Sweet Onion Pork Stew- l'Escadaoun- a Gascon specialty

My favorite French ‘pulled pork’ is called l'estouffade or l'escaoudoun in the Gascon patois. Tasted in a hideaway of a cafe in the Landes forest called La Croute du Pin near Reaup where it was made with the typique Noir de Gascogne pig, I re-created the dish here at Camont with most of the shoulder from Camas’ graduation pig. Once it cooked in the sweet onion sauce for a two hours, I ladled the sauce pork into large canning jars. When unannounced friends arrive for dinner, I’ll cook some Monalisa potatoes and serve them floating on an island of sweet onions pork, just like Madame did.

Recipe- for  Estouffade de Porc- l’Escaoudoun

• 2 kilos / 4 1/2 lbs. of farm raised pork shoulder, cut into large cubes
• 1 kilo of onions, sliced thinly
• 2 soupspoons of duck fat
• 1 bottle of sweet wine wine (jurancon or cote de gascogne)
• 1/2 bottle madera, sherry or white port
• 1 generous glass of armagnac
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• a large bouquet garni- lovage, bay leaf, thyme
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper, a lot of it!
• a large pick of quatre épice  (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves)

The basic recipe is to cook all of the above until the onions have melted, the pork is falling apart and the flavors of the sweet wine mingle with the onion in a caramel-colored sauce.

Cut #2- Pork Shoulder basics

* credit for chart

The Shoulder Cut of Pork is one of the most versatile cuts of meat in traditional Italian and French cuisine.
In France, the shoulder or épaule is cooked, cured, roasted, stewed, braised and made into pâtés.
A succulent shoulder roast stuffed with prunes and shallots is a classic French Sunday lunch. This summer we butchered the graduation carcass with the intent to can or cure all of the meat from half a pig. As I made a list of what to make with each cut of meat, I worried over the shoulder. The 25 pound boston butt and picnic ham is a lot of meat. (chart and pix of American cuts here)

In the end,  I decided on a smothered braised recipe I had eaten in a rustic restaurant in the Landes Forest. My escaoudoun a la Croute du Pins was made from artisan French pork like this farm produces.

Although the shoulder meatis fattier than some other cuts, it melts in your mouth when cooked well. Start to compare cuts in the butchers or supermarkets and then taste the differences by choosing two cuts and cooking the same dishes with both of them. The echine,high up on the shoulder makes a great roast but I prefer a braising and stewing the shoulder.

Miale-  Italian Pig

I wonder what Judy will make in Tuscany? 

Ribs-in-Jar: french fast food

This week at Whole Hog we started with the bone gnawing questions of what do Italians and French cooks do with ribs. Judy prepared a fabulous Naples-style Ragu here that turns into a Two-Meal Miracle. I decided to make a fast and furious rib dish to share with friends- French Fast Food.

What was so fast? I drove 4 kilometers to the nearest butcher (now that my 1-kilometer butcher shop has closed!)- 3 minutes. Bought the ribs- 2 minutes. Came home, cut them into single bone pieces- 6 minutes. Placed them in a large canning jar and poured marinade materials over them: a drizzle of our own honey, splash some red wine vinegar and apple juice & a generous pinch of salt and pepper- 4 minutes. Closed the jar, shaken not stirred and let rest while hanging out in the garden (read weeding!).2 hours doesn't count. Cooked the ribs over the grill with the sausage I bought for that night's dinner and then returned the ribs to the jar to store in the fridge.

Then I popped open a jar of simple summer beans I had canned last week (with thyme, bay leaf and Lovage)- 30 seconds. Placed the beans in a casserole dish- 30 more seconds. And slid them into a cold over, turned on a medium heat. 30 seconds de plus! Now just wait until hot- 30 minutes and EAT!

That's an easy 16 1/2 minutes of work, two hours of waiting, and 30 minutes to heat through.

Fast

French

Food.

I call it Ribs-n-Jar.

Not all French food takes a long time; the beans were done ahead of time one afternoon. It took me about one hour to shell and cook the fresh beans with the herbs and another 2 hour of canning time while I was doing something else (yup, weeding).Now I have three jars waiting for another fast meal.

The juices of the meaty ribs runs into beans to make a rich sauce.  Beans. Ribs. What's not to like? 
P.S. For all you "I don't have time to cooks", Check out some of the other things I have been cooking this week at my Kitchen-at-Camont here.

One Pot- Two Meals: Naples-style Pork Ragu

When Kate tossed the proverbial bone- RIBS as our Franco-Italo challenge for pork this week, I immediately remembered a rich luscious sauce I had in Naples last year at the bread festival I attended.

Strangely enough the sauce is called Ragu Genovese- Genova-style sauce. The recipe is not from Genova, but it is rather frugal- as are the Genovese, using equal weight of onions to meat in the sauce. The ragu is a classic for the traditional Sunday lunch or holidays and evokes images of mamma up early at the stove with the large pot simmering away all morning filling the air with the profume of love!

It is a long, slow cooked sauce which develops a deep rich flavor lost in todays fast food world.

Not only is the sauce fabulous, but the technique of cooking whole pieces of meat in a tomato sauce, creates two meals from one pot of cooking.

I chose the meatier thicker ribs for this recipe, leaving them in large pieces, which can be then cut for serving.

Salsa alla Genovese

inspired by Favurite- Renato Rutigliano

The traditional recipe often uses a whole piece of beef, a potroast.

I have found many families use various cuts of pork, ribs, sausages and or necks to enrich this sauce.

2 pound/ 1 kg pork ribs

2 carrots
1 celery stalk

3 pounds of onions ( I used the local red onions)

2 cups white wine

1/2 cup olive oil

4 tbs butter

4 tbs lard

2 ounces pancetta or salami chopped into tiny strips or cubes

salt and pepper

1/2 cup hot water

1/2 cup tomato paste

1 cup tomato sauce ( optional)

-Finely mince the carrot, onions and celery together and place in a pan large enough to hold the meat and vegetables.

-Also add the olive oil, lard and butter. Add the chopped pancetta or salami.

-Season with salt and pepper.

-Place the meat on top and start to cook over a low heat.

-Stir the pot occassionally to prevent sticking, the vegetables will give off a lot of liquid.

-Cook for at least one hour. The onions should start to caramelize.

-Add the wine, 1/2 cup additions at a time, letting it absorb into the sauce.

-Add the tomato paste dissolved in the hot water and the tomato sauce. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

-Cover and let cook for another two hours at least.

In Naples they say "pippare"- s tiny bubbling like the hot lava from Vesuvius!!!My friends actually cook the meat for at least 6 hours, you can immagine Grandmother getting up at 6am to have lunch ready at noon!!!

I cooked my ribs for two hours and then cooked the sauce for another hour. The sauce should glimmer when done and be very thick. Some people do not add any tomato sauce at all and more traditionally only tomato paste.

-Remove the meat from the sauce and keep warm.

-Serve the pasta with the sauce, a traditional pasta are Paccheri, a huge oversized hollow rigatoni.

The meat is served as a main course, mashed potatoes would be great to absorb the extra sauce!
I immagine this is where the idea of spaghetti and meatballs came from and Pollo alla cacciatore.Where meats are cooked in sauce and in America, the meatballs were left on the pasta! Chicken cacciatore is the same, often served with huge amounts of sauce, immagine how much nicer it would be to use that sauce on pasta and serve the infused chicken on its own.

France & Italy Redux- Pork Ribs

When Judy and I began this site a million years ago (ok, 2006) we were planning a piggy adventure for the Seattle IACP seminar with Fergus Henderson (see blog archives in sidebar). It was a way for us to organize the presentation and present supporting materials before the food world had adopted the e-way wholeheartedly. Fergus charmed us, taught us, and inspired us as well as the other 200 people in the room that day. The feeling was reciprocated. He said in his usual understated way, "It makes me a bit giddy. Why is everyone interested in me?" So I explained gently to him, "Fergus, here on Planet Food, you are a god, a maestro, a brave pioneer. And above all, food people are seeking 'The Way' in a too-virtual world. You offer them something visceral. Something they can hold. Smell. Eat. Digest. The nose-to-tail way of living.

And so it went all weekend that spring in 2006... pork, porc, maiale.
Now is the time to revisit what we were just exploring then. In the midst of a meat manifesto, a bacon explosion, a carniverous craving for flesh, bone and blood-- we return to honor Fergus Henderson's parting words, "Hug your butcher, please.'

From now until April 2010 when we return to the Northwest, this time to the IACP conference in Portland-Oregon- city of foodcart dreams and un-restaurants- we will be hugging our favorite Italian and French butchers as well as helping you learn about the Euro-way of pork butchery and curing. Charcuterie, recipes, portraits, pig lore, rare breeds, home butchery, and more to follow as we walk you through this oldworld pigearth where farmers are butchers, butchers are cooks and cooks are philosophers.

When I began this summer session of B&C (Butchery & Charcuterie) boot camp at the Kitchen-at-Camont I had no idea how deep we would go. Bone deep. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself seriously look at buying this for the workshops ...until I saw the price tag.

This week in honor of the last Summer weekends, we began at the inside, the structural key to loving the whole beast. The bone gnawing basics. The fatlicking fingers of tender meat. in other words...the ribs. Plain and simple. RIBS. Nothing spare about them.

Let's look at RIBS- neither acronym nor just a spare part, ribs are the very foundation on which we hang our bbq skills. Sticky. Sweet. Savory. Spicy. Think again. Think the Italian way. What do Italians do with ribs? Where does the butcher cut them? Or in France, what are the natives doing with the stubby little ribs, just buying 3 or 4 at a time? Check in for the answer from divinacucina and katedecamont and their butcher friends, here on the Going Whole Hog Road Show- part 2.

And yes, we are twittering as divinacucina and katedecamont.

Merci to www.arthursclipart.org for the artwork.

A Passion for Pork

I WANT YOU!

If you have a passion for pork like we do,
come and join Judy and Kate in their Whole Hog Workshops in France, Italy
or on the road.

Since we began the whole hog for our sell-out IACP conference presentation with the delovely Fergus Henderson of St. John's restaurant in London, there has been a lot of bacon under the bridge. We offer our personal Old World advice and flavors to the big new wwworld that craves the authentic at the table.

Workshops in France:

This February in Gascony, Kate Hill is celebrating All Things 'P' in France with a farm butchery course: cuts, home curing and classic charcuterie featuring the very old world Noir de Gascogne pig, cousin to the Tuscan Cinta Senese. For professionals and home butchers alike, we'll take the Whole Hog approach and with our master butchers breakdown an entire carcass in our own Kitchen-at-Camont.

Workshops in Italy:

Learn the secrets of Porchetta and other Italian specialties from Judy Witts, who has worked along side Master butcher Dario Cecchini and other fabulous butchers in the Central Market.

Italian specialties:
Porchetta: the how to primer
Soprasatta: Headcheese
Fegatelli: pork livers in caul fat-two ways
Roventini: blood "pancakes" savory and sweet
Lard- Tuscan Butter

On the Road:

Together Judy & Kate will bringing their favorite French & Italian butchers and bacon with them to the West Coast for a Spring Pig Frolic before the April IACP conference in Portland Oregon.

Want more information? leave a comment below.

Inspired in Bologna!

La Salumeria di Bruno e Franco
Via Oberdon, 16
Bologna

When in Bologna, one is in the land where pork is King!



On our day trip yesterday to meet with friends and do a little market filming, the selection preserved pork products was incredible.

Emilia Romagna is famous for it's pasta as well as it's pork, recipes change with every household and village.Very few recipes travel far in Italy,so the variety is incredible. Each area has it's own ways to prepare preserved pork. Salami's, sausages and prosciutto's. I was amazed at the wonderful variations on one of my favorite winter pork products, ciccioli, crispy little pieces of pork left over after rendering the fat. Here where was a moister, pressed version, made more like a soprasatta as well as the little crispy bits I amused to seeing.

But what I really want to try ( next time) is the pressed lard!
It looks very much like marble.



Doesn't that look fabulous???

Not having had enough pork- lunch today was a Spaghetti all'Amatriciana my way.

It is the first recipe I cooked for my now husband. When I served it, he walked out of the room without eating it at all. I had made it wrong!
He is my Italian life coach as well as culinary coach and I NEVER let that happen again!

Today he ate it all- I have had 25 years of practice!



My Amatriciana for two

200 gr spaghetti ( tradition is bucatini, a thick hollow spaghetti)
100 gr ( 3 ounces) smoked pancetta ( or thick sliced bacon)
1 small red onion, sliced
1 clove garlic
2 tiny birds eye chili's
olive oil
1 cup tomato sauce


Slice the pancetta into thin strips.
Saute' in pan until crispy.
Remove and saute the onion in the fat left from the pancetta, adding a little extra olive oil if needed.
Add the sliced garlic and break in the chili peppers. ( do not touch your eyes!)

Once the onion is cooked, add the tomato sauce and salt to taste.

Drain the spaghetti ( save some of the pasta water).

Place the spaghetti into the pan with the tomato sauce and saute.
the spaghetti will finish cooking by soaking up the tomato sauce.
Add some of the saved water if it gets too dry.

Add the crispy pancetta bits now and saute' again and serve immediately.

NO cheese!




I am leaving on Sunday for a month of teaching on the West Coast so I am building up my brownie points by cooking my heart out!

Dinner tonight was roast pork shins, stinche di maiale, one of the first dishes I had in Bologna about 20 years ago. Oven-roasted with simple rosemary, garlic, olive oil and sea salt.

Bake in parchment for 2 hours at 375 (or until the meat is ready to fall off the bones).
The last hour I threw tiny new yukon gold potatoes in the pan with sea salt, rosemary and olive oil. They melted in our mouths!



The secrets of the Italian kitchen.... great ingredients- prepared simply!