The
Practical Pig
Cost: €350 Small class - This
is an intensive hands-on course for those who want plenty of action! Or for those
who have started rearing pigs, or thinking about it and need the final push!!!
or for anybody who would like to eat lots of good pork for two days and most importantly
for anybody who wants great recipes. Includes dinner …………. 24th-25th
November 2007.
A full pig will be butchered a few days before
the class. Learn how to use all the cuts / parts of the pig. Make salamis, chorizo,
rillettes, sausage, black puddings etc. Hurry! Advance Warning: space is always
limited on this course. A popular Christmas or Father's Day gift for Him,
this course is also very popular with the boutique farming set and the slow food
enthusiast. Some of my best childhood memories are of sitting in the kitchen
of my grandparents farm after the pig was killed: the black pudding was made and
the bacon cured, some salted and the rest hung by the open fire to cure , I can
still remember that big wooden barrel full of salted bacon which kept the house
fed for the winter and some was posted to relations abroad. This great
art has died out in Ireland and we have got used to eating inferior pork and bacon.
We all know how much better wild salmon tastes than farmed; that free range chicken
and especially eggs don't compare with their factory cousins. Multiply that difference
by a hundred fold and you will get the idea of how far superior a lovingly raised
pig is to a pale graduate of a factory farm. So with Lisa's lovingly raised
pigs (well fed by the café and its staff), great recipes from France, Italy
and especially Spain, (I have been greatly influenced by my second chef Rebeca
from the Teruel region, her family still preserve their own pig every year) learning
from Rebeca and her mother exactly how they do it made for one of the most interesting
and exciting classes of the year.
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