Entries associated with the tag "Valerie Weihman-Rock":

It was a six-act pork circus last night at Blackbird.

I'll probably be accused of some bias when I say our multicourse mulefoot aporkalypse was spectacular, but I was surrounded by exacting, discriminating eaters. After months and months of me telling them that this was a special pig--something you've never tasted before, really, you gotta believe me--70-some folks, friends and strangers, took the bait and put their money down for Slow Food Chicago. All I had to do was look around the room as they took their first bites of Jason Hammel's braised belly to know I wasn't crazy.

It certainly didn't hurt that Paul Kahan had assembled a formidable array of talented chefs to work on these animals. Most work directly for him (or had in the past), and as Mike Gebert and I followed them around over the last week, a palpable sense of family surrounded them. I couldn't have dreamed a better team, and I couldn't be more grateful to them for allowing us to stick our cameras over their shoulders and pester them with endless questions.

I'm going to save description of the prep work of these dishes for later, and let the attached photos of the talented Ron Kaplan do the talking for now. But I have to let you know that Valerie Weihman-Rock raised some incredible animals, who produced more meat than was needed. So if you wanted a seat at the table but missed out, you have a few chances to try some yourself. Brian Huston of The Publican has an extra porchetta he'll be running as a special tonight, along with a surplus of skin for chicharrones. Justin Large, whose head cheese whole-grain mustard ravioli en brodo was my favorite course, has two extra quarts of the filling he'll be using at Avec sometime during the next three days. And Mike Sheerin is going to be curing one of the hams--you'll have to wait about six months for that one, but I'll track its progress.

One of the objectives of the Whole Hog Project (it goes on!) is to take a good look at what it takes to produce real food. Does anything in these photos resemble a living, breathing animal? Of course not. But just five days ago three mulefoots were roaming wide open, green pasture, eating quackgrass, chicken eggs, corn, oats, alfalfa, goat's milk, and Swiss chard. On November 13, in our food issue, I'm going to write about exactly what happened on the way from the farm, to the slaughterhouse, to Blackbird's basement, and finally to the dining room. The chefs have promised to contribute recipes based on their courses, and at this moment Gebert is toiling away with hours of footage he shot for an accompanying Sky Full of Bacon video podcast.

You really need to see Mike Sheerin break down a pig. He's a surgeon.

Well, after nearly a year and a half, it's time to see how mulefoots perform on the plate.

Back when we bought our own mulefoot with the aim of following the care and feeding of one of these rare heritage pigs and eventually hosting a public snout-to-tail dinner, I knew there was one chef who'd make the most of it--Paul Kahan. To my great delight, not only has Kahan agreed to cook for us (even in the midst of the frenzy surrounding the opening of his new restaurant, the Publican), but he's enlisted a formidable lineup of talent to help out. 

On Sunday, October 19, Kahan will be joined at Blackbird by Paul Virant of Vie, Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds of Lula, Blackbird's Mike Sheerin, Avec's Justin Large, and the Publican's Brian Huston in preparing a six-course mulefoot pig dinner--and you're invited.

Tickets are $125 (including wine but not tax or tip). It all starts with a champagne reception at 6, followed by dinner at 6:30. Proceeds benefit Kahan's choice of Slow Food Chicago. 

Blackbird, 619 W. Randolph, is taking reservations now at 312-715-0708.

Note: The Reader's pig, Dee Dee--for a variety of reasons I'll get into in an upcoming post--has won herself a reprieve from the dinner table. Instead Valerie Weihman-Rock will be providing three third-generation mulefoots--possibly Dee Dee's offspring--for the dinner. In the coming weeks we'll be following the pigs and the proceedings--from the farm, to the slaughterhouse, to the kitchen--right here on the blog.

In the meantime, if you want to catch up, see the entries in the whole Whole Hog Project posted in chronological order.

I finally got to see the latest generation of mulefoots under the care of Valerie Weihman-Rock in Argyle, Wisconsin, and brought back a ton of photos (attached) and video (which I'll post later this week). There are 17 new piglets in all, a little more than three and four weeks old.

The Reader's pig, Dee Dee, has undergone some changes since the last time I made it up there. For one, she's huge, and nowhere is that more striking than in her jowls, which have filled out, making her snout appear much shorter than it used to. She seems a lot friendlier too. She'll sniff your hand, talk, and express a curiosity that I haven't seen before in her. Valerie theorized that might have something to do with her getting a lot more attention now that she's a mother--and liking it. Dee Dee had four piglets, including one adopted by Reader correspondent David Hammond, named Ermine. Check out her face while she's nursing--pure, unadulterated bliss.

When last we heard from Valerie Weihman-Rock and the Wisconsin mulefoots, all five female pigs (four gilts and a sow)--including the Reader's Dee Dee--were getting ready to have their piglets. A little over a week ago two of them farrowed--Demetria gave birth to six, and Diana four. Valerie reported that Diana wasn't taking to motherhood so well--she didn't like having the little ones around her and Valerie was convinced she'd hurt them. Ergo, Demetria is nursing all 10 little ones--8 females, and two males.

So Diana ID'd herself as a good candidate for slaughter. Writes Valerie: "Diana will be ham, bacon, lard, etc. as the first one harvested soon. It is important when raising the heritage breeds to not continue genetics of unfavorable traits (such as being angry, snapping, and not accepting piglets)." 

Then, last Tuesday, our Dee Dee had four piglets, two of which are female (Valerie couldn't tell the sex of the others yet). One of these piglets Friend of the Food Chain David Hammond has arranged to buy--an anniversary gift for his wife, Caroline. He's named it Ermine--after his grandmother. "One of the girls has white hooves and white-around feet," wrote Valerie. "Just like Dee Dee. So this one will be Dave Hammond's 'Ermine.'"

Aww. Nothing says I love you like the gift of meat.

"All the pigs and their piglets are snugly ensconced in partitions covered with artists' canvas tarp," writes Valerie. "And a heat lamp for piglet bunk area. Moms can come and go as they wish and the 'partitions' are to keep piglets from running off in the relative cold of the barn. Their tents are ~70 degrees F inside. And the piglet area under heat lamp is 85-90 degrees F. Rest of barn was 45 [last] weekend. 40 [next] morning. And the boy pigs are happy digging in the mud and pasture."

That's 14 new mulefoots, folks. Stay tuned for photos.

Part three: the Meat

Last December, after Mark Kessenich and I escorted his mulefoots Cong and Cherry to the slaughterhouse, there was a quite a delay before he could actually pick up the meat. First, the pigs weren't scheduled to be cut up until the after the weekend, and then there was a snowstorm that kept him from making the pickup. And then another. And another.

When he finally made the return trip, Cong -- all 145.5 pounds of him -- had been cut up into his primal parts and frozen. He has a date with the sausage maker in April -- yes, they're that backed up.

Cherry, at 175.5 pounds, had been broken down into smaller cuts -- pork chops, hams, shoulder roasts, Boston butts, hocks, shanks, big slabs of belly that will eventually be cured for bacon, and big slabs of back fat that will be rendered into lard. 

Here's Linda Derrickson's e-mailed account of their first few meals:

"Our first pork chop meal (a few days ago) was the true reward we have been anticipating for our 16 months of hands-on hog raising adventures. . . . It's an amazing culinary experience: juicy, flavorful, plenty of texture while still being tender.  And the fat! Oh my gosh, a gastronomic delight. Mark and I relished every little piece of fat, especially the little cracklings left in the saute pan.

"Following the chops, our next pork meal was a shoulder roast. I rubbed it with our garden rosemary and garlic; then roasted it on a rack in the oven. The 4-lb. roast took a little over two hours. Superb! It was tender and succulent. Leftovers were sliced for terrific cold lunch sandwiches. And we boiled the bones and scraps and made a pork-cabbage-noodle soup."

It cost a total of $147.25 to process Cherry. Cong, who weighed significantly less, was more costly at $128.49 -- and he's going to cost more when he's made into sausage. Linda and Mark decided to raise their mulefoots, not just to help save the breed, but because they wanted a natural source of fat in their diets. I asked her whether it was worth it economically, given all the the difficulties they faced--pig breakouts, high feed costs, labor, hassles at the slaughterhouse.

"I think in the end you can say it was worth it for the experience," she said. "It certainly wasn't a financial success for us. I think we're getting the message from beyond us that we're not supposed to be raising pigs."  

Up until she said good-bye to the pigs, Linda spent a little bit of time each day scratching Cherry behind the ears. I asked her how it felt to be eating an animal she'd been so close to. 

"It's gratitude," she said. "It's not like 'I'm glad you're gone -- ha, ha, ha.' It isn't any different than eating a carrot. My philosophy allows me to eat a carrot, which is a living thing too, and I jerked it out of the ground before it even got a chance to bear young. Cherry got to bear her young. She got to fulfill her life cycle and produce progeny that can go on with her genetics." 

Thus ends the mulefoot residency at Hillspring Farm. Now we'll turn our full attention to our pig, Dee Dee, and the rest of the mulefoots at Valerie Weihman-Rock's spread in Argyle.

It's been a while since we checked in on the mulefoots at their new digs at the farm of Valerie Weihman-Rock and her husband Mike in Argyle, Wisconsin. The Rocks built a round house ten feet in diameter for the pigs' shelter and Valerie says they're planning to use the Swedish deep bedding method this winter--laying down three feet of hay or straw, whose hollow tubes hold air and insulate the structure. The Rocks, who are also starting up a grain-milling operation, plan to use organic barley straw, since pigs like to nibble on their bedding. I would too if I could sleep on bacon.

Valerie's been boiling organic barley for the pigs twice a day and letting it soak for their morning and evening meals. She recently she missed a day due to business in Madison, so she picked up a bag of pot-belly pig food to fill in the gap--thinking it would be more nutritious than standard commercial feed.

"Put it in their food dishes," she writes. "They would NOT TOUCH IT! Sniffed and walked over to eat grass. One of the larger male pigs ("Detlef--German for strength of ten") used his snout to shovel all of the food out of one of the dishes in hopes that I had buried some other type of food below. After snouting it out, he left it. No eating.

"Everyone skipped supper and ate plain old grass instead. The next day, I had to dump and rinse the food dishes  as well as scoop up the food that had gotten on the ground. It was only attracting flies at this point--a dry food, but apparently quite 'odoriferous' to everyone involved (unless it was wetted, I could not smell it)." She gave it to the chickens who apparently didn't think much of it either, but managed to finish it off after a few days.

So the mulefoots, reared on organic grains and good Wisconsin grass, have become quite the epicures.

Not long after my last trip to the farm I received some shocking news from Linda Derrickson. She and Mark Kessenich had decided to part with their mulefoots, selling seven of the piglets and two of the adults to a homesteader couple down the road in Argyle. She said they didn't make the decision lightly--it was something they'd been mulling for a while. Now that the piglets have reached weaning age they need to be separated from their mothers, who continue to be separated from the boars, Cong and Churchill (lest they create more piglets). That requires more land to be set aside and fenced off. And the mulefoots need the kind of daily care that their cattle, goats, and sheep don't. That's a lot of work for a couple who just wanted a source of quality fat in their diets.

Not long ago a woman named Valerie Weihman-Rock wandered into the Blanchardville co-op where Linda volunteers on Wednesdays, looking to give away a surplus of green beans she'd grown. Linda immediately volunteered the mulefoots to take care of them, and the two women got talking. Valerie, an artist and welding instructor, and her husband Mike, a metal- and woodworker, live on 151 acres about ten miles south of Blanchardville in Argyle. They have have the capability to grind their own organic corn and grains, and once the Rocks heard about the mulefoots they decided they wanted some of their own. An initial deal to buy two piglets from each litter to start a new breeding herd expanded to the whole group and two adults (Cherry and Churchill) after the Rocks got excited about propagating the breed.

As for the Reader's piglet, the Rocks have agreed to raise her for us. We've picked her out--she's the second largest female in the group, born of Cong and Crystal (more on her later).

Here's Linda's report on the big move, which happened about a week and a half ago: "Capturing and loading the piggies proved to be a bit more challenging than tagging them, mostly because they have been gorging on acorns that have begun to fall by the bushel-full and they weren't very hungry. In the thrill and excitement of pig roundup, Mike grabbed one, who let out a bloodcurdling squeal and then a couple of his buddies bolted out the door. From then on, it was a circus. . . . Once we got the piglets and their moms in the barn, we . . .  closed the door and leaned against it to keep the pigs from pushing out. Inside, Mike and Mark got the piglets loaded into a crate, while Cherry and Crystal roamed around the barn. From our side of the door, the squeals, bumps and thumps had us wagering on who would emerge alive--the pigs or the fellas. All survived, and with the piglets in a crate, the door was opened to let Cherry and Crystal outside. We gave them grain and green beans to distract them from the piglets who were confined in the barn. Mark used our tractor to lift and transport the eight crated piglets out to our pickup truck and we drove to the Rock's Farm.

"Have to relate an incident that Mark observed in the barn involving Crystal. During the noisy chaos of getting the piglets into the crate, Crystal defecated on her own tail and then flipped it up on her back. Mark thinks this was a 'defensive' behavior, perhaps to protect herself from danger that she perceived due to all the squealing and pig-wrangling. Neither Mark nor I had ever seen or heard of this, but it was was done very purposely and skillfully."

Interesting.

Despite the disruption, things seem to have calmed considerably and the piglets have reportedly taken quite well to the Rocks and their new digs, contentedly chowing down on tomatoes, swiss chard, green beans, and organic rolled oats soaked in goat milk. "This afternoon I spent some time sitting and watching after they ate," wrote Valerie the day after they moved in. "When I walked away towards the middle of the pen, three little ones ran after me and one started squealing. Then all of them were there clustered around my feet squealing and talking. I talked to them in an excited happy tone and we all encouraged each other to be rather silly. Then I ducked into their round wooden house which they have looked at but not used yet. It has a front and a side opening so I went through it and they all followed. I ran around the outside and went back in. A piggie fire drill. Did it a few times and I was as excited as them."

After the pigs have completely lost their taste for mother's milk Cherry and Churchill will make the move from Hillspring Farm, probably in October. Thanks to Mark and Linda for everything so far, but we haven't seen the last of them. This fall they're planning to send Cong and perhaps Crystal to the butcher, and they've invited us to come along. Meantime we have a piglet and new farmers to meet. Who said the farming life was boring?

Stay tuned. . .