It may have started with an increasing interest in charcuterie and cured meats—witness the success of Seattle’s Salumi, as well as Fatted Calf and Fra’Mani in the Bay Area—but our passion for pork seems to be growing unchecked. Everywhere you look, it’s all piggy, all the time.
Last week The New York Times heralded the new American love affair with salumi by presenting a primer on coppa, lardo, mortadella, and more (registration required), and claiming “the meat slicer could be the first appliance to earn a place on the kitchen counter since the espresso machine.”
At the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Food Editor Hsiao-Ching Chou discusses how chefs love pork belly—the cut that gets cured into bacon. “If you want to get a chef all hot and bothered,” she writes, “whisper ‘pork belly’ in her ear.” Chou says a local meat wholesaler reports that its pork belly sales have doubled in the past three months alone.
Even Gourmet magazine’s Ruth Reichl is getting into the act. In her weekly newsletter she reports, “I cooked the single best dinner I’ve made all year … leg of baby pig that was rich, tender, moist, and succulent, with skin so crisp it crackled when you took a bite.” Her organic, milk-fed porcelet came from D’Artagnan, though at $382.85 for half a pig, this level of porcine bliss is an investment.
Not even the gripping article last December in Rolling Stone about the horrific conditions under which Smithfield Foods raises a good portion of the nation’s pork seems to have dampened our ardor for pig.
What is it that fuels our piggy passion? Is it the lure of the forbidden—pork is off-limits to followers of two of the world’s major religions—or just the pleasure of some quality fatty crackle?
Sara Dickerman delved into the topic last December in an article for Slate on “The Development of the Piggy Confessional,” her look at why even food writers are obsessed with bacon and the rest. “Unless you abstain,” she writes, “pork is hard not to love. From the crackle of its skin to the strange chew of an ear, from the velvety threads of pork shoulder in confit to the blood that fills a minerally black sausage, pigs are edibility incarnate.”
Nuff said, pass the bacon.
In response to your comment about the treatments of industrially raised pigs by Smithfield Foods, I would point out that most industrially-raised meat is poorly-treated and bad for you to boot. (See Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma for the gory details.)
The answer is not, as many as quick to assume, to eschew pork or any other meat. Instead, do your best to find a good, responsible local farmer to source your meat from. That’s what I try to do, and while it might mean eating less meat (both because of the difficulty in finding it and the higher price) I’m convinced that it’s better for the land, the animal, and me. It’s also usually far tastier.
It does make eating out a challenge, however.
anyone has a nice recipee for pork tenderloin for easter for a novice with pork and that it will not burn, tx, mariana.
Regarding tenderloin, a search shows a couple on this site, eg.
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10115
Or my mother’s recipe using medallions of browned pork tenderloin, braised with bay leaves, peeled tomatoes (smash them with the spoon) and onions, served over couscous, will certainly keep you from burning the pork (again provided you stir the braise).
Another (more recent) editorial on the growing conditions for factory-farmed pork showed up on reddit a week or so ago, this one by Nicolette Niman (as in “Niman Ranch”). It was published in the NY Times Op-Ed section; link follows.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/opinion/14niman.html?ex=1331524800&en=aef48375cdbf84e4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Pollan’s position is the only one that makes sense to me — know where your food comes from and support a market in the type of food that you can live with. Willfully ignoring the mistreatment of both animals and consumers (i.e. your taste buds) is both stupid and counterproductive.
It costs more, but carefully raised food tastes better.
do you add liquid to a pork tenderloin when cooking it, tx, mariana.