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Ärende: US Airways Pig 922
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US Airways Magazine 8/07
GOING WHOLE HOG
John T. Edge

The calendar tells us it's time to celebrate all things pork.

As indicated by the Chinese lunar calendar, we're at the halfway mark in
the Year of the Pig. It's an auspicious year. According to tradition,
children born under the sign of the pig will be happy and prosperous,
and their fortunes will mirror those of the pig, whose corpulence is a
symbol of affluence.

Adults, on the other hand, get comparatively short shrift: a bit of good
luck, a few more coins jangling in their pocket, that sort of thing. The
passionate eaters among us, however, stand to get a bit more out of the
Year of the Pig. That's right. You guessed it. Great pork dishes.

Maybe it's the power of positive suggestion. Doesn't it stand to reason
that, in the Year of the Pig, chefs might tune in to porcine attributes?
Can't you imagine the subliminal influences at work?

Picture a big-city American chef who's about to phone in his butcher
order. He's ditching his regular leg of lamb and the steamship round in
favor of pork because back in February, when the Chinese New Year was
celebrated, he watched the parades in Chinatown and the throngs of
people carrying red banners blazoned with images of smiling pigs. He
marveled at the honor given to the animal.

So he calls Caw Caw Creek in South Carolina for a pork belly, a cut that
is - owing to the heritage of the Ossabaw Island breed and to the
integrity of the farmer who raises it - beribboned with
melt-in-your-mouth fat and flavor. He opted for the Ossabaw because of
its superior taste, no doubt about it. But I can't help but think that,
when just about all of Asia is celebrating the pig, something shifts in
the kitchens of America; an awareness dawns, and soon an appetite for
all things pork blossoms anew.

I've begun to notice a few eating trends in Year of the Pig. One is
about cuts: Fat is in. This translates on the plate as the fall of chops
and loins and, concurrently, the rise of bellies and shoulders.

For the longest time, chops and loins were prized. They were meatier.
They were rosy pink. But fat carries flavor. Always has. Bacon is a
testament to the import of fat. And for those of us who need a quick
lesson in pig anatomy - and who doesn't? - bacon is nothing more than
cured pig belly.

Of late, cured pig belly has been getting its due at restaurants such as
David Greggory in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where
on the third Monday of each month they host Aphrodisiac Bacon Dinners
featuring the likes of Nodine's garlic bacon with tempura bananas and
tuna loin. For dessert, they dish truffles of chocolate and Edwards Brown
Sugar Bacon, perfectly gilded with caramel-almond sauce.

BRUCE AIDELLS'S BANANA-LEAF-WRAPPED PORK
Cat: celebrity, pork
Serves 6 to 8

4 md tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/4 c freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 c orange juice
1/2 c roughly chopped onion
1 Tb cumin seeds, toasted
1/2 bn cilantro
2 ts dried oregano
3 Tb paprika
6 garlic gloves
3 Tb olive oil
4 ts Kosher salt
2 ts freshly ground black pepper
6 lb boneless Boston butt, cut into two equal pieces
2 (24" long) banana leaves, defrosted if frozen

Put all ingredients except pork and banana leaves into blender. Blend
until mixture forms paste. Spread paste over all sides of pork, then put
pork into a plastic bag, seal, and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut any long, hard sides from unfolded
banana leaves. Run them, one at a time, over high flame or hot electric
burner until softened and shiny. Put banana leaves in shallow
9-by-13-inch baking dish and top with pork and any juices from marinade.
Pull leaves up and tuck insides to enclose pork. Transfer pork to oven
and bake for 4 hours, or until meat is falling apart.

Remove pork from banana leaves, and pour off liquid into serving dish.
Break pork apart into chunks or shred and combine with cooking liquid.
Serve with citrus-marinated red onions, rice, and warm tortilla.

Source: US Airways Magazine 8/07

But the more interesting development is the ascendance of the uncured
belly. For years now, Wylie Dufresne of WD-50, the hipster restaurant
on New York City's Lower East Side, has been turning out dishes like
sous-vide cooked pork belly with smoked yucca, romaine, and papaya.
(He's also the guy who deep-fries mayonnaise cubes and scoops edamame
ice cream alongside venison.)

Dufresne has his share of compatriots, chefs like Nobu Fukuda at Sea Saw
in Scottsdale, Arizona, who nestles pork belly on a bed of sticky rice
and wraps it in a banana leaf before roasting it to a transcendent
succulence. Out in Berkeley, California, at Chez Panisse, the belly
isn't bold enough. At Alice Waters's venerable restaurant, housemade
headcheese hits the table with a rustic loaf of bread and a spreadable
feast of cornichons and mustard.

Which brings us to the shoulder. It's not as sexy as the belly. It
doesn't inspire devotion like the ham. It's a workaday cut, known to
some (with slight variation) as a Boston butt. Shoulder has long been
popular among barbecue pitmasters in the South, who prize the cut's
striations of fat, which, when subjected to the heat of a grill,
self-baste the meat. But only recently has shoulder received the
treatment it deserves.

Momofuku Ssam Bar, a shoebox in New York's East Village, is, at this
auspicious moment when Year of the Pig banners still fly high, the
reigning shoulder joint. David Chang and crew give the so-called lesser
cuts their due, roasting whole butts and - for those willing to commit
themselves to a night of indulgence - pairing them with platters of
oysters, sheaths of Bibb lettuce, and various sauces for roll-your-own
pork and oyster bundles that provide ample reason to never again ogle a
pork chop.

Source: US Airways Magazine 8/07

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