First, build one of these:

There’s a long guide in Sean Brock’s “Heritage” or you can read this fascinating piece, “How to Build a Pit and Cook a Whole Pig Like a Champion Pit-master” from the aptly named Ox & Bock blog. Whichever route you follow, either way, you’re going to lose at least a weekend. But you (and your grateful guests) are going to eat well…

It’s looking more and more as though the old saw by Adelle Davis is right. Front-load the calories at breakfast, a light lunch and then little or no dinner.

© Natalya Balnova

So, my earlier recommendation for breakfast at Hawksmoor, still seems OK

Thanks @PittCueCo, for this piece of sheer delight; a pig’s head. Strict, molten awe man. Strict, molten awe.

© Pitt Cue 2017 https://twitter.com/PittCueCo/status/899600998066524160

A rather beautiful explanatory line drawing …

… from the canonical “Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry Curing” by Michael Ruhlman.

But if you get them muddled up when ordering, who cares? They’ll both be delicious. And they both contain pork. Or even just order the two of them and put them both together, holus-bolus. That would be the shit.

“The place served tonkotsu-style ramen—it’s the porkiest ramen broth you can get, with the pork fat emulsified into the broth—and there were bowls of hard-boiled eggs everywhere that customers helped themselves to while they waited for their soup.” Dave Chang of Momofuku

This is what a good tonkotsu looks like, courtesy of this fascinating piece by the always reliable and scientifically rigorous J. Kenji López-Alt …

© J. Kenji López-Alt

…whilst this is his take on tonkatsu in another hugely detailed piece; as always, far more than just a bald recipe.

© J. Kenji López-Alt

2018 and Japan gets closer by the day…