So, with that, I am proud (pun intended) to announce this month’s Top 5 winner thanks to that online random generator… Commenter #22 Proud Italian Cook.  She is the lucky winner of a few of our fave porky products – some Goya ham stock cubes (when you’re in a hurry), achiote paste (fabulous with many Latin pork dishes like pernil and cochinitas pibil), dried corn husks for tamales and dried pasilla peppers (mild in flavor, try them in some tortilla soup, chili or a mole). Congrats!  Proud Italian Cook does mainly, well, Italian food.  Hopefully she’ll be able to use some of these porky products in her Italian kitchen.

Thank you to everyone for all the thoughtful answers.  It is very hard to think of just five top pork products, but you did a great job.  Some of favorite answers were lardo di colonnata (how could I leave this one off my list?), char siu, pork belly, ribs of any sort,  Siu yuk (Chinese roast pig with cracklins), ham and cheese crèpes from Parisian street vendors (thanks for this drool-worthy imagery, Duo Dishes), and finally, one we’d love to try, Peter’s own “magic sex bacon”. Thanks again, all. Join us next time when we want to know your Top 5.  And remember, you can win again if you’ve been a previous winner – just not twice in a row.
 

Anyone who takes even the briefest glance at our body of work on this blog cannot fail to notice that we have a definite proclivity towards the porcine, and so it is that this top five is perhaps the most hotly contested monthly selection thus far.

The pig is, in our humble opinion, the greatest animal on earth, and picking only five products made from its wondrous bounty was a difficult thing. Beatific smiles spread across our faces as we considered our porky love and suggested different products and cuts of the beast, but, after much debate, a surprising consensus form between us, with only two points of disagreement.

Let us know what your favorite pork products are and win a package of pork-related kitchen goodies.

Amy & Jonny’s Top Five Pork Products:
1. guanciale (cured pig’s jowls) - Jonny: switch out for Spanish cured lomo
2. chorizo (pimenton flavored cured sausage)
3. jamon iberico (special Spanish ham)
4. chicharrones (fried pork rinds)
5. scrapple (a Philadelphia tradition made with lots of bits of pig and cornmeal) - Jonny: switch out for unsmoked English back bacon rashers

They (we) call it a Sunday Gravy because it really suits a Sunday best.  The long simmering, the wine drinking, the letting-it-sit-on-the-stove-till-the-family-arrives kind of gravy.  Thanks to the Sopranos, people all over the world have heard of Sunday Gravy. Some scratch their heads in wonder as to why some call it sauce and others call it gravy.  It’s a hotly debated topic but, in essence, this “stew” of veal necks, sausage, pork ribs, bracciole, pigs feet, etc. should always be called a gravy over a sauce. It requires long and slow cooking and is flavored by the meat, hence it is technically a gravy. Friend of the blog, Joe, at Italyville has a wonderful post on this debate and I’d recommend all who are still confused to check it out.

To make the debate even more annoying, the Italian Americans in this country have kind of created this confusion about gravy vs. sauce.  For many Italians in this country, whether you call this type of meal a sauce or a gravy is decided by the family you come from and even the area of the country you live in.  For my Italian family, a gravy seems to be ANYTHING that contains tomato sauce.  Come to think of it, my family calls anything you put on top of meat or macaroni as “gravy”.  But, rule of thumb is if you are in Italy and you ask for gravy, you’re going to get a sauce that contains meat (ragu).  Check out Joe’s link for a perfect example of this from the Sopranos.

Sunday gravy can be made with a variety of meats and as long as you have a decent variety, you can not mess this up.  Our Sunday Gravy included pigs feet, bracciole, pork necks, veal shoulder, and sweet and hot sausage.  Other traditional additions include pork ribs, beef ribs, pork chops, some even put meatballs in theirs.  It’s kind of a “what can you get your hands on” kind of meal.  With that said, I would like to recommend that you do not skip two key ingredients in order to get optimal flavor – pigs feet and the pork necks.  I know, guys, some of you may be squeamish about this but the flavor, OH THE FLAVOR, you get by simmering these delicious bits of offal.  If you feel uncomfortable serving them with the rest of your meat, well throw them out after they flavor your gravy.  But, personally, I believe these two bits of pig really make the gravy.

So put on your ‘fat pants’, throw on some Sinatra, pour yourself a big glass of chiant’ (Chianti to all you non-Northeastern US Italians) and give yourself a good four to five hours to watch the porky love grow in your pot.

SUNDAY GRAVY (serves a sh!tload of people – at least 6 hungry men)

Ingredients:

• 2 pigs feet (about 1 1/2 to 2 lbs)
• 1 pound bracciole (about a 8 inch long piece)
• 2 pounds veal, beef or pork neck bones
• 1 pound veal shoulder (in chops form or cut into 3 inch pieces)
• 1 veal shank (bone-in)
• 1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage
• 1/2 pound hot Italian sausage
• 1 large onion
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 28 ounce can of tomatos (preferably San Marzano – I prefer pureed over whole)
• some water
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. Season meat with salt and pepper and, with a bit of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot (dutch over, preferably), brown all sides of each piece of meat.  Remove and set aside on a plate.
2. After all the meat is browned, add the onions and use the meat fat already in the pan to cook till soft (about 6-8 minutes), adding more olive oil if necessary. Add garlic and stir, cook for about a minute.
3. Add the wine and deglaze, scraping up the bits of goodness that have accumulated on the bottom of the pan.  Allow to reduce for a few minutes until it has reduced by about half.
4. Add tomatoes and one can of water (use the tomato can). Stir.
5. Add back the meat except the sausage and bracciole (which won’t be added until the last hour).  Bring to a simmer, cover and allow to cook for five hours.  Yes, kids, that’s five hours.  Ever once in a while stir.
6. At hour number four, add back the sausage and bracciole and allow to simmer for one more hour.
7. Taste and season with salt and pepper and add some hot pepper if you’d like.  Remove all the meat and serve separately from the gravy. Cut the sausage into 2 inch pieces.  Serve some of the gravy over pasta and enjoy.

The purpose of this trip was, principally, to visit my new nephew, William, who, we discovered, is a charming young chap with pink cheeks and a propensity for chewing his fingers, drinking milk, and synchronizing his burps and farts – some skills you just can’t teach. However, we also planned to visit old friends we hadn’t seen since our wedding 18 months ago, and, if we could fit it in, actually see some of London.

I’m sure many of you have heard and/or seen about the culinary renaissance that has been happening in the UK over the past ten years or so, that the country is rightfully proud of. Marco Pierre White, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein, and Heston Blumenthal, among others, have all made huge names for themselves domestically and internationally for their reinterpretations of classic British dishes and focus on the excellent produce of the British Isles. Much of this gastronomic progress has been realized in the restaurants of London, turning it from culinary wasteland to hot spot almost over night.

Now, my experience of dining in London as a resident were generally not at these temples of fine food, but instead at more down-at-heel places like the many gastro-pubs and curry houses. So, the first opportunity we got, Amy and I raced off to a local boozer in Putney (the Coat & Badge) for a quick pub lunch of pork pie, chips and mushy peas, washed down with a couple of pints of Fuller’s London Pride (a bitter made just over the Thames in Chiswick), and that evening, followed it up with a typically Anglo-Indian take-out curry from the totally average but completely wonderful Putney Tandoori.

Chucking back a chicken tikka jalfrezi and a lamb dhansak was like putting on an old sweater – familiar, comforting, and with a smell that evoked many happy memories. Rose-tinted memories for certain, because I’ve committed some fairly miserable and embarrassing mistakes of judgment at Indian restaurants over the years, including the time I ordered a fahl (an insanely-spiced dish), took one bite and then rubbed my eyes with a chile-soaked finger, and spent the rest of the night feverishly rinsing out my sockets fearing I’d blinded myself.

The day after our curries, we headed into London proper – to the centre/center – to revisit the nasty-ass basement bar where Amy and I stumbled across one another nearly six years ago, do some shopping down Neal Street, and then head up to Farringdon for lunch. Amazingly, the Gardening Club (the basement bar) looked like it had been given a face-lift, and was now, curiously, serving lunch, but neither of us could really face going inside for fear that it might change our cherished memories of the place. So, pushing on, we enjoyed the recent fall in value of the pound vs. the dollar and actually did some non-food shopping for a change.

One of the other “new” breed of British chef/restaurateurs, we knew about from having read about him, seen him on TV and bought his book, but who has garnered far less international celebrity is Fergus Henderson of St. John Restaurant near Smithfield Market. He is most famous for his widely-copied dish of roasted veal marrow-bones and parsley salad which we had eaten and loved at both Gabrielle Hamilton’s fabulous Prune, in NYC, and more recently at L’Express in Montreal. Now we wanted to try the original.

Below a sign featuring a hand-drawn pig, we entered the restaurant down a short hallway (the building which houses the restaurant is a Georgian-era carriage house, and one enters via the former carriage entrance the courtyard of which is now covered and serves as the restaurant’s bar, bakery and cafe area), and ascended a short flight of stairs to to the dining room full of anticipation. Factory-style lamps illuminated a white-walled space completely circled by head-high coat-hooks, and a thickly-painted floor was decorated only by ordinary white-clothed tables and dark, well-worn chairs.

Check out the slideshow above to see what we had for lunch, and then listen to the podcast below to learn more about St. John Restaurant, and our excitingly awkward meeting with chef/owner Fergus Henderson.

Have you ever eaten something so fabulous, so lucious, so decadent that you almost felt the need to run to confession (to confess your indulgent food “sins”), say three Hail Mary’s (that’s for you Catholics out there) and pray really hard that you can zip your jeans up again? Ok, a bit exaggerated, but looking back, this is a bit how my first real taste of lardo made me feel.

Now many of you may be scratching your head wondering, “Lardo? Wait, did she mean to write that? Maybe she mean Lardons? Surely she’s not talking about Lard?” Well, kids, hold on to your Spanx-controlled muffin-top, I am talking about lard. But lardo ain’t just any old lard… it’s special lard. Very, very, very special lard.

In our few trips to Italy over the past couple of years, lardo graced our palates a few times, but only in very small quantites (as it should!). The first time we ate it – in Modena, Italy – we were, sadly, so fiercely hungover that we couldn’t really appreciate it. However, this saved us from eating what was an obscene amount of it – slathered in thin ribbons over a beautiful 12 inch thin-crust pizza and topped with the town’s famous aged balsamic.

Apologies for the awful, 1970s plate. I’m blaming the in-laws.

Pearly-white inside and darker and grainy at the edges, lardo, which is basically salt-cured pig fat flavored with rosemary (and occasionally other herbs), is made throughout Italy, though the most famous – lardo di Colonata – is produced only in Colonata, a small, isolated Tuscan town, where the pigs are fed on a steady diet of acorns to better flavor their fat.

In some areas of northern Italy, lardo is used as the cooking fat in which soffrito is sauteed in the preparation of a sugo or ragu, but like other salume, it is often eaten in thin, bite-sized pieces and allowed to melt on the tongue, before being washed down with an effervescent white wine. Which is how, if you can find yourself some, you should try it for the first time. Yes, that’s right, cured pigs’ fat straight-up. No crackers, no bread, no olives. Just fat and your tongue in perfect harmony. It really does melt.

It’s unlikely that we ate lardo di Colonata that day, as the real thing is almost as expensive as the most highly-prized prosciutto, but what we had was still beautifully perfumed of bacon & rosemary, and incredibly rich & luscious tasting, and probably quite pricey in its own right. With the crackle of the pizza crust underneath and the honey sweetness of an ancient balsamic, it was one of the most texturally amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth, sober, drunk or hungover.

Occasionally, in the intervening year, we’ve complained of a lack of lardo in our lives, but we were completely shocked to find it at a local specialty foods store over the summer – and it was cheap too! They had about half a pound left, and we bought the whole thing, fearing that we might not find it ever again outside of Italy. Fortunately, because it’s cured, it has a good long shelf-life, so we’re taking it easy to make sure we don’t drop dead from cholesterol-related disease before we’re done eating it.

I think we need to do more research into recipes that call for lardo, because apart from taking it neat, so far we’ve only recreated that decadent pizza from Modena. There’s a recipe below, but the sad thing is, if you don’t have any lardo or anywhere that sells it, and you don’t have a 25 year old balsamic vinegar to top it with, that recipe might not be much use. Still, you can aspire to collect these ingredients, and trust me, when you find them, make this pizza and you’ll be glad you waited for it. It might be the most incredible pizza that ever passes your lips.

Lardo Pizza with Wilted Radicchio & Onion

For an absolutely tried & tested, nailed-on recipe for the perfect thin-crust pizza dough read this previous post: Remembering Italy with Thin-Crust Pizza. To get the finest aged balsamic vinegar available in North American delivered to your door, click here, or if you don’t want to buy the good stuff, you can reduce the ordinary kind in a saucepan until consistency resembles molasses.

Unfortunately, Italian lardo is not exported to America. The American Department of Agriculture wants it heated to 156 F (69 C) before it is sold to consumers, but at that point, the fat would start melting, and it would no longer be lardo. However, we found some domestically produced lardo completely by chance in a local store, so you may get lucky somewhere along the line. And while it is widely thought that Italian lardo is greatly superior to any made domestically because it is aged for so much longer, we found US lardo to be very acceptable indeed. Your best bet if you don’t have any awesome gourmet food stores nearby, and this may be even trickier, is to get friendly with your local organic hog farmer and have him save you some back fat from best fed pig on his farm, then cure your own pig fat! Why not? Good luck!

Ingredients & Recipe

1lb fresh pizza dough

1/2 head of radicchio di Chioggia (regular round, red radicchio), shredded finely

1/2 spanish (yellow) onion, finely sliced

2tbsp good olive oil

1 pinch kosher salt

- Sweat radicchio and onion until soft and decorate your pizza with it.

- Then, place thinly-sliced lardo on top and fire pizza in the oven. Remove and dress immediately with balsamic vinegar.

- Savor every mouthful.

A few months ago I was contacted by a representative of a site called cajungrocer.com. He offered to send us some Cajun treats if we would do a bit of a write-up on their products. Well, what else could I say but “Hell YEAH!”. We had our choice to sample crayfish, turducken or boudin. It wasn’t crayfish season so we mutually decided that wasn’t a good idea and the idea of “roadtesting” a turducken (which I honestly still don’t understand the purpose of… sorry if you’re a fan) skeeved me out and boudin is right up our alley so we settled on sampling that.

I was hoping to have this review done much earlier than now but when I explain to you why it took almost 2 months to taste-test, you’ll probably understand why. A week after giving the “hell YEAH” go-ahead to the cajungrocer.com rep I received a knock at the door – it was a UPS man holding a large styrofoam cooler. Not a ‘holds a six pack’ size cooler, but a giant one. As ripped the protective tape off and lifted the cooler’s lid, my heart leaped and my stomach grumbled. Inside was not one, not two, NOT THREE but FIVE different types of boudin (not to mention a crawfish appetizer we have yet to try!). So I hope now you can understand why we needed to wait until now to write this product review. Too many snausages, too little time.

Now, it is important to give you some background and history on Cajun Boudin – not to be confused with the French version you may have tasted before. Both are technically a version of boudin blanc (or white sausage), but the French version is often made with a combo of pork (or chicken or veal) and pork/chicken/veal bit’s (ie: liver and heart) along with milk, cognac and spices, thus making it a bit softer and more delicate to handle. After the French Acadians were forced by the British to leave Nova Scotia in 1755, they headed south and ended up making their homes in the various bayous and back-country of Louisiana, specifically in the area which is now called Acadiana or Cajun Country. Cajun boudin is obviously related to the French version but the recipe changed a bit to represent what was available and plentiful in their new land – pork and those lovely hog bits, cayenne pepper and rice – all stuffed into the hog’s intestines. These Cajun boudin recipes have been passed down from generation to generation since and they are not all created equally.

The center of Cajun Country in Acadiana is the town of Lafayette (see map below) and, supposedly, if you go there, you’ll see plenty of signs pointing you to the many, many places that sell boudin. It could be a restaurant, a guy on the side of the road or a place near a gas station but they are everywhere. And, according to my intense research, locals could give two flying pigs less if they are eating their boudin from a guy in a gas station or off some fine china at a nice restaurant – if it’s good, they’ll eat it. And again, according to research, the Cajuns call a Dr. Pepper and a link of boudin a Cajun Breakfast. Nothing screams healthy breakfast like a visit from the “Doctor” in the morning!
View Larger Map

Although we were sent alligator, shrimp and crawfish boudin from cajungrocer.com, I discovered that these are newer concoctions and are not traditional. Purists aren’t turned on by these “newfangled uppity” types but I must say – they were fabulously delicious and tasted exactly like you’d think. Traditionally there are a few things to consider when eating a Cajun Pork Boudin:

1. Do you like it wet or dry?
2. Do you like it spicy or mild?
3. How about chunky insides or mashed?
4. Do you like it with liver or without?
5. Do you want more meat or more rice?

The thing is, you can think about these questions while eating a boudin but you’re not going to be asked them by your boudin seller! There are various combos of all of these types depending on the family recipe. I think I’d like mine dry, spicy, chunky, with liver and more meat. You?

One interesting fact is that boudin is usually eaten as finger food and often thought of as a Cajuns version of fast food – eaten either by biting directly into the sausage or by squeezing the insides of the boudin right into your mouth. Grilling boudin is just starting to gain popularity in Cajun Country but usually it is stewed or braised. Besides being served with a Dr. Pepper in the morning, it is also often served with pork cracklins (fried pig skin), saltine crackers, hot sauce and beer – this sounds like my type of meal. Boudin can be put between two slices of white bread for a sandwich, in an omelette or made into boudin balls (deep fried boudin). We decided to eat the pork boudin grilled with some spicy mustard and the alligator boudin over yellow hominy and lentils and paired it with a sweet and spicy tomato sauce.

Even though we were in Brooklyn, I thought the boudin that cajungrocer.com sent to us was fabulous – full of flavor and perfectly spiced. Eating the Cajun boudin made me wish that I could experience not just the food of Louisiana, but the culture surrounding the food. Luckily, we still have a huge pork boudin with pork cracklin’ left to eat and, when we do, I’ll be throwing on some Satchmo, drinking some cold Abita (if I can find some) or a Dr. Pepper and dreaming I was in Lafayette. In fact, if you are every heading to Lafayette, Louisiana, check out boudinlink.com for reviews and an interactive map to find some of the best boudin around.

Thank you, again, cajungrocer.com – we highly, highly recommend your services and your delicious, authentic products.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Pork Roll and Scrapple – The Dirty Culinary Pride of South Jersey/Philly
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• In Defence of Sandwiches (White House Subs, Atlantic City)
• SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ (BAGUETTE FILLED WITH MERGUEZ SAUSAGE, FRENCH FRIES AND FRIED LEEKS)
• MORCILLA (SPANISH SAUSAGE) STUFFED GRILLED SQUID WITH A SPICY SAUCE

Not long ago our good friend Nuria at Recipes Pic by Pic offered to do a food exchange with us, knowing both how obsessed we are with Spanish food and their comparative scarcity over here in the States. In return she asked that we send her some typical American products of our choice as well as a Cuisinart food processor. We were delighted to oblige.

Nuria wasted no time and recently posted about a hummus she made with her shiny new toy and including a photograph of the rather idiosyncratic selection of foods we sent her. Amongst them Franks Hot Sauce, two kinds of dried Mexican chiles, Reeces Peanut Butter Cups (cause you know how much Americans love Peanut Butter) and, perhaps most amusingly, a packet of Silvia’s seasoned fried chicken coating.

Her package to us, however, contained rather more sophisticated ingredients: jamon iberico de bellota, chorizo de bellota, and some piquillo peppers. Those of you who read our Jamon, Jamon, Jamon, Jamon post back in January when we had just returned from Madrid will know how we feel about iberico ham – the finest grade of the wonderfully delicious range of Spanish cured hams made from black-footed pigs raised amidst the statuesque holm oaks of Extremadura in central west Spain near the Portuguese border. So you can imagine our delight at having a generous racione of it arrive vacuum-packed from the famed Mercado la Boqueria in Barcelona.

However, we were cautious, looking for an opportunity to savor the ham and give it the attention it deserves, we had to wait until earlier this week for the moment to finally breech the packaging. Following Nuria’s instruction we allowed it to come to room temperature – yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to enjoy iberico – and laid it out on a plate just as we had had it in Madrid, accompanied only by a couple of pieces of pa amb tomaquet (see recipe below) in a Catalan homage to both Nuria and the ham’s provenance in Barcelona.

And, how was it, you ask? Well, it was bliss. The ham’s fat was soft and almost unbelievably buttery and rich, yet strongly flavored with the scent of the acorns on which the pig was fed. The ham itself was gamey and powerful while being at once smooth and calming on the tongue. It was, in all honesty, swoon-inducingly good and provoked tearful memories of our last taste of iberico in the fug of a bar in Madrid back in January when we had sighed and wondered aloud when we might eat iberico again.

Thank you so much Nuria – muchissimas gracias a usted – for both offering to do the exchange in the first place and then trusting two complete strangers to respond in kind. It’s not only reserved you a very special place in our hearts (and stomachs) but also made us think very kindly about the rest of this wonderful food community that we’re getting to know and the fascinating and generous people who inhabit it. Buen provecho y salud a todos!  Oh, and also, thank you for giving us the Blogging with a Purpose award – much appreciated!

P.S. – After the iberico we made another tapa with some of the delicious piquillo peppers Nuria also sent us. Riffing off something Jose Andres made on his show Made in Spain, we put thick slices of Manchego cheese (or you can use any other type of hard cheese that melts like Provolone, Cheddar, Piave, Gouda, etc.) into the piquillos and lightly fried them in good olive oil and served them with a sprinkling of pimenton dulce or sweet Spanish paprika. So easy and so gooey and delicious.

For other ideas for tapas and for a delicious recipe for Spanish tortilla, check out an older post of ours.

Pa amb Tomaquet (Catalan toasts or bread with tomato) – serves 2

Ingredients:

• 2 thick slices of hearty Italian or country-style French bread
• 1 fresh and very ripe tomato (this is key – it should be ruby read and soft)
• 1 clove garlic, sliced lengthwise
• some extra virgin olive oil
• salt

What to do:

• Grill the bread pieces until toasted.
• While bread is still warm from the grill, rub the openly cut side of half a clove of garlic on each face of bread. This allows the scent and flavor of the garlic to melt into the warm bread.
• Cut tomato in half and rub each face of bread with the tomato. Rub hard and don’t be afraid if you feel it’s a bit messy – you want all the juice and pulp of the tomato to get on the bread.
• Drizzle some olive oil on both pieces of bread and then sprinkle a bit of salt on top. You can add some optional toppings of anchovies or olives or tuna for fun and a heartier tapa. MMMMMMM – enjoy!

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Chorizo and Clams with White Wine
• Squid with Golden Potatoes
• MORCILLA (SPANISH SAUSAGE) STUFFED GRILLED SQUID WITH A SPICY SAUCE
• ARROZ MARINERO (SPANISH RICE WITH SEAFOOD AND SPICES)
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!

I refuse to ’sugar coat’ what pork roll and scrapple are. So if you’ve eaten it your whole life without knowing what it actually is, please stop reading now. To give you a bit of background, I grew up around Philadelphia, eating both of these tasty treats as a ‘breakfast side dish’, but only once a weekend since they were “bad for you”. Pork roll and scrapple were also often used in egg and cheese sandwiches too, which could possibly give you a coranary five minutes after you finished eating one. I never asked what exactly either of these two treats were – for some reason, I just knew not to ask. I remember my family telling me not to even look on the side of the package to read the ingredients because I may just never eat it again. Sometimes, I thought, it was just better not knowing.

But my desire to know a bit more has led me to write this post. I’m at a different stage with my eating than I was years ago. I now will eat cow balls if I’m in a country where cow balls are the local delicacy. I’m not afraid of knowing what exactly I’m eating – I’ll still try it. So, bring it… I’m not afraid anymore. Well, I wasn’t until I read this explanation of pork roll on one website:

What is pork roll made of, you ask? Well, it’s a secret concoction, which consists mainly of pork ground up with bits of fat and seasonings, and then hung and cured in cotton bags…the rest is best left unsaid.

Does that help you understand it any better? Me neither. According to one of the oldest and most popular pork roll manufacturers, Taylor Provisions, it is “a type of sausage-like pork product made from coarsely ground pork shoulder”. It is also smoked. Most people from New Jersey will call pork roll “Taylor Ham” after the Trenton-based manufacturer. Maybe they do this to make it sound more edible? Where I grew up, outside of Philadelphia, it was just simply called pork roll. It is supposedly called this because of the ‘roll’ or tube-like cotton sack that it comes in when you buy it. You can also buy pre-cut slices so you don’t have to figure out how to get it out of that damn sack. It looks like a big, long salami when it’s packaged whole. Pork roll is often grilled or fried (for a double heart-attack) and should be cut slightly with either 2 or 4 slits on the outer edges so that it cooks more evenly and doesn’t curl. Now, on to scrapple.

Scrapple truly is made up of “lips and assholes”, although they don’t actually advertise that on any of the websites. According to Wikipedia, scrapple is a savory mush (yes, that is what they said) of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour. The mush is formed into a loaf and that’s how it comes when you buy it. You must slice it, like pork roll, and fry it up till the outside is crispy and the inside is nice and soft and warm. Scrapple got it’s name from the fact that it’s made of scraps the butcher was either going to throw out (aka, lips and assholes) or parts that are too small to be sold. Wikipedia actually offers a really wonderful description of the cooking process (which actually sells the product to non-believers better than I can – maybe I’m being too harsh with the ‘lips and assholes’ thing?):

Scrapple is typically made of hog offal, such as the head, heart, liver, and other scraps, which are boiled with any bones attached (often the entire head), to make a broth. Once cooked, bones and fat are discarded, the meat is reserved, and (dry) cornmeal is boiled in the broth to make a mush. The meat, finely minced, is returned, and seasonings, typically sage, thyme, savory, and others are added. The mush is cast into loaves and allowed to cool thoroughly until gelled.

Sounds good, huh? Both pork roll and scrapple really are delicious. If you’re still not sold on either of them, think about all the other things that are made from seemingly ‘gross’ things but taste pretty darn delicious – haggis, tripe, fried sheep brains, marrow, pigs feet, pigs ears, etc. etc. Next time you visit the store, ask if they have scrapple or pork roll. It may be hard to find, but I’ve read it is sold in some places in Florida and California. If you really are interested in tasting pork roll or scrapple, check out some of these mail order websites:

• http://www.jerseyporkroll.com/
• http://www.jerseyboyporkroll.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
• http://www.buynjporkroll.com/

Does your city or country have a dish that others may look down upon or think would be nasty if they knew what it was made of?  I’d love to know!

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
- William Blake

Have you ever thought, as you sit red-faced, breathing shallowly, “just… one… more… bite”? Have you ever then taken that extra bite and thought to yourself — in your blood-starved brain — “maybe, after all, I could manage another one”? And, finally, upon swallowing said final mouthful and feeling a previously unknown thickness on your tongue, have you ever thought, “perhaps I’ve overdone it”? It is at this point, as your mouth slowly stops salivating, your breath becomes labored and characterized by sharp exhalations and sighs intended to revitalize your flaccid organs, and your belly feels so tight and distended that if it weren’t for the shocking quantity of food you’ve just ingested (and several other flabby bodily areas), you might resemble a starved Ethiopian child, that you begin to understand why gluttony was included among the seven deadly sins.

Such was my state of mind as I sat, gravely concerned that I might actually suffocate myself internally as my stomach pressed up hard on diaphragm and lungs, at Casa Portal restaurant in Madrid, after a meal that would make a man’s recommended weekly caloric intake appear somehow unlikely to provide sufficient nourishment. The culprit you ask? Well, apart from my own greed, gluttony and propensity to exceed normal physical boundaries, the culprit was fabada. Fabada Asturiana to be precise. The famed bean and pork stew of the Asturian mountains (Picos de Europa) in northern Spain.

As earlier posts have described, I passed a vacation several years ago traveling in northern Spain and found it to be a formative experience. The food, the landscape, the culture and the climate had a profound impact on me and have kept me returning to Spain as regularly as possible given the intervening years in which I’ve gotten married and moved to the United States. Enjoying fresh seafood, doused in garlic, parsley and olive oil, and washed down with non-carbonated local cider in the beautiful, secluded harbor town of Luarca is one particularly evocative memory. And so it was that when we were in Madrid recently I wanted to recollect these memories, so we spent most of a morning walking across the city in search of an Asturian restaurant that had been recommended to us.

Our meal began with a selection of Asturian appetizers, including a tunafish and tomato empanadilla, a whole steamed morcilla, and a large cooking chorizo simmered in cider, accompanied by chewy bread and a liter of Asturian cider. My wife was then presented with what can only be described as a pond-sized bowl of fish bisque, that we shared but could not finish. Thankfully, a pause of fifteen minutes offered some digestive respite to our already extended guts and allowed our moistening brows to cool. However, when the final assault came, it was one that an hour-long intermission would not have adequately prepared us for.

My fabada arrived in a bowl of similar proportions to my wife’s soup course, and in it, along with the delicious softened, yet still toothsome, large white beans, came half of ANOTHER cooking chorizo, half of ANOTHER morcilla, and an entire pork chop. Maternal warnings of eyes-bigger-than-belly swam in my head as I plowed in, loosening my thickly greased palate at regular intervals with an excellent Crianza from Navarre. The beans were, well, like butter, and the various pork products, each delicious and flavorful in their own way, but the star of the dish, and indeed the entire meal, was morcilla.

This blood sausage, sometimes made with rice, sometimes with grains, which we Brits would class as black pudding, is common throughout Spain and, I’m sure, is widely derided by most tourists — even those with gourmet aspirations — for being disgusting. As I began to labor through the final mouthfuls, it crossed my mind just what levels of dietary deprivation had forced the inventors of morcilla to collect an animal’s blood and congeal it with fat, salt and grains, and fashion it into a sausage for preservation and sustinence later on. In the same way, I often try to imagine the back-breaking work of so many grape-pickers during the annual vendanges as I take my first sip of a newly-opened wine, in order to better appreciate the effort and craftsmanship that goes into the things I enjoy most. However, in this instance, my reverie for Spanish food culture was interrupted (and would not return for a while) by a lack of blood to my brain, as it flooded south to my upper intestine to begin absorbing the porky appetizers of the previous half hour.

An uncomfortable period followed (I know not how long), during which my wife was kind enough to gently pat my limp hand and fan my flushed and fevered cheeks with a napkin, before I was able to even contemplate the short walk to the bathroom — the pressure having eased above was now pressuring a full bladder below. Even upon staggering back to the table and slumping ungraciously into my seat, I was unable to consider taking a glass of refreshing water so full was I. Apparently, until this point, I had been unable to articulate my suffering, but chose this moment to confess that not only might I have overdone it, but that I might also be experiencing a previously unheard of “pork overdose” that could turn out to be prejudicial to health. My wife replied pithily that at least I was advancing medical science by my gluttony.

Eventually, my bloatedness subsided enough for me to leave the restaurant and lurch slowly around the shopping district near the Goya metro stop, ashamed everytime my sagging and pallid features were reflected in a store window. And, lest, you think, gentle reader, that you might be prepared to risk a similarly harrowing experience in the daring pursuit of local specialties, you should know that as a result of my over-indulgence at lunch, I was unable to eat anything for the rest of the day and so missed an entire evenings’ worth of tapas.

If these were the immediate penalties of gluttony, the medium term ones have been even worse. I try in vain to shake off my fabada-induced weight gain each midday at the gym and, so far, I see no change in my girth. Yet, in spite of all this (self-inflicted) suffering, I still feel that it might well have been worth it. One only learns one’s limits by testing them, no?

Unsurprisingly, we have not yet had the courage to make our own version of fabada since returning to the States, though we intend to do so before winter is out. In the meantime, our good friend Nuria at Spanish Recipes Pic by Pic recently posted an authentic fabada Asturiana recipe on her site, which we will be putting through its paces just as soon as we can face it.

THIS IS AMY (the wife) TO SAY SOMETHING: The story you have just read above is not only true, but not even exaggerated. I really have never seen this man react to overeating (which we too often do, unfortunately) the way he did after consuming the fabada this day in Madrid. It was mildly hilarious, but kind of scary as I didn’t know how to say “Where can I get his stomach pumped” in Spanish. We hope to make our own fabada soon since we finally were able to find morcilla for sale in a speciality store. I’m just hoping it doesn’t have the same effect on the man this time.

If you are interested in reading more of our posts on Spain, please check out:

• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Jamon, Jamon
• Pictures of Madrid
• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP

The film was shot in the dry, scrubby hills surrounding Zaragoza and a lot of the landscape shots include a large metal bull (the Osborne sherry insignia) sitting among a forest of radio and TV antennae – a view that is quite common in Spain. In one scene, Cruz’s other suitor, a wannabe bullfighter swings from the bulls cojones and accidentally pulls them off, castrating the beast. The sexual meaning of this is, of course, implicit in the movie, but being someone who marvels more at the wonder of pork products than at the chemistry of on-screen lovers, I find the dual motifs of ham and bulls very interesting.

You see, bull bumper stickers are found throughout Spain and the meaning is linked to Spanish culturalism (yes, including, bullfighting) and, in a country with several semi-independent regions, centralism under Madrid. In Catalunya, you often see donkey bumper stickers, as a statement of Catalan identity — the humble donkey being the symbol of that region. Anyway, if the bull is the “official” emblem of Spain, then the unofficial emblem should be the ham, for nowhere else I have ever been holds that cut of meat in higher esteem. I mean, quite apart from naming an award-winning movie after it, the Spanish are quite literally mad for their ham. In Madrid, for example, there are several Museos de Jamon, which aren’t exactly museums — they’re shops — but the idea is that ham is of such great importance to the people that such a store name isn’t overblown in the slightest.

As far as I am concerned, they are right to love it so. For me, there are very few things in life as delicious as a racione of cured Iberian ham (jamon iberico) split between as few people as possible. The taste is almost indescribably good. It is unquestionably porky, but in an intense, almost gamey way, and the fat, oh the fat, is well, like acorn flavored pork butter, if that even conveys anything. If not, rest assured that jamon iberico (or the lower grade, but still exceedingly delicious, jamon serrano) tastes absolutely nothing like the boiled, sugar-coated, artificially-preserved, ready circle-cut ham legs sold in the US. Whereas US hogs are factory farmed in the backwaters of Tennessee in giant filthy sheds and the run-off from the pig-sties pollutes local rivers, the Spanish hogs are a noble, almost-wild breed of pig that are nearly as famous for their intelligence as their tasty limbs.

Fed primarily (though not exclusively, depending on the producer) on acorns, Iberian black-footed pigs (yes, they leave the trotter on the leg so you tell) come from the region of Extremadura bordering Portugal in the central west of Spain, and are allowed to roam freely around under the same cork oaks that have for centuries produced the stoppers for European wine-bottles. It would not be wrong, I don’t think, to compare jamon iberico to other world-famous delicacies like kobe beef (waygu) or beluga caviar or the famed blue-footed chickens of Bresse, France, because it is simply beyond compare. And yes, I ate plenty of prosciutto di Parma and prosciutto San Daniele last year in Italy, and while they are very, very good, jamon iberico is just a richer, more intense, less salty experience. For more on the pigs that produce this delicacy, click here. If you understand Spanish, then you should check out this YouTube video, which demonstrates the correct way to prepare a platter of delicious jamon.

And, by clicking the first link, you’ll be heading to La Tienda who now import bone-in legs of jamon to the US for your delectation. We’re saving our pennies hard right now for a whole leg.

P.S. – just to add one final note to how deeply ingrained Spanish culture is with jamon, there is a childrens’ word game — a tongue-twister — in which the word jamon is repeated quickly over and over. Before long the player starts to say the word monja instead of jamon, which means nun, although you might have to be a Spanish kid to understand why that’s funny…

To read more of our posts about Spain, check out:

• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Pictures of Madrid
• ENSALADA DE CABRALES (Thin Sliced Apple with Cabrales Salad)
• HORNAZO (Spanish Sausage-Stuffed Easter Bread)
• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP