So, this is a book about pigs from head to foot. No, I’m not being literary. I am being literal: head to foot. The last quarter of Pork has chapter on offal and here you will find recipes for:
- Tongue in parsley peppercorn jelly
- Tail soup with jumbo couscous and cabbage
- Warm liver parfait
- Sherried kidneys
- Braised hearts with 40 cloves of garlic
- Brain and avocado wrap
- Roasted stuffed pig’s head with pistachios, dates and parsley
I suspect, strongly suspect, that these are dishes that have not crossed your table. They might soon, if you are a culinary explorer. Offal is a trend and more and more chefs are trying to do what our ancestors did: use the whole animal.
Authors Phil Vickery and Simon Boddy are British, as perhaps the titles of those recipes might tell you. The subtitle of this book is, I'll point out, "Preparing, curing & cooking all that's possible from a pig." Vickery is a Michelin winning chef with fourteen cookbooks under his belt. He grew up in the country with pigs and they have been a central apsect of his life. As an adult, when he tried raising pigs to duplicate the pork products he had tasted in Spain, he failed. His was a farm boy and a chef and writer, but he was not a famer or a butcher.
Simon Boddy is a butcher, one actually with a disdain for chefs but a deep understanding of pork, the breeds, the fat contents, the ways to make a damn good sausage. The two men have teamed up, raising great pigs, educating people and now literally riding a hog wave.
Wave? What’s the most popular meat? Beef, chicken, … No, it’s pork, by a 33% margin. Pork. Domesticated from wild boars perhaps 15,000 years ago in what is now Turkey, pork has been a part of human culture for these thousands and thousands of years. And in that culture, for most of the time, there has not been “surplus” food around. When the family pig was slaughtered in the fall after a spring and summer of feeding, the family was obligated to create recipes for every last morsel.
In British culture, there evolved a complicated series of recipes that became ones like those offal ones listed above. It’s good food actually. And I might be tempted. But, as I said, you find those offal offerings in the last quarter of the book.
I will admit it’s the front three-quarters of the book that grabbed my attention. Things a little more familiar, shall we say. But not too familiar. No the beauty of this book is the elevated recipes that are here beginning with the very first one:
- Braised pork shoulder with dried blueberries and elderberries
Now, that pork dish I have not had, but I am eager to try. In fact, there’s a bevy of porcine delight in Pork:
- Juicy pork cutlets with warm winter coleslaw
- Fragrant Pork Vindaloo
- Pork and shrimp spring rolls with dipping sauce
- Pork tenderloin scallops with blackcurrants and heavy cram
- Roasted pork shoulder with sauerkraut, cider vinegar and mustard
- Spicy sausages braised in red onion marmalade
- Succulent pork with plums, sugar and onion
Vickery believes that pork is the most versatile meat you can cook with. Those recipe titles, stretching from Britain through Europe and onto Asia, support his claim with substance. You can pair almost anything with pork. Adding sweet and sour seems to be a worldwide obsession, a good obsession.
I mentioned that the authors were British and that proves to be very humorous. They note that in Britain the ribs have been considered a by-product. It happens they traveled to the United States and Down South they learned about rib barbeque and … Well, their own fantastic rib recipes are in the book. I don’t believe they consider rips to be anything less than top dollar now, or top pound.
Pork is organized by location in the animal:
- Shoulder and ribs
- Belly, loin and chops
- Ham
- Bacon and pancetta
- Sausages
- Offal [our starting point]
That sausage chapter, for example, is not just about using sausages. It’s about making them. Consider this very British sausage concoction:
Pork with Leek and Stilton Sausages
Yield: makes 2 ¼ pounds
Ingredients:
- 1 pound 10 ounce pork shoulder
- ½ tablespoon ground white pepper
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- ⅔ cup chilled water
- ⅓ leek, washed well, sautéed until soft, and cooled
- ⅓ cup Stilton cheese crumbled
- Hog casings
Preparation:
Grind the pork through a ⅓ inch plate into a bowl.
In a separate bowl, add the seasoning to the bread and ix well. Pour in the water and leave until the water is absorbed.
Add the soaked bread mixture to the meat along with the leek and Stilton and mix thoroughly until nice and tacky.
Stuff the sausage meat into hog casing and twist into 4 to 5 inch links.
You haven’t made sausage in a while. But, if you have one gram of “foodie” genes in you, you have thought about it. Doesn’t this recipe — with those ingredients and the ease of preparation — just make you think twice about purchasing a meat grinder?
Pork is a book for pork lovers at every level. Yes, you can stay with the front of the book and do the pork cutlets or scallops. You can venture deeper and make your own ham or sausage or bacon with the simple, yet very trustworthy recipes here. Or, you can go the whole hog, pun intended. You explore that offal chapter and perhaps discover that hog heart, with 40 cloves of garlic, reminds you of something. Something good and hearty, pun intended, again.
Pork is a book that can you lead you on many food journeys. How far you go, what you explore, is up to you. But whichever path you follow, you can trust the expertise of Phil Vickery and Simon Boddy. You’ll never look a pig in the eye the same way again. It's all that's possible.