Eating a Pig

[Originally posted on Green Roof Growers.]

On January 28th, I butchered half a pig from Slagel Farms in front of a few people. Six different cooks used almost all of that pig to create this menu over the following two Sundays. Anna of Turning Fork Supper Club pulled it all together. [Part 1 has the butchering info/photos.]

My original idea of turning The Spectacle in on itself to end up with something more honest fell a bit short; setting aside what I wanted, on its own terms, I couldn't have asked for anything more from my adventure with a pig.

A few pictures from the two dinners--









From dinner number two:












We were very happy with how it all turned out and I'd encourage any of our readers to give it a try.

Some numbers.

From the 94 pound half pig we made -

• 25 appetizer portions of testa
• 25 appetizer portions of pork terrine with tenderloin inlay
• 40 appetizer portions of sausage
• 40 appetizer portions of rillettes
• 25 servings of rib pasta sauce
• 5 pound cured shoulder roast - 10 servings
• 15 pound house cured ham - 30 servings
• 18 pounds porchetta (belly wrapped around loin, stuffed with fennel) - 30+ servings
• 1 pound cracklings
• 16 quarts gelatinous pork stock
• 10 pounds cotechino sausage (need some more pork shoulder for this) - will serve 15-20
  

Only the shoulder roast and the cotechino sausage weren't served at one of the two meals.

The ingredients cost roughly $450, with the pig accounting for a little less than half of that. I'm guessing that it took about 150 hours to put it all together.

More photos in the slide shows.

Dinner #1 -



Dinner #2 -

Butchering a Pig

[Originally posted at Green Roof Growers on 2.5.10]

Eight days ago, Art and I picked up half of a 190-pound pig from Mado Restaurant, where it had been dropped off by the Slagel Farm delivery truck. Soon it was lying on a table in my living room, and shortly after that people began showing up. They came to watch me butcher the pig for the two subsequent Sunday dinners we were holding with some new friends.

[All pics by H2. A previous post that traces the path from rooftop gardening to pig butchering can be found here.]




We started out with the conceit that every part of the (half) animal would make it onto our plates. The menu derived from that decision informed how I cut up the pig.

First I broke the carcass down into its primal cuts: Shoulder, saddle, and ham. From there I cut it into the pieces that would be used by the cooks: Hock, trotter, leaf lard, fat back, boneless saddle for porchetta, coppa, deboned shoulder for sausage, backbone and ribs.

As I was doing this I answered questions from the group. They had all come to learn how to do it themselves, or were just curious how a pig became meat. In either case, in a few days they'd be eating what I was cutting up.

















Here's the slideshow of the entire butchering process.




The first dinner was a success, and a great deal of that was due to Anna at Turning Fork Supper Club. The second dinner is this Sunday. We have lots of good shots of food prep: terrines, testa, sausages, soup, porchetta, and plenty of pictures of people enjoying themselves. More on that in the next post.

[Updated 2.10.10, Part 2 is here.]