The phrase “farm to table” is used a lot in foodie circles. In the second half of this Sky Full of Bacon two-part podcast, I’ll complete the picture of what that really means with visits to restaurant kitchens… and to a slaughterhouse.

Sky Full of Bacon 06: There Will Be Pork (pt. 2) from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Mike Sula of the Chicago Reader has been writing about the rare mulefoot pig for the last year and a half (see here). Now the Reader has enlisted award-winning chef Paul Kahan, of Chicago’s Blackbird, to plan an elaborate six-course dinner showcasing the meat of these pigs and the sustainable, humane way in which they’re raised, as a benefit for Slow Food.

In Part 2, Mike Sula and I watch as Kahan and chefs Jason Hammel (Lula Cafe), Justin Large (Avec), Mike Sheerin (Blackbird) and Tim Dahl (Blackbird) prepare for the big night and talk about why supporting and promoting good pork matters to them. And we go to the rural slaughterhouse with Jason Hammel to gain a better understanding of what really lies behind the meat we eat. (Warning: although we were not allowed to film the kill itself, the video does contain frank footage of everything else that goes on in a slaughterhouse.) (19:56)

Mike Sula’s account of the same events
Recipes from the dinner
The Chicago Reader’s complete “Whole Hog Project” archive
LTHforum posts on the dinner, and Chuck Sudo’s account at Chicagoist
Monica Eng of the Chi-Trib wrote a really great piece about her experiences at various slaughterhouses here

P.S. Originally I felt like this one needed some kind of summing-up at the end expressing how I felt after watching my dinner live and die. In the end, as I usually do, I preferred to let the subjects and the images speak, not listen to me yak. But here, if anyone’s curious, is what I wrote and recorded but left on the cutting room floor:

It was an amazing meal. Was it worth the price?

We all joked, before we went to Eickman’s, that we’d come out vegetarian converts.

But in the end, I found myself affected less by the moment of these animals’ deaths… than by the day I spent seeing their lives at Valerie’s farm, free and happy and living naturally.

And I was impressed by the thoughtfulness, even reverence with which all of the chefs approached the meat we brought them.

It’s easy to say meat is bad. It’s just as easy to buy industrial meat without thinking about where it comes from. The hard thing is raising, cooking and eating meat in a way that’s good for the land, pigs and people. That’s what I feel like I’ve seen on this journey… from farm to table.

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About Sky Full of Bacon
Sky Full of Bacon #5: There Will Be Pork (pt. 1)
Sky Full of Bacon #4: A Head’s Tale
Sky Full of Bacon #3: The Last Brisket Show
Sky Full of Bacon #2: Duck School
Sky Full of Bacon #1: How Local Can You Go?

Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.

Tags: avec, blackbird, Eickman's, Jason Hammel, lula, Paul Kahan, pigs, slaughterhouse

“Convey[s] the downright decency of all parties involved with a directness that’s difficult to achieve in prose. Listening to farmer Linda Derrickson talk from the heart about honoring and giving thanks for the happy lives of pigs is worth at least 100 pages of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” —Martha Bayne

The phrase “farm to table” is used a lot in foodie circles. In this Sky Full of Bacon two-part podcast, I’ll show you what it really means— from the farm to the slaughterhouse to the kitchens of five of Chicago’s top restaurants.

Sky Full of Bacon 05: There Will Be Pork (pt. 1) from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Mike Sula of the Chicago Reader has been writing about the rare mulefoot pig for the last year and a half. Now the Reader has enlisted award-winning chef Paul Kahan, of Chicago’s Blackbird, to plan an elaborate six-course dinner showcasing the meat of these pigs and the sustainable, humane way in which they’re raised. Kahan in turn recruited chefs Jason Hammel (Lula Cafe), Paul Virant (Vie), Brian Huston (the newly opened The Publican) and Justin Large (Avec), as well as Blackbird executive chef Mike Sheerin and dessert chef Tim Dahl, to each prepare a course utilizing different parts of the whole animal.

But no meal begins with the restaurant. In Part 1, Mike Sula and I visit the farmers who’ve raised these mulefoot pigs in southern Wisconsin, and consider the paradox of why eating an endangered pig breed could be the key to saving it. And as preparations for the meal get underway, we talk to Huston and Virant about why raising pork humanely from farmers you know and using the whole animal matters to them. (Warning: video does contain vivid footage of meatcutting.) It’s an epic tale with as much meat (pun unavoidable) as two or three Sky Full of Bacon podcasts, which is why it’s broken into two parts, the first of which runs 19:57.  Next week, in Part 2, we’ll complete the story.

Mike Sula’s account of the same events
Recipes from the dinner
The Chicago Reader’s complete “Whole Hog Project” archive
LTHforum posts on the dinner, and Chuck Sudo’s account at Chicagoist

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About Sky Full of Bacon
Sky Full of Bacon #4: A Head’s Tale
Sky Full of Bacon #3: The Last Brisket Show
Sky Full of Bacon #2: Duck School
Sky Full of Bacon #1: How Local Can You Go?

Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.

If you have 19 minutes, this is a great video on making a headcheese from Michael Gebert, especially as we see the pig’s head from the point of purchase at the market, through to the finished dish.  A great reminder of using the whole animal. —Michael Ruhlman

Could eating head cheese be a moral act? In “A Head’s Tale,” I follow a piece of meat most of us would avoid, a whole pig’s head, from organic farm to restaurant table. It’s a thought-provoking, and only slightly gross, journey. And trust me, it was tasty!

Sky Full of Bacon 04: A Head’s Tale from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

We’ve gotten so used to only eating anonymous squares of meat that it’s shocking to encounter a piece of meat with a face. Yet traditional cultures have always used every part of the animal, and there are sound environmental and moral reasons for doing so… not to mention the culinary ones for not letting some of the most delicious meat go uneaten. In this Sky Full of Bacon, I follow the progress of an organically-raised pig’s head acquired by locavore blogger Rob Gardner, from the farmer to a restaurant, Mado, where chefs Rob and Allison Levitt turn it into testa, Italian head cheese, and make a strong case for restaurants taking on the responsibility of using the whole animal. It’s a thought-provoking piece about what we owe to farmers and the animals we eat, and while it does contain some in-your-face pictures of a real live dead pig head, there’s a lot more on the Sky Full of Bacon mind here than just grossing you out.

Presented in association with The Local Beet; running time 19:19.

Links:

Rob Gardner blogs at Vital Information and at The Local Beet.

Dennis Wettstein can be found Saturday mornings at the Oak Park Farmer’s Market, held in the parking lot of Pilgrim Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park.

Mado
1647 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL
773-342-2340

And Special Guest Headcheese Taster Helen Rosner blogs at Menu Pages Chicago.

The Paul Bertolli book Rob Levitt talks about is Cooking By Hand. For a home cook-level book about Charcuterie, Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie is a good choice; I learned to make bacon there.

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Recipe for Mado’s Testa

Making head cheese should be within the ability of any reasonably good home chef.  It does require adjusting seasoning to the amount of meat you have, so precise amounts are not given and I assume you can season to taste reasonably well.  But the other techniques should be easily achievable for most cooks.

1. Place head in a large stock pot with a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme, a head of garlic, and a couple of onions.  Cover with cold water.  Bring to simmer and skim any scum that rises.  Simmer for about 12 hours, until very tender.

2. Remove head from pot, reserving stock.  Let cool to the point where it’s comfortable to work with, but still warm enough to pick meat off the bones easily.  Go over the entire head, removing meat from every nook and cranny and separating fat or other stuff from meat by hand, but keeping the meat in fairly good-sized pieces.  Discard any glands, eyeballs, etc.  Carefully peel the skin off the tongue to remove the thick, bumpy skin which you do not want to run across in your finished testa, and chop into half inch or inch-sized chunks.

3. Meanwhile, in a mortar, grind a couple of tablespoons of fennel and mustard seed and a couple of teaspoons of allspice and clove, along with a couple of chilis.  Add this to a quart of the reserved stock, and reduce until fairly rich and dark.

4. Place the meat in a bowl.  Salt it fairly strongly—since it will be served cold, the seasoning will be somewhat muted.  Squeeze the garlic bulb into the meat as well.  Mix thoroughly, but don’t break up the chunks of meat.

5. The easiest way to make a testa is to put a layer of meat in a terrine, pour some of the reduced stock over it, and repeat until you have two or three alternating layers.  (This is what I call the French style in the video.)  Place in refrigerator and it should set overnight and keep at least a week.

To make the Italian style loaf, roll out a length of plastic wrap, spoon the meat onto it, and pour the reduced stock over it.  Roll it into a slightly loose “sushi roll” and set aside.  Roll out a second length of wrap, place the “sushi roll on it, poke holes in the roll, and then roll it up inside the second piece of wrap, squeezing air out of the roll as you tighten up its shape.  (Watch the video for a better sense of the techniques here.)

When you’ve done as much as you can by hand, tie the ends with kitchen twine, leaving a fair amount of extra plastic at each end.  Then twirl the roll as shown in the video, gradually squeezing the meat into a tighter roll.  Tie this shape off again and place in the refrigerator to set overnight.  Slice cold.

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About Sky Full of Bacon
Sky Full of Bacon #3: The Last Brisket Show
Sky Full of Bacon #2: Duck School
Sky Full of Bacon #1: How Local Can You Go?

Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.

Tags: farmer's market, head cheese, helen rosner, italian, mado, oak park, organic, pork, rob gardner, testa, vital information

Go deep into the smoke-stained barbecue country of central Texas as I talk to two legendary pitmasters in a town that almost has more great BBQ joints than people— Taylor, Texas.

Sky Full of Bacon 03: The Last Brisket Show from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Taylor, Texas is a small town still just far enough from Austin to feel like the middle of nowhere, rather than a suburb of somewhere. But when it comes to barbecue, Taylor is a big somewhere in its own right— home to three of Texas’ most famous barbecue temples as well as an annual BBQ festival. I visit two of these barbecue meccas and find them incredibly evocative of Texas’ past. A former basketball court turned meat emporium, Louie Mueller’s is the most smoke-stained place I’ve ever seen in my life. While Taylor Cafe, once a rowdy and potentially dangerous cowboy bar, is calmer today, but full of memories as related by 84-year-old owner Vencil Mares. It runs 13 minutes.

Louie Mueller Barbeque
206 W. Second
Taylor, TX
512-352-6206
website

Taylor Cafe
101 N. Main
Taylor, TX
512-352-2828

My LTHForum post on visiting Taylor (and other BBQ meccas)
Hill Country BBQ tour by Bill Daley in the Chicago Tribune
Vencil Mares’ recipe for slow-cooked beans
The best guidebook to Texas barbecue joints is this cookbook by Robb Walsh, which is actually more history than cookbook; here’s a new book that will be out in a few days and looks promising.

About Sky Full of Bacon
Sky Full of Bacon 02: Duck School
Sky Full of Bacon 01: How Local Can You Go?

Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.

(Oh, and why is a Chicago food podcast doing a segment from Texas? Because I’m a Chicago food podcaster, but the podcast is about anything that interests me. And hopefully you, too.)

“It’s a great story and the shots of all those crispy golden-brown ducks are so mouthwatering you’ll be tempted to call Sun Wah and place an order to go.” —Bill Daley, Chicago Tribune/The Stew

Go inside a Chinese restaurant to learn not only how Peking duck is made but how traditions are passed from immigrant father to Americanized daughter in the new Sky Full of Bacon podcast.

Sky Full of Bacon 02: Duck School from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Sun Wah BBQ has been serving Chinese barbecue— chicken heads and all— for 22 years. I talk to Eric Cheng about how he settled in the Vietnamese “New Chinatown” on Argyle Street on Chicago’s north side, and to his daughter Kelly, who with two of her siblings is training to take over the restaurant— introducing new ideas of her own along the way. It runs just over 15 minutes and I think you’ll find it an interesting look at the generational changes lurking behind the smiling facade of a Chinese restaurant— and to all the work and thought that goes into a seemingly straightforward dish like barbecued duck.

Oh, and if you thought the tone of Sky Full of Bacon was set by all the pretty vegetables in the first one, be prepared for a very meaty look at the delectable duck, pork and other dishes coming out of Sun Wah’s kitchen. You’ll want the address after watching this:

Sun Wah BBQ
1132-4 W. Argyle St.
Chicago
773-769-1254

There are too many LTHForum threads to link, but these Ronnie Suburban pics (including Kelly directing her father and brother in roasting a pig) are particularly good.

About Sky Full of Bacon
Sky Full of Bacon #1: How Local Can You Go?

Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.

P.S. Big bloggy thanks to Joe Germuska for his help in making this iTunes/WordPress/RSS stuff work the way I want it to. If it does this time, thank him.

Tags: argyle, chinese, podcast, sun wah, uptown

At last, the main reason for this blog: the first episode of Sky Full of Bacon is up!

Sky Full of Bacon 01: How Local Can You Go? from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Local is a hot word in food these days. In How Local Can You Go? I visit two people who are taking different approaches to trying to bring local food into the mainstream in Chicago. Cassie Green runs a market in West Town called (what else?) Green Grocer, which features a lot of the producers who sell at Green City and other farmer’s markets. One of the knocks on local and organic food is that it’s the kind of thing only yuppies with extra money to spend can worry about, but the market that sustains something like local growing and eating usually starts with a cute little shop in a trendy neighborhood, and Cassie’s enthusiasm for the wonderful-looking food she sells is infectious.

Meanwhile, Bruce F. is a Wicker Park resident who read about Earthboxes in the Reader, and subsequently built about 30 DIY ones out of Rubbermaid tubs on his garage, as well as a Flickr page that tell you all about how and why you should do it too. He’s a thoughtful guy who really brings a lot of perspective to the broader issues surrounding the act of growing your own food in the city, in a way that kind of reminds you of John Cusack’s character in Say Anything.

The total podcast runs 19:39, though I’m pretty sure it doesn’t feel like it. As the season progresses I’ll check back with both Cassie and Bruce to see what else is growing, and include the updates in future podcasts.

Green Grocer
1420 W. Grand (just west of Ogden), Chicago
312.624.9508

Links for further exploration:
Green Grocer Chicago
Bruce’s Flickr page, and his Daily Kos diary
Reader article on Earthboxes
LTHForum thread on Earthboxes (with posts by both Bruce and myself)
Links to blogs and articles shown in the montage of locavore press toward the beginning:
Eat Local Challenge
Vital Information (essential Chicago locavore blog)
NY Times
Food & Wine

About Sky Full of Bacon

I’m very interested in your comments on this first Sky Full of Bacon effort. Please feel free to comment here or to email me here.