Meditations

Pasture-raised pork coming to the Foodist table for butchery, charcuterie and revelry


chico-at-the-butcher

A few of us from the collective are getting together to butcher a pig in a couple of weeks. We’ll make sausages, salumi, maybe some pancetta and prosciutto too. The plan is also to have a big supper that evening with pork in every dish and likely too much wine. The first time I butchered a whole pig was in the Piedmont. A beautiful and delicious creature named Chico. Most of the butchery was done by these two amazing old-school Piemontese butchers, who transformed living 200 kilo pig into lunch on the very butcher-table in just a few hours.

There is no chance that we will do as good of a job butchering as this guy, but we’ll try. What I can guarantee is that my fellow foodists and I will enjoy a blissed-out meal on the butcher table, where we will finish our sated bellies off with some grappa smuggled directly from the Piedmont. I’m sure you will see posts with photos, but it will look something like this scene from lunch with Chico.
chico-master-piemontese-butcher
We have secured our Sloping Hill Farms pig through Two Rivers Specialty Meats.Two Rivers is based in North Vancouver and specializes in delicious, sustainable meats. We had hoped to go meet our pig and tour Sloping Hill, but Dirk told us that we would disturb the pigs too much, but he sent along this little tour.
Sloping Hill Farm
chico-lunch

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6 Responses to “Pasture-raised pork coming to the Foodist table for butchery, charcuterie and revelry”

  1. Posted on March 5th, 2009

    So, how does one place their pancetta order?

  2. Posted on March 6th, 2009

    ooh, sounds very exciting!

  3. Posted on March 7th, 2009

    Brilliant! Can’t wait for the next report.

  4. Posted on March 8th, 2009

    What a great idea. Also a chance to plug one of my favorite books: “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing” by Michael Ruhlman and Bryan Polcyn… Good luck and I am looking forward to additional posts.

  5. Posted on March 21st, 2009

    Check out the website for pancetta picks. No, we did not butcher the pig, but allow me to remove all of your apprehensions about making pancetta. Easy and so delicious!

  6. Posted on March 29th, 2009

    Check out the updates over at the other post!

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