My personal hajj - to find the perfect pig fat

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Several years ago, I went to Tuscany for the first time. I'm lucky enough to work for a company with a major research and manufacturing center in Siena, Italy. It's actually the largest site in my division of the company. Which means, as much as I generally speaking hate the very idea of packing my suitcase, sleeping in not-my-bed and showering in not-my-shower, I still end up there at least a couple of times a year. In this case, at least, it's a burden I'm willing to shoulder. You know, for the good of the family. Because I'm all noble like that.
Back to that very first trip. I was out with the team at a little restaurant tucked up a cobbled street behind the main piazza del campo (the one where the horse race happens. Think James Bond & 'Quantum of Solace'). My Italian is not so good, even these days, though I can pretty much work my way through a menu. On that first trip, I just asked my colleague next to me - a native of Siena - to order whatever she thought I'd like. 'Something local.' I said. She smiled, and promised to take care of me. What came out next was a selection of antipasti. Salumi. Bruschetta smeared with a kind of dark liver pâté meets haggis. And one particular plate of what looked like thin slices of fat, with a dusting of dark chocolate shavings. Normally I don't trouble myself too much with asking what is in a particular dish. I've found that I'm usually better off not knowing before I taste it. But my curiosity was piqued. "What's that?" I asked my colleague. Her eyes lit up as she told me. "Lardo di Colonnata. You must try it." Even with my rudimentary Italian, I was pretty sure I knew what she was talking about. I speared a slice with my fork, and put it onto a slim piece of toast - crostini and popped it into my mouth. Oh. My. God. Imagine a slice of salami for a moment. Perfectly cured. A little salty. Now remove all the needless meaty bits from that salami, and leave behind the creamy-yet-toothsome fatty bits. Now sprinkle that with a bit of Olympian ambrosia. and add a dash of crack cocaine. And it's still better than that. Silky, salty perfection.
Each trip back, I always sought out the lardo. It's a Tuscan specialty, made for hundreds of years in the north of the region, and difficult to find (or even conceive of) outside of the region. The process involves taking fat from the back of a pig and curing it for about 6 months in a marble basin, stowed away in a warm cave in the hills, or maybe a dirt-floored cellar of a family home. At one point apparently someone official in the EU caught on to the process and was horrified. Because, you know... that just doesn't sound healthy. There was a brief movement to shut down production. The people of this tiny town, thankfully, fought this intervention successfully, proving that a) nothing unhealthy could live through that curing process, and b) the stuff just tastes too damn good to be banned. And so it continues to be made in the small village of Colonnata using traditional techniques.
Ever since we started getting our own pigs a couple of years ago, I've had an idea in the back of my head to work up towards my own lardo. Ambitious, I know. But I've been working up to it. When I started to plan my latest trip to Italy for work, I told my Bride I'd be spending an extra day or so, to make a special trip up to Colonnata. I had the pig fat. I just needed the special basin. And to see the source, and meet the people that make it. Colonnata is a small village - can't be more than a couple of hundred people. It is in the mountains above Carrera - as in, where the marble comes from. It's a long, windy road up, and you can see where the slopes have been cut away in huge quarries, leaving the hill sides in jagged, straight-cut edges of white stone. When you get near the village, you have to pull off and walk the final half kilometer or so up the hill. Looking at the quarries as I hiked up the road, it was easy to see why the men who cut and hauled the marble away appreciate the high-calorie practicality of a meal like lardo.
I wandered around the village for a bit and found a little shop near the edge that had all sorts of marble products. On the floor, several boxes were set out. More than boxes. They were basically hollowed out cubes of marble. I got excited. In my broken Italian, I asked the proprietress... "Concas? Por... um... lardo?" She smiled and nodded. I looked and lifted and poked, and couldn't decide. Then she showed me the prices. 30 to 50 euros apiece. Holy crap. Cheap. I bought 2 immediately. She wrapped them up for me, and pushed the bags to the edge of the counter. Then I remembered: marble? It's heavy. Each one of the basins weights over 10 kilos. And I still had to make it back down the hill to my car. Not to mention figure out a way to get them home in my suitcase. It didn't matter. I was so ecstatic to have them, that I could have bought another pair and still been happy stumbling down the hill. I sat outside at a little bistro, eating lardo and anchovies, sipping a beer, grinning like an idiot.
Now I've just got to dig all the fatback out of my freezer, and start the curing process. I'll let you know how it turns out. Six months or so from now.
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Making sorghum candy

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Every year in Union County, Georgia, they hold a Sorghum festival. For most of my early childhood, this was a centerpiece in our autumn activities. For those of you without enough Appalachia in your blood, sorghum is a sugar crop. Kind of like the South's answer to sugar cane. It was cheap, easy to grow, did well in places where sugar cane or beet didn't, and was a staple of Southern cookery for decades until refined sugars became more easily available. The Sorghum Festival is a celebration of this old-fashioned sticky treat, with suitable old-fashioned activities to keep a kid fascinated for a long, cool weekend. I don't know if they're still doing it, but in my youth this included log-sawing and greased-pig-catching competitions. Country fairs are so underrated. Of course, I didn't know any of this when I was a kid, though. I just knew that sorghum syrup kicks ass on a hot biscuit. I don't think I had thought about sorghum syrup or the festival in decades, though, until this past October, as we were quietly enjoying our own New England fall colors in the wake of my grandmother's (and the Critter's namesake's) passing. Sitting around one evening and telling the children stories of some of our adventures together, I remembered that we had once tried, unsuccessfully, to make homemade sorghum candy. We made a real botch of it, and I think ruined at least one pan completely in our attempts. Given how sticky hot boiled sugar can be, we were lucky that one or both of us didn't end up with 3rd degree burns in the process, given that I was 8, and she was well into her 60's. But I do remember having a lot of fun along the way.
The week of my grandmother's death, I ordered two small jugs of sorghum syrup (amazing what you can find on amazon), and told the kids we'd make candy like Nanny and I did when I was a kid. They sat in the pantry through the holidays, and occasionally the Critter would remind me that we were supposed to make candy. Shut up in the house with all the snow and ice outside, I finally broke out a jug this weekend.
The recipe is pretty simple. - 1 part syrup - 1 part water - a pinch or so of salt. Boil. OK, no problem. Even I can follow that kind of recipe. I used a cast iron dutch oven, but I think pretty much any stock pot would do. I figured, however, that if all went awry again, I wouldn't feel too bad about taking the steel wool or a power sander to the cast iron. My Bride would probably feel differently if I used the rather expensive le Crueset
Boil until you reach the "hard ball stage" or 260-270 degrees. Hey honey, where's your candy thermometer? You threw it out? You think you could have told me this before now? What the heck am I supposed to do now? Ah. Drop it in the cold water, and see if it forms a hard ball. Of course. How long is that supposed to take? 'You'll know it when you get there,' huh? Yeah. Thanks. Really f#@%ing helpful, lady.
There was a lot of watching and waiting. Sugar isn't something you want to heat too quickly or walk away from. And I'm pretty sure this is where my grandmother and I went wrong - she was probably tired of hearing me ask "is it ready yet", and pulled it off the heat a bit early, resulting in a gooey, stringy mess. Now that I've seen how long it really takes to get there, I can't say I blame her.
Hey look! Hardball stage! At this point, the whole house was full of the gentle, earthy sweet flavor of sorghum. It's very like molasses, but with a more buttery scent and flavor. There's simply nothing else that approaches that smell and taste. At this point, I poured the hot, bubbly mass into a buttered bowl to cool.
After a half hour or so, it was cool enough to handle. More from the recipe: "Butter your hands, and taking a smallish bit of the sorghum, work and stretch until it changes color and hardens. This works better when two people are pulling. Remember in the mountains, families were usually large" (I'm not kidding. That last part is actually part of the recipe. Any recipe that includes the phrase: "Remember, in the mountains..." is a winner in my book.)
There was plenty in the bowl for two of us (at this point, I became very glad that I made the decision to only use one of the jugs of sorghum to make candy) The Critter was mildly disturbed at the thought of having to rub butter all over her hands, but she really got into the pulling and twisting part. She wanted hers to "look like licorice" (which I think meant twisted and braided).
I looked back at the recipe to see how things were supposed to end. But that was it. "Pull until it changes color and hardens." What? And then what? Is it supposed to turn into sticks? Lollipops? What color is it supposed to turn into? Blue? I racked my memory to try and recall the end state, but of course my grandmother and I ended up throwing out our gooey mess, and never finished it off. Eventually, I decided that it was pretty much supposed to look and feel like caramels. (and no amount of google searching could disprove this theory). So we rolled the stretched candy out, and cut it into rounds to finish cooling.
Twisted into wax paper squares, and tucked in a jar, our little homemade candies bring a real smile to my face. Objectively speaking, I had just spent several hours of effort and turned half the kitchen into a sticky, buttery mess to produce the equivalent of a couple of $0.99 bags of candy. But the whole process of slowly boiling the dark, buttery sorghum for hours with my own 8 year old Eleanor was a kind of cosmic loop-closer, and another little peek for both of us into what growing up in another era, one without 7-11's and mall Ye Olde Candy Supershoppes was like. We all tried one, and decided the effort was worth it.
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Winter Farmers' Market

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For the past couple of months, my Bride and The Critter have been hatching a new scheme: cracking the Farmers' Market money pile. Our little village has a summer farmers' market from June right through October - it's how we got to know half the town, as we take the whole family and the dog there bright and shiny every Saturday morning. The produce is all locally grown, and you get to know the vendors you like, buying from them fresh each week. One vendor - we call her "The Tomato Lady" (though she does have a real name, Susan) - has a place over towards the Concord river. We got to know us so well that we ended up doing back-table deals for boxes of her 'not pretty' tomatoes at ridiculously low prices. I'd buy a few pounds of beautiful heirloom tomatoes, and she'd throw in a box of 20 or 25 lbs of split or blemished ones for cooking for pennies, if not free, just because she knew we loved to cook with her fantastic produce. We bring her canned tomato sauce or corn relish in trade, so she gets to try the end result. And then there's Clovis. I can't exactly tell where Clovis is from originally. I just know he's from someplace of warmer climate than Eastern Massachusetts. I'm thinking an island. I could ask, but I'm too busy talking to him about the fantastic vegetables that show up on his table and nobody else's. The first day I met Clovis, I was grinning at my finds, pawing through a big pile of dark green leafy collards piled on one side of his table. I separated out about half of them and asked him what he wanted for them. There was a pause. "What are you going to do with them?" Clovis didn't reach for his money box. He just stood there looking at me, waiting for my answer. I felt like I was being tested. "I... I'll probably cook them down with some leftover country ham, and maybe a half an onion, or some chopped ginger. It takes a little while, but that's how I grew up eating them." (This was only a slight stretch of the truth. You couldn't have paid me to put a collard green on my plate until I was in my late 20's, at which time, I discovered a love of bitter greens that I never knew I had). Clovis nodded solemnly, and reached for a large-ish garbage bag. I think he charged me about $3. (Like many greens, collards start out pretty voluminous before you cook them down. Don't underestimate how many you'll need). Now, when he sees me coming, he sets aside whatever particular crop he thinks we'll like. A bag of fingerling potatoes. A Guyanan version of a pumpkin, elongated and rosy pink. A hubbard squash the size of my neighbor's first grader. Each new treat is always amazing.
Through our farmers' market, I've also met other chicken people (what we call ourselves), cheese makers, and a half dozen children entrepreneurs. We occasionally trouble ourselves to schlep over to one of the neighboring town's farmers' markets, all of which seem to be much more professional affairs. Note: I do not mean this in a complimentary way. There are a growing number of lovely, organic, extra-smug-added farms in the New England area that are doing wonderful things to bring back all manner of crops, which is a neat trick to accomplish while standing on a self-constructed pedestal. Look, I'm all for freshness, and supporting my local farmer. Hell, I just bought an entire cow from the farmer down the road. But I do not need a lecture, stated or implied, on why the corn industry is destroying human kind, particularly from the guy busy selling me a dozen ears of just-picked-that-morning corn on the cob. I like food. You show up with a good product at a reasonable price, I'll buy your food. You throw in a little food conversation to the mix, and I'll almost certainly be back to buy more of your food tomorrow. You try and charge me six or seven bucks for a head of non-descript lettuce "to make a point" to the jack-booted thugs of the Agro-Industrial Complex, and I'm going to want to punch you in the neck. But the difference I didn't really notice until someone pointed it out is that none of the other markets really feature any kids selling stuff. Our market has a kid that sells garlic his dad planted last fall. 2 kids selling banana bread they baked to earn a couple of extra bucks. One kid taught herself to make duct tape wallets. And one kid has a sign hawking "free-range firewood" that makes me chuckle every time I see it.
As fall came this year, someone said they were going to have a 'Winters' market for the first time, hosting it inside the Union Hall off the town green. (How much do I love living someplace with a "town green," by the way?) The Critter had been itching to supplement her egg-selling money for a while, and pestering My Bride to make use of the Swiss sewing-robot she has, with all of its self-aware attachments. So the two of them signed up to be a vendor, and worked for several weeks putting together a collection of goodies for sale.
Blankets of various sizes (toddler, lap, baby). Burp cloths. Super-hero capes for little kids. Doll clothes. Embroidered monogram necklaces and hair tie doo-hickies. All put together and on display.
The deal was, the Critter could keep the cash from the necklaces, hair ties and doll clothes. My Bride keeps everything else. My contribution was building a blanket display rack, and keeping The Boy quiet and occupied during the 3 hours the market runs.
It's one Saturday morning a month during the winter months, and with a couple behind us, has become a fun event we look forward to. It's an early morning of coffee, hot cider and setup/preparation as a family affair. And then a few hours of greeting and chatting with friends and neighbors, occasionally tucking some cash into the box and handing over one of the fabric creations. We've gotten to know the vendors at the market a bit better on a different level. Several of them are the normal crew from the summer months. And there are still several enterprising kids (and my daughter's now proud to be in that club). With fewer market opportunities, there are also more farmers coming in from a little bit further afield, including a few of those 'professionals' I've bumped into elsewhere. Most of them really are lovely folks, who do it as much for the pleasure as for the income. But the first weekend, there were those 1 or 2 self-declared beacons of purity who took exception to the kids selling goods that might compete with their own wares. How are you going to compete selling hand crafted biscotti for $4 a smidge when the kid at the next table is selling "everything" cookies for fifty cents a bakers dozen? Admittedly, that's a tough one. On the other hand, that kid is my neighbor, and you I don't know. One thing's for sure. If you don't stop looking like you just ate a steaming turd every time you look at the cute little capitalist on your left, you're chances are not going to get any better.
But really, there was only one or two curmudgeonly foreign vendors, and they didn't bother showing up for the second time around. Which was certainly no great loss. In the meantime, the Critter made a killing, on an 8 year old scale, earning more discretionary income than I think I had until I enlisted in the Army. And several of the blankets and other fabric paraphernalia went home happily rolled into someone's re-usable go-to-market, I-used-to-be-a-Toyota-sedan collapsable sack.
I mostly just sat in the back with my book and a cup of whatever was warm, and tried to entertain the boy while the Grady girls sold things. I like listening to the conversations when my Bride humbly shows off some of her amazing handicrafts. Or the quiet glee that my daughter shows as she mentally counts up her loot. And some of the browsing customers provide their own amusement. One elderly grandmother type pawed through the blankets and other goods, and held up a monogrammed necklace in one spotted fist. "I'd buy this if it was pink." She somehow managed to make the statement into an accusation. Like there had been a conspiracy to change it from pink moments before she walked up, just to screw with her head. My Bride shrugged apologetically, and tried to show her some of the other pieces. "No. I want this one. Except it's not pink. So I won't buy it. I would buy it if it were pink." She tossed it back into the pile and stumped off. No doubt looking for something pink. Luckily, most people are a little less single minded. But we'll have more pink in the inventory, just in case she's back next month. Both times, we somehow got lucky enough to be right next to the couple of musicians that came to the market, lending it a fun old-timey air. A book, a cup of warm cider, a couple of hours of clawhammer banjo and fiddle tunes, and a chance to chat with my neighbors. Holy crap... I'm turning into Garrison Keillor.
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