From Tail to Snout, Grunt to Squeal, a Pig from Caledon (Plus Some Really Great Chefs) Can Teach You How to Savour Every Last Detail of Dinner
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The Beauty shOuldeR Pete goffe-Wood, Kitchen Cowboys lOin laurent deslandes, Bizerca Bistro Rump neil Jewell, Bread & Wine The head Bertus Basson, Overture trotteRs leg Chris erasmus, Reuben Riffel, Pierneef à la Motte Reuben’s BELLY Margot Janse, le Quartier Français of the Beast From tail to snout, grunt to squeal, a pig from Caledon (plus some really great chefs) can teach you how to savour every last detail of dinner BY Tudor CaRadoc-davies PhotogRaPhs igor polzenhagen 154 n O v e mb e R 2 011 i’m not @Pigspotter, but i’m nervous as hell about traffic cops right now. Winding my way over hells hoogte heading from Franschhoek to stellenbosch, traffic fines and faulty iheadlights are the least of my worries, because i’m driving with a butchered body in my car. all i can think is that if i were to get in a crash, even a minor fender bender, or get pulled over at one of those zero tolerance checkpoints, it would be difficult to explain the neatly dismembered limbs and organs i have packaged in see-through plastic bags in my boot and the head on the passenger seat. i feel like some kind of winelands dexter. did i get my licence updated? do i have my driver’s licence on me? i wonder what prison food in that Correctional services facility in Paarl is like? it might take the cops a moment to work it out, but the body in question belongs to a 90kg pig and i’ve just taken possession of what remained of it after neil Jewell and three other chefs butchered and divided the carcass. My mission? To deliver the remainder to the other chefs who’d volunteered for this experiment. The Pig squad (from left): Jewell is a chef, charcuterie expert and man chefs Chris erasmus, Margot with a deeper understanding and love for meat Janse, neil Jewell, Reuben Riffel. than Jan Braai, vleis visagie and homer simpson will ever understand. Of all the chefs competing for profits and praise in Fransch- and celebrate their cooked or cured cuts at a You see, modern man has gone from wily hoek’s foodie enclave, Jewell has carved a banquet attended by foodie writers, bloggers, hunter-gatherer to the ignorant supermarket reputation for himself as the meat specialist. tweeters and influencers. On a deeper level, the schlubs we are today. We refer to food as That’s why Men’s health chose him to be goal was to discover the full potential of the protein, carbs and fat before identifying what Captain Pig in a one-of-a-kind event: the Pig Off. whole animal from snout to tail, offal to prime it really is. idle aisle browsers, we pluck On the surface, the idea was to source the cuts; and to start the conversation about the indiscriminately at random cuts of meat giving finest free-range pig we could find, divide the provenance of our produce, to raise awareness little thought to what animal it is, what part of entire animal in a lottery among seven of south about the quality of what we eat and the con- the beast it came from and how it was treated africa’s top chefs and challenge them to present ditions animals experience before we eat them. on its way to the butcher’s block. The majority FROM snOuT to Tail a piece-by-piece guide to cooking the most delicious pork on the planet pork \pork\ n 1 : the fresh or salted flesh of swine when dressed for food. see also: bacon, bratwurst, chicharrón, chitterling, chorizo, country ham, crackling, culatello, fatback, guanciale, headcheese, hot dog, jamón serrano, leaf lard, pancetta, pâté, pork rind, prosciutto, rillettes, salami, salt pork, scrapple, souse, spam 156 n O v e mb e R 2 011 an interest, start the conservation with your butcher and begin to understand where your meat comes from. f all the meats we indulge in, few are as Oversatile as pork. it holds up to a variety of preparations, from quick grilling to slow braising. You can tart it up with some bold flavours or accent its own character with subtle notes. But the biggest drawcard of pork for professional chefs is the fat. since the mid- eighties pork has been trying to market itself as the other white meat after health-conscious The splits: Captain Pig, neil consumers moved from Jewell, divides the spoils. pork to chicken, falling for a still-unproven link between saturated fat and heart disease. in response, industrial pig Of all the meats we indulge in, breeders started breeding the fat out of their pork to the extent that the average pig has few are as versatile as pork 15% less fat today than it did 60 years ago. The tragedy is that the fat those pork of us don’t know that the shrink-wrapped flesh Perhaps most worrying is that the majority producers toiled so hard to eliminate is in fact lining the aisles comes from young, over-sized of us know about these techniques, but find it the heart-healthy monounsaturated variety. animals that are maltreated and overfed on easier to embrace ignorance, because caring Take a look at the fatty profile of bacon: a steady diet of unnatural feeds and steroids. means effort. We believe that knowing may according to the USDA, 33% of bacon fat is Most of the time, we have no idea where the mean giving up what we like to eat. hell, you saturated. But that breaks down like this: 31% meat comes from at all. From our home may even consider vegetarianism. But most is stearic acid and 64% is palmitic acid, neither province or trucked across the country? Was of you wouldn’t last. There’s a reason we have of which has much effect on cholesterol. Plus, it grass or grain fed? did the farmer allow space all those pointy incisors and canines. humans 41% of the total fat content of bacon is oleic acid, for it to root around for food in the sunshine; are omnivores through and through. the healthy fat in olive oil. or was it reared in a dark shed, knee-deep in its The good news is that we can continue “When you take a look at the whole picture,” own waste, face in a feed trough, back to back? to eat meat. all it requires is for you to take says dr Jeffv olek, a nutrition researcher at the T h e l O i n 1. a mix of breadcrumbs, orange zest and parsley laurent deslandes Bizerca Bistro Pork loin, being so lean and tender, is one of the to add crunch and flavour healthiest cuts, but it dries to the finished dish. out easily. Keep it moist best for: and flavourful with these 3. Baking and grilling three steps: 1) Buy loin Pork and smoke are with a thin cap of fat on perfect partners, but most Once browned and sealed, the loin top; 2) brine it overnight guys don’t have smokers. can retain moisture if baked or in ½ cup of salt, ¼ cup solution: a few pinches grilled for a short period of time. of sugar and 2 litres water; 2. of smoked sea salt to and 3) cook it to an inter- Because loin is pretty top slices of loin works nal temperature of 65°C. mushy, you should use well too. n O v e mb e R 2 011 157 Chef Pete goffe-Wood prepares to show his hand. The chefs each received two cuts: a “goodie” and a “funny”. university of Connecticut, “87% of pork fat is stock-reared pigs as well as significantly higher humane, sustainable conditions, with diets free predicted to have no effect or a positive effect levels of polyunsaturated fat and significantly of hormones and other additives. The support on cholesterol.” lower saturate-to-polyunsaturated mass ratios they get from locavore-restaurants and chefs now they tell us. What’s worse is that the and total lipid dry masses. That means lower (people interested in eating food that is locally “healthier” pork we’re exposed to doesn’t exactly total fat and a greater proportion of fat produced) is brilliant, where menus inform go through a natural process. To breed out comprising good polyunsaturated fat. Their and educate customers about how the pork much of the healthy fat, farmers pump their findings concluded that the high levels of chop on today’s menu comes from X farm and pigs full of antibiotics and other drugs, which saturated fat in domesticated pig meat were is a Y breed of pig. While south africa is not stimulate muscle growth and inhibit fat storage, not natural, but rather a consequence of the there yet, interest is definitely growing in the in essence replacing the pot belly with a skinnier, intensive stock-farming practices used to provenance of our food. faster-growing frame. accelerate animal growth to slaughter-weight. To bring the Men’s health Pig Off together, Researchers at the university of Witwaters- we needed a superstar pig. Pork with character rand found that when commercially farmed ortunately, like star Wars, the that tastes incredible; looks amazing both pork was compared to laboratory pigs raised rebels are organising. small cured and cooked; and comes with the in near-natural conditions and wild-ranging farmers overseas have been assurance that it has had a happier life with warthogs, the lab pigs and warthogs showed working hard to reintroduce top- more sunshine, freedom and healthy food than significantly lower levels of saturates than the F quality heritage hogs, reared in most office workers experience per annum.