Charcuterie, smoking, curing, brining and all things porcine. Brought to you from deepest, darkest Cambs, England by Chris Bulow. In the smoker or in the kitchen....Salutate porcum!
Length: < 1 min Just a “heads up”, short post, to point out that the fine team at Butchr (aka The Meat Professionals Network) are carrying on adding to and updating the list I started last year of female butchers in the UK — and… Read More »Women butchers via Butchr…
Length: 4 mins You know how important something must have been — and latterly now is again — to the Japanese diet (and their psyche) if your Emperor decides not to ban pig when prohibiting the eating of most any other meat ¹ as he… Read More »Banned by the Emperor; never a boaring life eh?
Length: 3 mins “Crisply braised, A paragon of fat and lean Drips juicily upon the pit. Sustainer of the South, The Pig doth yearn to Sacrifice and serve. I eat it lustily, Sauce-stained and smiling.” Anonymous. Just before I do more on Spain… Read More »Mangalitsa; pork perfection proven?
Length: < 1 min OK, it probably doesn’t take a genius to figure out, even with just these few words as your only clues, what country we’re planning to be in, sometime in 2017… Yup; we’re off to 日本国, Nippon, also known as Toyoashihara no mizuho… Read More »Chasing down Kagoshima Kurobuta かごしま黒豚, sharp ‘blue steel’ knives; gampi washi & Satsuma pottery
Length: 2 mins With events across The Pond unfolding daily, all involving yet more of the madness of The Orange Stain, it’s beginning to look more and more like an outtake from The Man In The High Castle. So, we have decided that,… Read More »Pick a pintxo; punch a Nazi
Length: < 1 min I just know Val will roll her eyes at this and say “what, not that bloody Fergus, again“, but sorry sweetie, no apologies for highlighting again the work of two masters of their craft (rather than the more plodding efforts displayed by… Read More »Get ahead; get a head pie.
Length: < 1 min Address to a Haggis, by Rabbie Burns Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin’-race! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace As lang’s my arm.… Read More »A Burns sausage
Length: 2 mins The Spanish word “matar”, means ‘to kill’; the related word ‘matanza’ however refers to much more than just a simple death; it’s the name for the whole process that, extending over two or three days, starts with the actual slaughtering — involving… Read More »La matanza
Length: 4 mins I came across this expression whilst researching background on the Ossabaw and Ibérico pig breeds recently. It’s not actually a euphemism (although I’m told that it’s also been used as a slang term for male masturbation, but then what hasn’t?)…… Read More »“Slopping the hog”
Length: < 1 min Courtesy René Redzepi of Noma fame, is this demonstration of how sharp a knife can (and should be). Mine fail the test. At the moment…
Length: 5 mins “Pigs are omnivores, and the more options you give them to eat, the better the product is,” says Clay Trainum (of Autumn Olive Farms, Washington State). “It’s all about terroir and we have fantastic terroir here.” [Clay is from America. But that’s… Read More »Terroir or tierra? It’s ALL about the land, stupid.
Length: 3 mins A question asked by barbers in the “old days” (i.e. when I was younger). It’s supposed to be a (euphemistic) code used by them, to avoid asking the male customer directly if he wanted to buy some condoms, as in… Read More »“Something for the weekend, Sir?”
Length: < 1 min Bacon & Eggs The chicken contributes, But the pig gives his all. Ain’t that the truth? Take a look at this plateful of Earthly delights from those fine folks at Riverford at The Duke of Cambridge in Islington. Ethical and… Read More »A pig poem, by Howard Nemerov
Length: 3 mins Nola jan jakitea, nahikoa jakitea da; “To know how to eat, is to know enough.”– old Basque saying I’ve covered the rare & endangered breeds of Great Britain and heritage US ones also under similar threat plus one (le… Read More »Osasuna eta On Egin and the Euskal Txerria
Length: < 1 min …but that’s OK. It was fittingly after all, a report from earlier this year that, on July 20, 2016, the Slow Food movement awarded their 100th Ark of Taste product certificate to the breed society of …….<drum roll please> ……. The… Read More »A bit slow in reporting this news…
Length: 3 mins There’s an almost symbiotic relationship between pigs and apple trees and oak forests, that dates back thousands, probably even tens of thousands, of years. These great oak trees below are to be found in Brampton Wood where we walked yesterday.… Read More »Apples, oaks & acorns
Length: 3 mins Somewhere in the decade around 1430 — with King Henry VI on the English throne — one of the earliest, still extant, cook books was being written called “Potage Dyvers“. It included a list of ingredients (or “bills of fare”)… Read More »Pork “meatballs”; to the Lancastrians they were pompys
Length: 2 mins …it’s yet another arriviste immigrant from Spain (along with the Ossabaw & Mulefoot amongst others). But the Choctaw Hog is named after the Choctaw Native American tribe; who, whilst they weren’t the only people in America to take advantage of this… Read More »The Choctaw isn’t a native American…
Length: < 1 min I’m looking at making my own “peameal bacon”. This is an iconic Canadian dish (despite some totally bogus claims to the contrary from their brash, shouty neighbour in the south); it’s a wet-cured pork loin taken from the back of… Read More »Not piecemeal, PEAMEAL.
