"pig" news and stories

You won't find many titles that contain both the words "vice president" and "shop manager," and you won't find many salumi shops like Boccalone either. The salumeria in San Francisco's Ferry Building is one of the best places in the country to experience the sheer joy of chowing down on high-quality, slow-cured pork. We recently caught up with Executive Vice President Tatiana Graf and asked her about her day-to-day routine working in a pig lover's paradise.

One day about a month after we had opened the shop, an older woman came in and started looking around. When I greeted her, she asked in a slightly gruff way, "You don't make head cheese, do you?" I said, "Of course we do. We call it Coppa di Testa. Would you like to try some?" She was surprised and said "Sure." I could tell she wasn't convinced that I knew what I was talking about. I got a sample and brought it over for her to try. While she tasted it, I explained a little about our company and how we make make everything in the traditional, old-world style. She considered for a minute and then a smile grew across her face. She looked me in the eye and told me she hadn't tasted any head cheese that good since her father, who was a butcher, had made it when she was a kid. She said the flavor took her right back to her childhood. All the gruffness in her voice was gone. She was happy and so was I.

There's something about pork that makes it the perfect wrapping and stuffing. Sizzling bacon often encircles the likes of scallops, beef, turkey and even French toast, while porcine goodness can occasionally be found in that classic junk food, pigs in a blanket.

Chef Albert Di Meglio of New York City restaurant Olana has taken it one tantalizing step further. In the above video, Di Meglio makes Sausage-Wrapped Pork -- a whole new world for the dedicated pig fan. He grabs a pork tenderloin, wraps it in a sausage filling and finally encases it with caul (a type of fat). He pops the whole thing in the oven and then slices and serves it.

Those who just can't wait till the end of the video to broaden their porcine horizons can click here for the recipe.

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Who said we need to cut the pork? This porcine bento, from Cooking Cute, features several iterations of edible pigs. We've got salmon rice piggies with scallion-nori eyes, hand-cut kamaboko (fish cake) fans, hot dog flowers with star-cut carrot centers, orange and green sticky rice flowers and pinwheels, pig spam nigiri, and a pig-shaped pink hard-boiled egg made in an egg mold.

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As I wrote several weeks ago, a pig pickin' is a North Carolina tradition involving a pig, a converted petroleum drum cooker, a bunch of charcoal and a whole lot of time. But a pig pickin' is not the only way to cook a whole hog - cultures across the world have been spit roasting, grilling and burying pigs in hot ash for thousands of years. In many places, pork is the cheapest meal available, making pig roasts an affordable way to have big festive meals for the whole community. Here are a few whole hog traditions from around the world:

Hawaii: Possibly the most famous whole pig preparation of them all, the kalua pig is a staple of the Hawaiian luau. The pig is "dressed" (gutted, the outer layer of skin and hair removed) and salted and placed in an imu - a banana leaf-lined pit filled with hot stones. The pig is covered in more dirt and left for hours until smoky and falling apart tender.

Cuba: Cubans love their lechón (suckling pig), a Christmas Eve tradition. Pigs are often cooked in backyard roasters made from bricks or cinder blocks. One popular version of the homemade roaster is called a "caja china" (a Chinese box), a rather coffin-like device in which the pig is placed on the metal-lined bottom and a tray of coals is placed on top, cooking the meat through indirect heat.

Italy: At the annual Sagra del Maiale festival of pork, Italians grill whole pigs over a food fire and lovingly dis-articulate them to feed the whole village. Skin becomes crispy and meat is buttery soft and succulent. And not a big of the porker is wasted - even the ears and trotters are fair game. Not headed to Italy any time soon? Some Italian restaurants in NYC and other cities have their own Sagra del Maiale.

The Philippines: The image of the golden-skinned pig spinning on a spit over a roaring fire is a reality here in the South Pacific, where Filipinos adore stuffing the pig's belly with herbs and spices, impaling it horizontally, and roasting it until the skin crackles and the meat is meltingly tender. The dish, known as lechon baboy, is a festival day favorite.

My husband and I were watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire the other day and there was a question that stuck with me. What type of hat is named for it's distinctive shape? The answer turned out to be a pork pie hat. I had never heard of such a thing and couldn't figure out what made it "distinctive" enough to be named after pork or even pie. Once I looked it up online (what did we do before Google? Lived in oblivion, I suppose), I recognized it right away. I now understand the correlation between the hat and shape of a particular meat pie but I still couldn't get the silly name out of my head. So, naturally, I decided to make a cake.

I started by taking a 6 inch round, cutting it in half and standing each on its side with the bottoms together to make the body. I used my smallest mixing bowl for the head, some mini-cupcakes for a nose and feet and a pyrex ramiken for the pie. The entire thing needed a little carving here and there. The edges of his back were rounded out some, the head cut off a bit to make the neck shorter and the bottoms of the feet flattened so they would snug up next to him better. I inserted a toothpick to help hold his nose in place and went to work making him pink. It takes longer than you think to cover a pig in hot pink buttercream icing using a star tip. If I did it again, I'd probably just ice it and flatten it out to make it easier but I do like the texture contrast between the pig and the smooth fondant of the accessories.

More piggy after the jump.