Brown Veal Stock, Pork and Rabbit (Boston Butt, uh huh huh huh)

There is no doubt about it: pork is delicious. After being vegan/vegetarian for several years, it was the smell of frying bacon in a diner that seduced me back to porcine foods. Since then, I've developed my palate enough to be repulsed by over-salted industrial factory-raised bacon, and taught myself to sear a pork tenderloin medallion properly. As a Jew who grew up with very little pork in the home, it is the "other white meat" that stands as one of the pillars of my food-love.

According to Chef M, the pig is a great animal because it's easy to raise, will eat anything, and its meat and products are so versatile it's not unusual to get a 95% yield (use 95% of the animal) as opposed to the 30% yield of a cow. For example, beef fat melts at such a high temp that when ground into sausage, it can taste like little lardy bits. On the other hand, pork fat melts at body temperature. You can literally take a pig, grind it up with some spices, and--poof--you got good sausage. Pigs used to be 50/50 meat/fat, but through diet and breeding, today's pigs are about 70/30 meat/fat, making them fit well into today's nutritional scheme. Trichinosis (a disease associated with undercooked pork) is not really an issue in farm-raised pork, as the disease is picked up from diet. Wild pig, however, should always be cooked to over 160 degrees to kill bugs and other viruses.

Of course, the pig is unpopular because of what it eats: everything. There are stories throughout history of a farmer's child going to feed the pig, falling into the slop trough, and being eaten alive by the pigs. It's not for nothing that they're neither treif (unkosher) nor hallal.

A pig can grow to over 1,000 lbs but the kill weight is around 250. As with other animals, factory farming has made pork poisonous to our health and our environment. Pigs are packed into small pens, up to their knees in poo, shot full of antibiotics and sick most of the time. Their poo is put into huge plastic-lined collect pools that destroy the environment, whereas it could potentially be denatured and spread out as fertilizer -- but that would take more that looking beyond the profits at the end of the week. Chef M name-checked some outfits that do pork the right way. These brands are environmentally friendly and raise pigs healthfully and humanely: Nehman Ranch, Applegate Farms, and Berkshire Pork.

When the knives came out, the time-pressure was on. Our first task was to cut up mirepoix for veal stock. Up to this point, when we chopped celery, carrots, and onion, we could take our time to dice nicely. Now we were rushing to get the veg into large pots (in a little oil and salt) to get some browning and carmelization going. I found myself dicing, but when realizing time was short, simply rough-chopped to get things in the pot. In mirepoix, it's all cooked down, so things like trimmings can go in the pot -- it's all going to turn to mush and be strained anyway. While we were chopping, we put veal bones from yesterday in the oven to brown. During the course of class while we butchered and at one point we added tomato paste to the mirepoix to brown further. Then the roasted bones and the mirepoix were put in a huge pot and covered with cold water to be brought to a boil before being set to simmer for 24 hours or so.

First up was an entire intact pork loin, which was basically very similar to the beef loin we worked our way through, only smaller. Indeed, as time went on, the fat would get a bit slippery and coat our gloved hands, unlike the turkey-meat-like beef fat.

While thirds of a loin were distributed to each student, Chef M allowed me to finish fabricating his whole loin. Once I got the fat off, it looked like the pieces of loin I find in the market, only pre-cut into medallions.

Yesterday Chef M made an important point which I think he may not of stressed strongly enough. Any cook can take an expensive cut like a pork tenderloin and make it taste fantastic. It takes a chef to take a cheap tough-cut and make it fantastic -- and, most important to any restaurant, profitable.

Then out hopped the rabbits. I haven't eaten much rabbit in my life because it simply isn't offered. The rabbit is cool because it's just like a cow or a pig -- the skeletal structure and the meat muscles are all there, just tiny. Unlike the small parts we worked on before, this time we got the whole animal. If we had a whole cow, we'd need huge table saws and hatchets -- the rabbit only required a paring knife and scissors for the bones.

Butchering is a tough job that require both a strong and steady hand. I'm looking forward to going to the old-fashioned butcher in a city-owned market space by my home soon and hitting him up to see if he has any grass-fed grass-finished organic product.

ADDENDA:
After class, hit up the farmer's market in Union Square to pick up apples for dessert for tonight's dinner party with a colleague from school and his wife. Yoga was kind of annoying today: The substitute teacher played bad music loud enough to obscure her voice, and went over by a full 30 minutes to go through a greatest-hits of positions I can't do yet.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, 2 buttermilk pancakes, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Using the new pancake mix I made with the scale, I finished the buttermilk before it went bad. I'm not quite sure why, but these were the fluffiest, lightest pancakes I ever made. A little bit chewy, but like big pancakey pillows. Put 4 in the freezer.

AM TASTING: 11:30am, 2 small pieces of baby back ribs, half of a mini eclair, small piece of French bread .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
After hacking pork sides apart today, Chef M chose to roast baby back ribs in the oven, painted with a rub of vinegar, sugar, salt, and a few spices. Due to limited class time, he couldn't slow cook it at a lower temp, and the meat was a little tough, but still tasty. Pastry class sent up a small plate of mini-treats. That was cruel -- we should send them a handful of mini fillet mignons next week.

LUNCH: 12:30pm, pad thai, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Went to a so-called Vietnamese joint at 13th and University, whose menu was really Pan-Asian. It was raining, I needed to sit. Got a HUGE plate of under-dressed pad thai for $7 including tax. I literally left over 1/3 of the food, it was just too much. I guess this place makes money by massive turnover, as their putting a ton of poorly prepared food on a plate at a very small price.

PM SNACK: 5pm, handful of carrots and cucumber with homemade hummus, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
In school, we toss the odd-shaped slivers of veg we chop into a 'trim bucket' to be used for stock or whatever. As I'm not making stock at home soon, my mouth became my trim bucket.

DINNER: 7:30pm, crudites with hummus & olive oil, 4 slices of homemade pizza, homemade vanilla ice cream and homemade apple crumble, 1 glass wine, 2 glasses seltzer, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
It's nice when a dinner you make more or less goes the way you hope. Making pizza dough with a scale is the only way to go -- the dough balls came out of the fridge from proofing over night looking like I busted them out of a pizzeria. We started with battonets of celery, carrot, cucumber and red pepper with some homemade but standard issue hummus and nice green flavorful olive oil with some pine nuts. The parade of pizzas started with a simple bufalla moz margarita. The dough, after resting for a couple of hours, became very stretchy and was almost translucent in the middle when I laid it on the stone. It was too thin for about 1/3 of the interior to retain it's structure when pulled out. The second pie added organic pancetta, portobellos, cippolinis, and garlic. The salty pig fat really helped meld the vegetables to the pie, and this time I made sure the dough was consistent. Nicely browned on the bottom, it was airy but chewy, just right. The third pie involved my guest's chili (he's from Arizona, chili is his thing) as the sauce and Guinness-marbled cheddar. Came out better than I thought -- the black goo of the beer and the orange of the cheese melded into the strong flavor of the chili perfectly, and the pizza dough acted as a perfect dish for this hot yumminess. The fourth and final pie replaced the cheese with a truffled goat cheese and white onions, though in my opinion the goat cheese overwhelmed even the bold chili. Dessert was some French vanilla ice cream straight out of the maker and apple crumble, whose crust was greatly improved with 2 extra tablespoons of butter.