Posted by The Bay Citizen, CA on June 04, 2010 at 16:16:22:
Pigging Out at the Fairmont Hotel
At Cochon 555, five local chefs serve up five heritage pigs
By Queena Kim on June 4, 2010 - 1:20 p.m. PDT
There used to be a time when cooking contests were confined to the County Fair. Then came Iron Chef, Hell's Kitchen and Top Chef.
Now, Cochon 555 puts another twist to the genre. Their shtick? Give five chefs five pigs - head, carcass, hoofs and all - and see how they dismantle and cook it. And in case you're wondering what the last "5" is for? Cochon 555 also asks 5 local winemakers to provide drinks for the nosh.
Dubbed a "culinary event," Cochon 555 travels from New York to Stillwater and on Sunday, it'll be at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.
Cochon 555 selected five local chefs and gave them each a heritage pig on Tuesday. For the event, chefs bring back the pork in the form of finger-foods. In American Idol style, "the people" will vote on who made the tastiest bites. A panel of esteemed chefs will weigh in, too.
Cochon 555 says its mission is to promote pig diversity by raising cultural awareness of heritage pigs.
Pig studies anybody?
Three chefs who are participating in Sunday's event, identified by their business and the kind of pig they're cooking, discuss the finer points of of the breed.
Morgan Maki, Bi-Rite Market
Pig: Mangalitsa from Suisun Valley Farm
QK: Tell me about the Mangalitsa.
MM: Mangalitsa is a breed of pig. It's a neat pig because it's really wooly. The breed is originally from central and eastern Europe. They bring it up to a bigger weight there and use it as a curing pig.
QK: If you cooked the Mangalista up as bacon and put it next to a Niman's, could you tell the difference?
MM: The texture would be different, and the proportion of fat to meat would be different. The reason why Mangalista is a cool pig is because they store a lot of back-fat, two to three inches. It's poly-unsaturated fat, which has a lower melting point and creamier consistency.
QK: So it would be fattier than Niman bacon?
MM: Yeah.
QK: Now, Mangalitsa is hard-to-find. Why?
MM: It's a specialty product and more expensive because there's not a lot of them being grown in this country. Only one or two people have breeding stock. There's a fellow in Washington state who breeds the pig, but he'll castrate the piglet before he sells it to you.
QK: Because he doesn't want you to breed it?
MM: Yeah, you can't import a live pig into the country anymore but he had his pig before the USDA made the rule.
Thomas McNaughton, Flour + Water
Pig: Berkshire/Duroc from Devil's Gulch Ranch
Q: So tell me about the pig you're cooking this weekend?
TM: Oh no! It's this weekend?
Q: Yeah, isn't it this weekend!
TM: I'm just joking! We're cooking a Berkshire/Duroc from Devil's Gulch and Mark Pasternak from Devil's Gulch kind of connected us to Cochon 555. We work with a lot of small farmers and go through at least one pig a week.
QK: Oh yeah, I saw the staff picture on your website and somebody was holding a pig!
TM: No, that's a lamb.
QK: Oh.
TM: Bringing in the whole animal is extremely labor intensive, but it's nice to see an event like this grow awareness. So many up-and-coming cooks don't know how to break down an animal anymore. Things just show up in boxes. And I bet I can show them a picture of a guinea hen in the wild, and even if they've cooked with one, they wouldn't know what it was.
QK: So the Berkshire-Duroc is a mix. Berkshire is a pig and Duroc is a boar. What's it taste like?
TM: The Berkshire is fattier and Duroc is leaner. Most people say Berkshire for fat and Duroc for flavor. The flavor depends on the ratio of Berkshire and Duroc. But generally it has an intense porky flavor, and either people love it or don't. It has a deep, red hue color to the meat.
QK: But I thought pork was the white meat.
TM: No, a lot of people are used to the pork you buy at the supermarket. That's what most people eat and that's why they think pork has a neutral flavor and is a white meat. When people eat a real pig, they always say they never tasted so much flavor!
QK: Why does it taste so different?
TM: It's the feed. The pigs at the market are stuffed with non-nutritional food to bulk up the weight and so they don't have much flavor. It's like feeding somebody cardboard. When we buy a whole pig and roast the leg, you can taste what they're grazing on.
QK: Like, you can taste if it's corn or grass?
TM: Yeah, if you feed a pig nothing but acorns it's going to have a nutty flavor. It comes through in the fat. Even with these old heritage breeds. If you have a brother and sister pig and you separate them and feed the two separate diets, they're going to taste different.
QK: What are you going to do with the pig?
TM: Is this going to be printed before the event?
QK: Yeah.
TM: Is anybody else telling you?
QK: They're telling me generally what they're doing.
TM: Ok, I'll tell you we're doing five different temperatures and we're cooking up the whole pig. We literally threw away about two unusable pounds. But we're using everything, bones, mouth, ears...
QK: Ears?
TM: Yeah, at the restaurant, we braise them until they're tender and julienne them and fry them and put them in a pig ear salad with watercress.
QK: So, you fry it. Does it taste like bacon?
TM: No, there's no meat in the ear. It's gelatin. That's the thing about using the whole pig, there's a lot of gelatin in the skin.
Anthony Strong, Pizzeria Delfina
Pig: A Gloucester Old Spot from Clark Summit Farm.
QK: How'd you get chosen for the event?
AS: We're pretty big into pig. We go through pretty obnoxious amounts of pork in a pizzeria. We pretty much put pork on everything we can put it on.
QK: Do you use heritage pigs in your pizza?
AS: Yeah, all the pig we use is Berkshire pork from Eden Farms in Iowa.
QK: Ever cooked with the Gloucester Old Spot before?
AS: No, I'm really excited to, but I'm still waiting for my pig! Everybody was supposed to get their pig on Tuesday but I made a trade-off. I'm getting mine on Thursday, but I get to go up to Clark Summit Farm to slaughter the pig with their butcher.
I've butchered a lot of animals but I haven't slaughtered one. Having a connection to food is really important to me. We're going to slaughter it and bleed it and use the blood, too.
QK: What are you using the blood for?
AS: Blood sausage. We use six quarts of blood in blood sausage. We mix the blood with tons of minced up pork fat and bread and a little ground pork. Then add bay leaf and brown pepper.
QK: Do you know anything about the Gloucster Old Spot?
AS: I was on Wikipedia and printed some sh*it, but I've been so crazy busy. Hopefully, I'll get to read it at some point before Sunday.
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