Lard-Ass

There is no such thing as the Lard Information Council.

If someone calls you a “lard-ass,” take it as a compliment. Lard is one of the best things about pigs (after the bacon and hams and chops and cracklings, of course). Lard is the rendered thin white fat that surrounds various of the hog’s internal organs, and has been an indispensible part of old world cuisines since men first wrestled a boar to the ground, had them a fry-up and said “yum!”

Because we all know that the flavor in meat is carried in the fat (you knew that, right?), it is most often pig’s fat that is made into lard, because on the contrary, it carries little flavor. This makes it ideal as a shortening for pastry, and its high smoke point also makes it a good choice for frying. Hogs fed on their natural diet (foraged acorns and scraps) produce the most lovely tasting meat, whereas hogs fed on corn (as industrially raised ones are) have very little flavor.

While it is true that as an animal fat, lard has its fair share of saturated fat, it is worth pointing out that the same amount of butter (by weight) contains more unsaturated fats and less cholesterol. Hydrogenated vegetable oil, developed in the early 1900s made cooking with shortening possible for those whose dietary restrictions forbid pork products, and for a long time, this trend was followed in restaurants too. But recently, good old-fashioned lard is making a comeback. It’s delicacy and the ease with which we can digest it cannot be substituted for something made from soybeans.

But lard has gotten a bad rap. It’s become synonymous with wanton, endemic obesity — so much so that it has even spawned spoof posters proclaiming its health benefits, such as the one above.

The thing is — the fake poster is, well, true.

Here’s what Mrs. Beeton has to say about making your own:

Lard (to Make):

METHOD.— melt the inner fat of the pig by putting it in a stone jar, and placing this in a saucepan of boiling water, previously stripping off the skin. Let it simmer gently, and, as it melts, pour it carefully from the sediment. Put it into small jars or bladders for use, and keep it in a cool place. The flead or inside fat of the pig before it is melted makes exceedingly light crust, and is particularly wholesome. It may be preserved a length of time by salting it well, and occasionally changing the brine. When wanted for use, wash and wipe it, and it will answer for making paste as well as fresh lard.

 Here is a very nice modern version from chickensintheroad.com: Lard Recipe

This Little Piggy . . .

What’s mildly disturbing about this recipe isn’t the graphic goriness of it — putting the piglet’s tail in it’s mouth; boiling it partway then flaying and quartering it — but that all the way through the process it has a pronoun: he. This poor piglet seems to be cooked alive.

 Cooks and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott, 1723

Also from this book: Blood Pudding, Tits, Mead, Scurvy, Scourge Of The Seas, Quackery, Gastropub / Gastropig: Eating High on the Hog, Take Your Lumps, Pigeon à la Française, Sugared Plums (Ouch)

How To Make The Most Of A Pig, Before It Is Killed

Ensure that you pig has a good, fulfilling life, with plenty of exercise, shelter, acorns to nibble and scraps to eat. Give it the company of other pigs. Sing to your pig in the evening as you distribute the night-time straw. Pat your pig. When reading to your pig, avoid tales involving pigs whose houses are destroyed by angry wolves. Do not name your pig “Babe.” Name it “Bacon.”

A Plain Cookery Book For The Working Classes, Charles Elme´ Francatelli, 1852

Also from this book: Mutton Chops, Heads, Plucks, Shanks and Scrag-Ends, How (Not) To Make Coffee, Take A Deep Breath..., Stuffed Up, Bee Stings, What Pluck!, Faggots

Gastropub / Gastropig: Eating High on the Hog

Before the 1990s, if you wanted to eat in a public house, you had “pub grub.” After the 1990s, if you wanted to go to a pub to eat, you went to a “gastropub.” The kind of traditional foods one could previously find in a pub — the pub grub — were homely and nostalgic nods to what you’d get at home, ideally, if your wife was your mother and it was 1950: Ploughman’s Lunch, shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, Cornish pasties and the like. In other words, foods that filled your stomach and went well with beer. Fine dining establishments wouldn’t be caught dead serving this sort of common food, and they certainly wouldn’t refer to it as “grub,” a term reserved for casually prepared food one eats on the fly. What the gastropub did was to conjoin those two worlds, bringing the quality of fine dining to bear on the preparation of those much-beloved common foods, so that they could be consumed with ease in a shabby-chic environment — the pub. Naturally, the pub itself also underwent a sort of reverse gentrification, which emphasized the value of the antique environment over the tired utilitarian in all things from furniture to decoration to lighting. The stuff the pub is built of (worn brick, wood) is as visible as what the food is made of. In short, the gastropub morphed into the Apollonian Ideal of one’s local — the kind tourists see in coffee table books about English villages but which had become hard to find.

The rise of the gastropub went hand-in-hand with two culinary revolutions, each feeding the other. One was the locally-sourced and organic food movement, which, in focusing on smaller, independent crops, was able to re-introduce the kinds of fruits and vegetables that big agriculture could not produce — the kinds of delicate salad leaves and baby veggies one could grow in a garden, but not in a field. The gastropub could proudly display the origins of its ingredients on its chalkboard, giving the customer (or punter?) a sense of place if not merely the sense that they are eating responsibly. The other was the increasing acceptance of “snout to tail” restaurants whose menus revolved around the parts of an animal not usually considered something one would pay good money for.  It has become cool to have developed a taste for offal and bits and pieces — not simply because it suggests an adventurous palate, but because it appeals to those who want to say they are part of the cutting edge, whatever that may be. Only the “in” crowd would know what caché a reservation at St. John holds. At such places, rich men eat like poor ones; that is to say, they pay through the nose for noses.

 The butcher has regained the respect and visibility he once had when one bought meat from a butcher shop, because his expertise allows him to dismantle an animal in such a way as to make use of all its parts for human consumption. I use the masculine pronoun, though one sees far more women in the profession today. A woman engaging in butchery – wielding a big knife — is sexy in a somehow sexier way that a woman wielding a big knife to cut up an animal didn’t used to be.

But all this is not new — it never is. In 1773, it was the women who were charged with making ends meet — literally, making the ends of an animal meet their needs, because protein was scarce. Making these odds and ends palatable involves the addition of a lot of flavoring ingredients — herbs and spices — as can be seen in this recipe for Palates, Noses and Lips. The only difference between this recipe and a hot dog is that here the parts are served whole, whereas the hot dog has been cast of the proverbial “pink slime” rendered by intense puréeing.

You might not think you are eating such old-fashioned food when you chow down on a ballpark frank, but you are: it’s the same palates, noses and lips in a different shape, a different place. Though it might not seem like it, you are in fact eating high on the hog.

The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott, 1773

Also from this book: Mead, Blood Pudding, Tits, Sugared Plums (Ouch), Scurvy, Scourge Of The Seas, Quackery, Take Your Lumps, Pigeon à la Française, This Little Piggy...