Meet Breakfast

Back in January, when I started talking about this nose to tail challenge of eating Everything But The Oink, I stated that I had no intention of eating a whole pig.  I was content at eating a bit of everything that was on offer and not having to deal with two whole hams and a belly full of bacon.  However, over the last few months I realised that there are some bits of pig that will be very difficult to get hold of unless I befriended a farmer.

Through the wonderful medium of Twitter I had a number of exciting conversations.  Pork farms were suggested left right and centre.  People told me who their favourite butcher was.  The promise of butchery and charcuterie classes were dangled in front of my eyes.  But none of this was going to help me a lay my hands on a pig's spleen.

The only farm that I had an existing relationship with was Swillington Organic Farm.  Along with cattle and chickens, Swillington rear free range, rare breed pigs.  Saddlebacks to be precise.  I've bought meat and vegetables from their farm shop and from various markets around Leeds previously.  I have even had a couple of their monthly meat boxes delivered to my house.

During the planning* stage of Everything but the Oink, I emailed the farm to pick their brains.  I was interested in the quantity of pork a pig produces and price per pound.  We continued our chat in person on a snowy Saturday in January.  We had popped to the farm shop to pick up some meat and had an impromptu tour to show R the chickens.  It wasn't long before the conversation turned to pigs and this challenge.

Up until that moment I had no idea that you could sponsor a pig to be reared on your behalf.  I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted a whole pig.  If the truth is known I wasn't sure that I wanted to have a relationship with a pig prior to eating it.  I left the farm that day with more questions buzzing around my head that I had space for.  Firstly this was not a cheap undertaking.  We're talking about a whole pig here, not a chicken a duck or a goose, a whole pig.  I asked around to see if anybody would like to share the cost and the pork but there were no takers.

Even though nobody wanted in on the action, everyone that I told about the piggy possibility was very enthusiastic.  The problem was that everybody assumed that I was going to go through with it and sponsor a pig.  I hadn't made my mind up but the more I told people about the idea the more enthusiastic I was becoming about it.

Breakfast

So today I took R on another visit to Swillington, this time to look at the piggies.  R loves farm animals** so the idea of seeing them in person had him bouncing off the walls.  I did have the ulterior motive of choosing my piglet and paying for it.  The little chap in the photo above is Breakfast.  He's a week old and part of a litter of 10.  There were more traditional looking Saddleback pigs but I needed to be able to recognise him and pick him out of a crowd, so I went for his distinctive spotty markings.

Breakfast will live at the farm with his brothers, sisters, Mum and extended family for between 6 to 7 months before his time is up.  During that time I will be visiting often to check on his progress.  I don't intend on getting too attached to him and I know that giving him a name might not have been the best of ideas.  I am just going to keep in mind the quality of the meat that I have had from Swillington in the past.  I also promise to make the very best use of everything that Breakfast has to offer.  For the next 6 months I'll be cooking as much pork as I can so that when I do get him home there will be no disappointing meals.

**UPDATE**

I have just heard from the good people at Swillington Farm that Breakfast is a Boar.  This means that I now have a source for testicles which were high on my list of pig bits that are hard to find.  I was under the impression that male piggies were castrated at an early age to make them easier to raise but this is not the case at Swillington.  To make sure there are no unwanted piglets Breakfast will be kept way from his sisters once he starts getting interested in girls.

*let us, just for one moment, pretend that all of this is planned and hasn't just accidentally happened shall we.
**apart from the "big Daddy cows" which were so noisy at Home Farm that he was terrified.  We are not allowed to do cow impressions at home now which makes reading certain bedtime stories interesting.

Vietnamese Pig Heart Stirfry

When I started Everything But The Oink in January there were a number of pork cuts that I was immediately excited about trying for the first time.  I'm really looking forward to curing my own bacon and finally getting around to tackling brawn, but the stand out ingredient that I wanted to get my hands on was heart.

Of all the parts of a pig that I am going to be faced with during this year I think heart is the most instantly recognisable as an organ*.  Liver and kidney are often sold pre-sliced and when they are not it's still hard to see what they are.  A loin chop could be from anywhere/anything unless you know your pig's anatomy.  With heart there is no doubt.

We had come close to having heart in January.  I was on the lookout for trotters one Saturday and noticed pig's hearts on my favourite butcher's counter.  But I was on a mission, so I left empty handed to look elsewhere for the trotters that I desired.  I ended that day with neither trotters nor heart and I resolved to be more spontaneous when it came to picking up portions of pig so that I didn't miss out in future.

This weekend was our wedding anniversary and to celebrate we decided to have steak**.  While we were in Leeds we took a detour to B & J Callard's butchers in Kirkgate Market.  We joined the merry throng outside the butchers window to assess our options.  Our assessment didn't take long as we both love rump steak.  I sidled through the scrum at the door and took my place in the queue.  It was only while my steak was being cut from the huge rump in the window that I noticed the tray of pig's hearts on the counter.  Z was still outside so I trusted my instincts and without batting an eyelid, added one to my order.

When I told Z what I had done her face froze.  It has been a while since Everything But The Oink has featured in our lives and it had probably slipped from her mind.  To say that this is my food adventure is unfair.  Z is joining me every step of the way but she is definitely my voice of caution.  Z is an ex-vegetarian who still has some meat hang-ups, especially lamb and offal.  Liver is a particular cut beyond the pale for her so the idea of eating heart was a tricky one for her to stomach.

I had previously done some research for heart recipes and Z had seen the fruits of my searches.  It is fair to say that none of my chosen recipes had done anything to bring Z around fully to the idea of eating heart, but there was some movement in her mindset.  As heart is a muscle she was convincing herself that it would have a much better texture than liver.  That was half of the battle won.

As I had planned to have the heart as a mid week evening meal it had to be quick to cook.  That removed two of the recipes I'd found.  My research had told me that heart, like liver, squid and so many other things, needs to be cooked for hours or for as little time as possible and by the time we have the toddler in bed there are not that many hours left in the day for cooking.

Having never eaten or cooked heart it suddenly dawned on me that I had never prepared one either.  How hard can it be?  Well it wasn't that hard at all.  I cut the heart into 5mm slices and then trimmed the slices of any sinew, tubes and connective tissue.  What I was left with resembled finely sliced venison loin, only with a closer grain to the meat.

I marinated the heart in fish sauce while I sliced the rest of the ingredients for the stir fry.  The recipe I was following [click here] only asked for onion and spring onion to accompany the heart, but as Z was still wary*** I decided to up the vegetable content with green pepper and carrot.  The meat was cooked first in a searing hot wok before being rested while the vegetables are cooked in the same pan.  Everything is then stirred together, seasoned with soy sauce and served with noodles or rice.  The dish, as with all stir fries was simple and fast to cook, assuming you don't count the chopping and slicing as part of the cooking time.

Silence has never filled our kitchen the way it did tonight when I presented the two plates of noodles.  I was excited about the prospect of trying a potential new favourite food stuff but I was also anxious.  What if I didn't like it.  More importantly, what if Z didn't like it.  We simultaneously went straight for the heart and the silence lingered.

It is fair to say that the meal was a success.  We both really enjoyed the heart.  We tried to pin down the flavour of the meat while we were eating and decided that it tasted more like game than offal, which is what I had expected when dissecting it.  Texturally, it was similar to pigeon breast rather than liver or steak.  By the time we had finished we were already planning the next outing for pig heart in our kitchen.  We'll possibly do another stir fry but with fiery black bean and chilli sauce.  We're also keen on seeing how slow cooking alters the flavour and texture.

For me pig heart epitomises the reasons that I'm carrying out this nose to tail challenge.  This was a glorious meal, made with a stunning ingredient that so many people would turn their noses up at without even tasting it.  The blog where I found the recipe talks about how revered heart is in Vietnamese culture.  It is so expensive there that only wealthy families eat it more than once a year.  My pig heart cost only 79p.  That is ten times less than the steak that I bought at the same time and it would have fed more people.

It staggers me that something so delicious is seen as a worthless by-product of the butchers counter.  We have been over sensitised to our food so much that I hear people say that they don't like chicken thighs because they contain bones.  If we are unable to respect and eat all of an animal whose life has been given to feed us, then perhaps we should all become vegetarian.  I'm not happy to take that step but am happy to eat everything that has been provided to me and eat good meat less often.

*Yes I know that we could all spot a head in a line up but you know what I mean.
**I know it's an old cliché but we both love steak and don't have it often.  We were going to have a Mexican feast but couldn't get hold of a ripe avocado for love nor money.
***she was getting quite excited by this point.