On the huge chopping board is one half of a pig. The head is detached and is on a separate board. He begins by explaining the journey of a pig’s life, with the assistance of a small plastic animal from a child’s farmyard set. The point at which it meets its maker is especially important since a stressful death will impair the flavour of the meat. The pig we have lived a happy life, completely organic, regularly moved to fresh ground. (I can vouch for this, having watched them rutting one morning on my way to organic gardening). The day before slaughter it was fasted and driven to the local abattoir. It spent the night there, allowing it to relax and ‘chill out,’ as Philip puts it, before being humanely terminated in the morning. The one we have today is still smiling.
The pig consists, in layman’s terms, of three broad areas: front (nearest the head), middle and back. These are the neck and shoulder, belly and loin and the leg. The leg is detached first, taking care not to damage the fillet, or tenderloin, that runs from the aitchbone to the kidney. Next the shoulder is detached by cutting around the trotter and onto the shoulder blade. The shoulder is basically a tennis racket shape, with the foreleg being the handle and the blade the head. So now we have removed both the limbs and their associated bits.
The fillet is now removed from the loin by cutting along the spine. The fatty outer lining is removed and the fillet cleaned up. This is the most expensive part of the butchered animal, so extra care is taken not to damage it. Next, we separate the belly from the loin. First of all we rip the inner layer of fat away from the leg end of the belly, with the kidney attached. This makes wonderful lard. Given the trendiness of pork belly these days, the cut could well be made higher up than in the past, but it is down to the individual. Think of your back bacon. The rounded part comes from the loin, the thinner, streaky part from the belly. You decide where to make the cut. Today we make it four finger widths from the spine. Starting from the neck, we saw a few inches, bend the spine to straighten the animal and then carry on straight through to separate the belly.
The neck is then separated from the loin (which is now basically the spine with meat and ribs attached), by cutting 6 ribs down from where the head once was. The short ribs are removed, and the main ‘rack’ of ribs has the chine bone removed allowing it to be easily roasted and carved or butchered into chops. The front, or spare, ribs are removed from the belly. The cheek is removed from the shoulder. Philip gradually whittles away. It started as one. It became three. Then six. Now seven, eight, more.
We graduate to the head. Philip gauges out the lean cheek, and talks us through the process of making brawn, or headcheese. I’m sure they could have thought of a more appetising name for a terrine made from the boiled insides of a pig’s head, but apparently not. Some people, when making headcheese, get a bit antsy about the possibility of earwax, so remove the whole ear first. God knows why -in for a penny, in for a pound I say.
We move on to what we can do with all these body parts. We salt the belly to make pancetta. We could also salt the neck to make coppa. Philip has been cleaning up as he goes, trimming away. He has three bowls on the go: lean, fat and mixed. Scraps are thrown into them throughout the butchering. He talks us through a basic sausage recipe, gets the grinder out and quickly knocks some up before lunch. By 1.30pm we are eating sausages made from the animal that lay whole, smiling, before us only four hours earlier. Now it has been reduced to its constituent parts. The inedible removed, and every last usable scrap extracted, cleaned and prepared.
The whole process is an extraordinary thing to witness. I was madly scribbling notes, annotating diagrams; drawing new diagrams when my scribbles obscured the printed ones; asking questions, telling the whisperers to shut up. I was transfixed. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything. I wanted a whole pig waiting on the slab when I got home so I could have a go myself. I wanted to be a butcher.
And so here we are again, the circle continues. First I want to learn about food. Next I want to be a cook. Then I want to be a chef. Then I want to be a baker. Now I want to be a butcher. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to be a cheesemaker, but that just ain't cutting the mustard anymore. There is something mystical, enchanting and elusive about the art of butchery. What the hell am I going to want to be next? I feel like a child again.
The afternoon was never going to live up to the excitement of the morning. It had a good go though, with a South African winemaker giving a quick talk and tasting session after lunch. She was brilliant as it happens - really passionate, informative and straight talking. Her father decided he wanted to plant Sauvignon Blanc on particularly inhospitable terrain that is 70% quartz stone. After getting his hands on a bulldozer that didn’t even scratch the surface, he had to bribe the local council to lend him a breaker so he could punch holes in the ground big enough to plant the vines.
You have to admire that kind of tenacity. That guy saw something, believed in it, and didn’t stop believing in it until it was done. I hope to God that's what I'm going to be like. Just as soon as I've finished working out exactly what it is I'm going to do when this is all over, I can’t wait to get on with making it happen.
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