It's berry and currant season again

15 jars of jelly made so far, so only just beginning.......

The last porky tales - part 3: In praise of fat and a varied diet

If I had to pin down just one thing about the taste of home grown pork that was a revelation, it would be the fat.

I should probably point out that we haven't eaten commercial pork for a number of years now, preferring to buy from an excellent free range producer nearby (King Valley Free Range - hi E!), so we were already eating pork that has amazing flavour. So to be honest I wasn't expecting there to be much (if any) noticeable difference with our own pork as long as we got it right in the cooking. I was wrong.

I can taste the difference, particularly in the fat. Honestly the fat is so tasty it's almost better than the meat. I think this is because as a home producer we had the luxury of being able to provide a more varied diet for our 2 piggies, including trailerloads of apples and chestnuts from a neighbour, plus a regular supply of vegetable scraps from the local green grocer. Not only did this help keep our food bills down and our piggies happy, but I think the diet has had a difference to the flavour - in the same way you can taste the difference between grass fed and grain fed beef, or between a home grown and a commercial chicken. It was interesting that the butcher was shocked at the size of our pigs compared to their litter mates (who were processed 4 weeks before) - and I put that down to their diet too. Granted they were a bit spoilt and probably got a bit more food than was strictly necessary, but as you can see from the previous porky tales post there is a very nice layer of fat, but it isn't excessive - there is still plenty of meat.

A few weeks ago in Bendigo we went to the fabulous Dispensary Enoteca, and Jerry had a pork belly entree (free range, rare breed). We both agreed that the fat had no flavour compared to ours. It was really interesting as before growing our own we would have said it was pretty tasty.

So with Christmas coming, and my experience that the only decent pastry I ever make involves lard, I decided to render some from our piggies. I saved some of the fat for barding (the butcher had scored it), but the rest went in batches into a low oven in my cast iron pot to render. It took a few hours each time, but I was left with several jars of lard, and then some pork scratchings (crispy skin). I've never been bad keen on them so they mostly went to the dogs.

When I was rendering the back fat for lard I swear it smelt like roasting toffee apples - but better. The smell was more enticing than a full roast dinner! When cold it went a beautify snowy white, and it still smells great.

Since then I've used the lard to make lardy cake, as well as make some mighty fine crispy roast potatoes to go with roast dinners.

I can't say I was overwhelmed with the lardy cake, but glad I have tried it once. I'll be saving the rest of the lard for pastry and potatoes!

Coming soon: getting my head around brawn and pate, plus making bone broth.

The last porky tales, part 2

The suspense is over folks - here's part 2 of the last porky tales.

So, where were we? Butchering day (as in the day the butcher comes to create all those lovely chops, roasts and so on). It was a fairly long one for our excellent butcher - probably about 6 hours to do both pigs. We had a chat about what I wanted, with the assistance of Hugh F-W's meat book for illustration!

My goal was to use as much of the pig as possible. I admit though that I didn't go so far as to use the caul or stomach or some of the more creative innards - mostly doe to the time available as I had to be in Sydney 5 days later for a uni course. Plus I'd bought myself a home vacuum sealing machine so I was pretty busy this day and the next just packing and labelling meat, as well as making various bits and bobs.

I did however use or keep the livers (more on pate later), kidneys, hearts, heads, tongues (more on that later). But much of the day was spent lugging in tubs of meat from the butcher's mobile workshop and packing them.

 

  So what was the end tally? From 2 heritage piggies 7 months old we ended up with:

• 18kg of forequarter chops - most the size of dinner plates and more than enough to feed 2 per chop
• 23kg of loin chops
• 6.5kg of rack of pork
• 7.5kg of hand of pork
• 11kg of belly
• 8kg of leg steaks
• 10kg of boneless mini leg roasts
• 6kg of hocks
• 600g of fillet
• 3kg of American ribs
• 6.5kg of mince
• 17.5kg in leg roasts
• 6.5kg rolled shoulder roasts
• 2.8kg pork cheeks
• 4kg liver
• 600g hearts
• Forgot to weigh the kidneys but probably about 1kg
• 1.2 kg of meat from the heads
• Bones (lots)
• Trotters (forgot to weigh them - treat for the dogs)
• About 10kg of fat that was either saved for barding, frozen, or rendered for lard (more on that later)

So all up about 135kg of meat plus the fat.  We did a quick back-of-envelope calculation and worked out this cost us about $12 per kilo (including buying the piglets, feed, and paying the butcher). I think that's outstanding value for free range heritage pork.

So if you're at our place in the next year you know what will be on the menu!

The only waste from 2 pigs was 1 garbage bin of innards (went on a neighbours fire), and about 1/2 of a green garbage bag of hair/skin/fat bits that weren't worth salvaging. I'm pretty happy with that.

Stay tuned for more editions of the porky tales, coming soon(ish)

Thanks CFA

A few good men (not being sexist, they were all men) came out in their trucks last night to do some fuel reduction burns for us in the paddocks. Hopefully this is the only time we will have flames and fire trucks so close to the house.

 

The guys were here for about 2.5 hours, and then poor things were back at 11pm cause someone called 000 and they were paged. But it was all fine. During the burn off there were 12 calls to 000 so it's nice to see that people driving by are on the alert.

The picture above is how it looked this morning. It's been a long night for deputy fireman Jerry who has been up every few hours during the night checking on the smouldering bits to make sure nothing flares up, particularly as the grass in our neighbours paddock is waist high. Hopefully there will be a bit more rain overnight to really put it all out so we don't have to call the guys back on Sunday (restrictions start Sunday night so everything has to be out by then).

See the fun you city kids miss out on?!