: http://ladebrouillard.com/?p=238

Chez US: http://www.chezus.com/traveling/charcuterie/

For more information contact: katehill at email dot com.

A new project, a new program for the Gascon Kitchen. Lisa Maiklem, our neighborhood fleuriste grows all her own organic flowers that she weaves into magical bouquets and airy celebration of color and scent. Running out of space to fill the growing demand for her jewel-toned and naturally eccentric blossoms, we hatched a plan to turn a little used strip of park by the petanque court into a Gascon Kitchen floral annex.

Beginning with seedlings that Lisa mothers in March and armed with a pitchfork, we are fencing out the hens and ducks, and creating a colorful and organic cutting garden that will welcome students and visitors to Camont’s productive park. A mowed lawn is slowly and thoughtfully becoming a living work of art.

Lisa Maiklem of le Frechou tends her ephemeral crops and weaves daring tapestries of posies.

Color against the stone gravel terrace at the Gascon Kitchen at Camont.

Tea cakes in Franco-Anglais style.

From green to a riot of color- a lot of hard work and planning. New programs are available for those interested in apprenticing with Lisa on how to create and maintain an organic cutting garden and business, program runs from March-October.

Green fields will give way to color this summer! Come join our new Organic French Cutting Garden  program.

http://www.fleursdete.com/

The bees at Camont are going to love it!

Our day started on Goats, moved into Cheese- chèvre, of course, and then finished on Cake. Goat’s Cheese Cake.

I welcomed @SabinaCuisina into the Gascon Kitchen a short week ago, fresh from midterms at her culinary institute and ready for a Gascon Spring Break. (thanks to hubby TP!) Sabina was not the first person in the Gascon Kitchen that lives and breathes cheese- goats, sheep or cow! But she is the first person to come who actually tends and milks goats and makes chèvre working with Liz and Peter Mulholland at the lovely Valley View Farms in Topsfield MA. So  I laid out a week for Sabina that was cheese based, with a few Gascon Kitchen extras thrown in. (P.S. check our program page for more info.) What we ended with was a wonderful experiment in making one of my favorite bought pastries and a successful first attempt at making a goat cheese cake called a tourteau.

These are the goats who make the milk,

that Sabine cares for,

that makes Phillipe  uses to make the cheese,

that he sells at the Agen Market,

and we buy to bring home wrapped in pure white paper…

Oops, what that round black ball? Le Marquis Noir de Jahan?

Otherwise known as a Tourteau Fromagé.

The Tourteau Fromagé is a specialty cake of Poitou-Charente region of Southwest France. Found usually in cheese shops, I developed a weakness for the finely textured, barely sweet cake.  Like an Angel Food Cake married to a N.Y. Cheesecake. After just one bite Sabina also fell for the sweet trap and we decided to test the recipe with some of the fresh goat cheese from Phillipe.

Local is as local does. And here in Gascony, you can tell that even our flour, that I buy in one kilo sacks at Pierre’s Boulangerie is a local product. Wearing the Musketeers habit, this is the classic ‘type 55′ all purpose flour used for most baking. EXTREME warning: The extraordinary eggs from my hens account for the extreme yellow color of the interior of the cake just as the extra-high temperature of the oven produces the traditional blackened crust. The contrast of soft tender cake and charcoaled top crust is part of the tourteaux charm. We produced three cakes from the following recipe that we made in small very deep mini-cassoles each holding about 12fl oz or 300ml. So inspired by the courage of the Cadets of Gascony- all for one and one tourteau for all!

Tourteau de Chèvre or a goat.cheese.cake

Preheat oven to 380’C or 530’F.  Yes. HOT! Very HOT!

For the pastry I sued a simple butter short crust.

• 100 gr butter- unsalted
• 200 gr flour- all purpose unbleached
• Salt- pinch
• 1 egg
• Water- as needed

Cut butter into flour and salt with fingertips. Add egg and water. Gather pastry crust into ball. Divide into three. Roll out each third, place into deep rounded molds. Trim. Prick.

Batter:

• 250 gr fresh goats cheese (after draining)
• 175 gr white sugar (125gr for yolks- 50gr for whites)
• 50 ml milk (about a tablespoon)
• 6 eggs, separated
• 60 gr flour
• Splash of vanilla/rum/Armagnac

1. Pass goat cheese through a food mill or ricer.
2. Beat in 125 gr sugar, milk and flour. (I used a whisk.)
3. Whisk egg whites with 50 gr sugar until stiff peaks. (we use a copper bowl and hand whisk in the Gascon Kitchen.)
4. Fold in a large spoonful of whites into the cheese/yolk mixture. Stir well.
5. Fold remaining whites into cheese/yolk batter.
6. Pour into unbaked pastry shells.
7. Place into HOT oven (280’C/530’F) for 10 minutes. The tops will puff up round and start to brown and blacken immediately. Don’t panic!
8. Then turn oven down to 220′C or 425′F for 40 minutes. remove from oven and let cool.

I used 3 small cassoulet bowls holding about 300ml/12oz each. this is what they look like baking. The forward one we slid in 4 minutes after the first two, and it was indeed underdone. but delicious.

The tops popped up while baking but resettled once they were removed from the oven. The pastry adheres to the batter and shrinks away from the sides making it easy to remove from the glazed bowls. The finished cake has a light and rich texture, akin to a rich golden angel food cake, barely sweet and scented of fresh cheese. Although commercially made with fresh cow’s cheese, the goat’s cheese tang makes a delicious difference. When in France make sure to try one from a fromager or make your own version at home. I am making mini ones this weekend for a large Easter gathering. Another golden eggy wonder from the Gascon Kitchen’s healthy hens. Merci to Sabina, TP, Phillipe and sabine and her goats

Camont's Henri IV

Merci Henri IV*.

You started a culinary tradition that outlasts event he most political promises when you declared in the late 1500′s-

Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!

If God spares me, I will ensure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!

France's Henri IV

In Gascony, a Poule-au-Pot- or a Chicken-in-a-Pot has the mythic attributes that many cultures attribute to chicken soup- heart warming, restorative & familial.  Plus it sports the royal seal of approval from the most mythic king of France- Good King Henry or le Vert Galant. Rather than sporting an ill pallor or being the envious sort, the Vert here refers to the vigorous, sharp or spicy adjective characteristics of being green– as in a sauce verte.**

Here at Camont, we have our own pecking order of royalty. Our Black Gascon rooster, Henri IV, shares more than a name with his royal predecessor. he shares the heroic and amorous reputation of being a true lady’s man. Henri of Navarre has the enviable  reputation of being the Royal Lady’s Man with a hundred ladies-in-waiting at his beck and call, referred to as Catherine de Medici’s Escadron Volant or her famous flying squadron. Henri of Camont has his own ladies in waiting, laying at his beck and coco-ri-co or dashing about the le Parc de Basse-Cour or our Barnyard Park.

So when it came time ‘cull the flock’ and ‘harvest some meat’ , in other words remove a non-productive hen who had stopped laying (taking room & board away from the rest of the working girls), I turned to Henri IV of Navarre’s words and prepared a simple version of a traditional French Sunday dinner- la Poule-au-Pot.

First we killed the hen…

Now before I segue into a rant about a lot of ‘amateur’ urban farm killing taking place in back lots, or self-taught so-called-expert butchery (in the bad sense of the word) on small farms for enthusiastic but unwitting restaurants, let me make a positive appeal for working with the real experts. Experts are those men and women who have worked all their lives raising our food. They are trained in agricultural schools, on family farms, and as apprentices to others previous generations of experts.

Marie-Rose Blancuzzi, my go-to-neighbor and friend came by for a hands-on demonstration. Marie-Rose is a French housewife. She is also an expert chicken killer. Every year since she married the dashing Italian Franck Blancuzzi, nearly 50 years ago, she has raised, slaughtered and cooked hundreds of substantial farm chickens. I have killed a handful of chickens and ducks, fish, pigs over these Gascon years. But I like learning hand-to-hand, and I wanted Marie-Rose to show me some trucs or tricks. Mostly what she showed me was how simple and easy to make it while being sweet and gentle with the good hen who had laid 2 years worth of eggs- somewhere around eggs or so.

So we took the hen from the cage where I had rested her overnight with a sister hen away from the others, (in the end we didn’t kill the second the hen; she got a timely reprieve because she laid an egg in the cage). Marie-Rose cradled her under her arm like a furry black basketball, while Erika grabbed a knife, a pot of hot water and her camera.

I held the hen by her feet and wings while M-R held her head and beak closed. She then extended her neck, sliced the thin sharp knife just under the earlobe and through the main arteries. Holding the head over a pan in which to collect the blood, Marie-Rose encouraged the hen, “Va, va…” I held the body as her life left and the muscles relaxed, her comb and earlobes pale.

Now to pluck.  A quick dunk of the feet first allowed us to peel off the tough outer skin of the feet. I would use the feet in the soup.

Then a few up and down dunks into the hot not boiling water ( approx. 140′F) before the two of us starting at the wings, began to pluck the soft feathers.

Within a few minutes, we were done and the feathers and warm water went into the compost pile. a Perfect way to jump start the pile. The hefty warm carcass sported plump breasts, meaty legs and well-developed bone structure. Back in the kitchen, M-R showed me a neat trick to eviscerate the carcass much like cleaning a foie gras duck.

She removed the mostly empty tripe (not feeding her the night before or early morning made for a cleaner removal of the intestines), the windpipe, crop, gizzard, heart and a surprisingly golden fatted liver. The excess amounts of fat in her cavity attest to how well-fed Camont’s free-range birds are and the liver, like a mini-foie gras was a tasty treat for cooks and helpers alike. We split the chicken in two, each of us taking a half of the hefty nearly 3 kilo bird. I’m not sure how Marie-Rose cooked her half yet, But I chose to make a very local, very Gascon, very easy version of Henri IV’s famous poule-au-pot.

Henri IV's Famous Poule-au-Pot

Cooking the laying hen for much longer than a commercially raised fryer, I used carrots, onions, thyme, bay, garlic, salt & pepper for the base as it stewed away for over two hours. The broth it made was/is heavenly and we ate the chicken, soup and all with some cardoon slices and made an eggy golden potato puree to serve as a sort of rough dumpling.

Happy I am to have a chicken every week in my pot. It doesn’t have to be Sunday. It doesn’t have to be a economic promise. But it does have to taste good! Merci Henri.

All fotos here by the Gascon Kitchen’s 2010 Photographer in Residence

Erika Hildegarde Johnson

*for more about Henri IV start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France

**for your “French-word-a-day”

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I love honey. I use honey in many of my traditional recipes like pain d’épice, chevre, miel & armagnac tartine or a pan-seared foie gras aux 4-épice. Best of all, I love honey straight from the pot, drizzled over warm toasted bread that has been smeared with fresh salted butter. But I have never, ever had such delicious honey as that Miel de Ronces (bramble honey) from local beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto.

This year I wished for a bee swarm and got one (see archives here), followed the #Tweehive happening on Twitter and have been planning to integrate more beekeeping in Camont’s resident programs. Only problem was WHO would be our King Bee?

While working on a chapter for my book of French food producers- “Butcher, Baker, Armagnac-maker’, I have long ‘stalked’ this honey man, this beekeeper, this sweet pillar of the market. This week Photographer Xtraordinaire Tim Clinch, fall intern Julia Leach, and I went across the Garonne River and through the woods to discover the sweet secret way of the beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto at his Ferme de la Chateau Madaillan. After coffee with his smiling new bride, (they have lived together 30 years and just married 5 months ago!), Narcisse told me a few sweet secrets and, at last, I know the answer of just how he makes THE BEST HONEY IN GASCONY.

Want to know how? Then join us this spring in France for the inaugural Apiculture Internship at

La Ruche… outside the Kitchen-at-Camont.

April-June 2010.

Narcisse Ferranoto by Tim Clinch

French Beekeeper Teacher at Camont

Created by Julia Leach, 8-week stagiere at the Kitchen-at-Camont.

Fall ’09.

]]> http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/10/26/bon-jour-les-poulets/feed/ 1 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.