Saying Goodbye to Breakfast

I'm not going to beat around the bush, this week has been quite emotional.  I've known that it would come ever since I first set eyes on my tiny one week old piglet, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier.  During every visit to Swillington Farm I have reminded myself that ours was only a fleeting relationship and that one day he, along with his brothers and sisters, would be sent to slaughter.

For Breakfast that day has come.  Monday was my last visit to see him running around his field, it was also the only time that I have been to the farm without R in tow.  Still in my work attire of shirt and tie, I donned my wellies and, like a stock footage image of a quantity surveyor, I helped to get Breakfast and 4 other pigs into their trailer.

On Tuesday morning, while most people were tucked up in bed, they made the short journey to the abattoir and that was that.  I had wanted to go along for the ride, not out of loyalty towards Breakfast, but to have a look at one of the places where our animals become meat.  Call it morbid curiosity.  Sadly I wasn't able to make the trip this time.

I spent most of the rest of the week wondering what I was going to do when I took delivery of a pig's worth of meat.  While I have spent the last year trawling the internet for interesting pork recipes I had missed one very vital bit of information, how did I want Breakfast to be butchered.  I had a date on Saturday with Simon, Swillington Farm's resident butcher, and he needed to know what I wanted.

A side of Breakfast I hadn't seen before.

Along with the usual chops and roasting joints I did have a couple of more unusual requests.  T-bone steaks, leg steaks cut in an Osso Buco style and double thickness loin chops were all on my wish list.  I have been fantasising about making my own bacon since before this adventure started, so I made sure that I had the thick end of belly prepared specifically.  I knew what the trotters were destined for so they were the first things to be bagged up for me.

It took Simon, a professional butcher, almost two hours to deal with Breakfast.  I'm sure he would have been faster without me standing over his shoulder taking photos and making stupid requests.  I'm also sure that it would have taken me a couple of days to get anywhere close to what he achieved.  There also would have been a whole lot of wastage, especially if I had attempted to bone out the shoulder.

But sadly, even with Simon's expertise with a knife, there was a lot of wastage.  Of the 5 pigs that went to slaughter from Swillington Farm on Tuesday, the only offal that came back was Breakfast's kidneys.  Simon put this down to a lack of common sense on the part of the abattoir's vet.  In years gone past the slaughterman would cut out potential bad meat from livers, hearts and kidneys but now everything is discarded if the vet, in the interest of hygiene, decides that there is potential for contamination.

Not quite all of Breakfast.

I was lucky to get the kidneys but this does leave Everything But The Oink on a knife-edge with only a couple of months left of 2013.  I can't see how I'm now going to secure (and find the time to cook and eat) the more unusual cuts of pork.  While I'm trying to work that out, at least I have a house full of pork to process and eat.  That all starts tomorrow.

The Captain's Table

Last Wednesday night I made significant inroads into eating Everything but the Oink at The Captain's Table, in Outlaws Yacht Club.  It was the first pop-up restaurant that Outlaws had hosted and the guest chefs were the team behind The Greedy Pig, a wonderful cafe on North Street.  As you can probably guess, Jo and Stu from The Pig are lovers of all things porcine and their menu for the evening promised to be a nose to tail dining experience.

I saw the menu in advance but I had kept it from Z as I knew that she would have a problem with at least one of the courses.  I was right and sadly it was the first out of the block.  I thought that the savoury beetroot jelly containing morsels of ear, trotter, tongue and cheek was a brave and tasty way to start the evening, I get the impression others weren't convinced.  To give Z her credit she ate about half of her serving before giving up.  It wasn't the cuts of pig that put her off however, she just doesn't like jelly, neither sweet, savoury or infused with vodka.

The next course was more conventional, a rustic pate of shoulder, belly, liver and pistachio nuts.  Aware of what was still to come, I only took one piece of the proffered bread, but that meant that my bread to pate ratio was out.  That didn't really matter as the pate bore more than a passing resemblance to rillettes and I have been known to eat that by the bowl full.

I'll admit that I was a little bit disappointed with the next course.  Due to no fault of The Pig or Outlaws, the advertised spleen was no longer on the menu.  It turns out that the man from DEFRA had decided that this little piggy's spleen wasn't fit for human consumption.  Not only was this disappointing but it was a stark reminder that I might not get all of Breakfast when he does go to slaughter.  Everything is in the hands of the vet.

On the Yorkshire tapas plate, the spleen was replaced with tripe rolled in cured ham.  It was accompanied by grilled heart skewers, quails egg scotch eggs, and a celeriac remoulade.  All three were fantastic but I could have eaten a mountain of the heart kebabs.

Next up was "Three Little Pigs", a trio of boudin blanc, chorizo tortilla and the daddy of all sausages, black pudding.  Unlike the tapas plate, this one was bulging with piggy goodness.  I can only imagine the fun Stu had in making his own black pudding.  It is something I want to try, but I have a feeling that blood may be one of the items of Breakfast's anatomy that I am denied.

By the time the final savoury course arrived, protien fatigue had begun to creep around the room.  I for one was not going to be defeated and soldiered on.  I'm glad I persevered as the slice of rolled roast belly pork was sublime.  It actually reminded me of the Bath Chaps that I made earlier this year, without having been cured.  The bitter kale and the creamy mushroom and kidney sauce really set the pork off too.

Finally we had reached the last plate, dessert.  Pear poached in elderflower cider with brown bread ice cream is the kind of desert that I would probably choose from a menu but I was finally full.  Z on the other hand, who had bitten off more than she could chew a couple of mouth fulls into the roast pork, suddenly found a bit more room for pudding, washed down with a glass of mulled cider.

We got the chance to say thank you to Jo and Stu before wandering off into the night to sleep it off.  We needed to relieve our babysitter so couldn't hang around and chew the fat with them.  I know that Jo had been worried about giving people enough food and Stu had been working like a Trojan to get everything prepared.  Jo needn't have worried, there was more than enough food, if anything the three little pigs could have been littler.  It was clear too that Stu's efforts in the kitchen had really paid off.

I don't know if the next Captain's Table at Outlaws Yacht Club will feature The Greedy Pig, but whoever it is that next takes up the tiller will have to go some way to match the standard that has been set.  You could say that I have almost finished the nose to tail challenge that I set myself for this year, but Breakfast is still running around his pen at Swillington farm and until I've sampled all he has to offer, the challenge is still on.

School Report

It has been a while since I posted anything here but that's not to say that I've stopped eating pork.  I haven't given up on the Everything but the Oink Challenge either.  The last time we visited Breakfast was on Open Farm Sunday. He was doing well and a week away from being weaned from his mum. 

Today I found him sheltering from the heat on the shady side of his pen with his brothers for company.  To avoid unwanted bacon making the sows and boars are separated once they are weaned so Breakfast is hanging with the boys from now on.  This, I think, is why Breakfast has been playing up.  Everybody that I spoke to at the farm was full of the same stories.  Breakfast has been a bad boy.

I felt like a parent who had been summoned to see the headmaster.  It turns out that my little piggy is something of an escapologist.  He is free range, but to make sure that pigs don't run amok they have large areas fenced off for their own enjoyment.  Chickens and turkeys wander in and out of their field but the pigs are meant to stay put.

It's bad enough that he has been getting out but once beyond the fence he has been letting himself into the chicken sheds and eating the their food.  Part of me thinks that he's doing this to show off.  Perhaps, as one of the smaller pigs, he just wants to catch up to his brothers and put some extra weight on.  Maybe he's just clever.  Either way, I have chosen a pig with character and I'm even more determined to make the most of him when the time comes.

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.