Ossabaw Island Pork

What is the best way to preserve a extremely rare heritage breed of animal, eat it!

Ossabaw Island is a small Island off the coast of Georgia. When the Spanish were exploring the Americas in the 16th century, they brought livestock with them as a mobile food source. The Ossabaw Island pig is a feral breed of the pigs the Spaniards left behind hundreds of years ago on the island. They are also thought to be the only U.S. breed which is descended from the Iberian-type pigs in Spain.

Both the island and mainland populations continue to be considered vulnerable by the ALBC, Slow Food, and others.The breed is listed as "critical" on the priority list of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy,and is also included in Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction

The meat of Ossabaws is dark, with a unique texture, and is prized for resembling the jamón ibérico of the Black Iberian pig. It is considered to be artisanal, heritage product especially well-suited to use in pork, cured meats, and whole pig roasts.   Source

As a man with a love of all things Porcine, I jumped at the chance to get some of this rare pork from my local butcher, Cleaver and Co.

The first cut I got from the butcher was a chunk of back fat, about 3 lbs in size. This block of pork love was destined to become God's gift to man, Lardo.

Lardo is a Tuscan cured pork product. Where slabs of back fat are cured in marble tubs with salt, pepper, rosemary and garlic. They age for as long as 6 months before being sliced thin and served as charcuterie.

I used a recipe from Ruhlman and Polcyn's book Charcuterie. Salt, sugar, pink salt (sodium nitrite) pepper and bay.

 

This mixture was vacuum packed around the pork and left to cure in the refrigerator for two weeks.

The salt pulls out moisture, resulting in a very firm texture in the pork.

The curing mixture is washed from the surface of the pork and then left in the fridge to dry for a few days.  Shaved thin, it is best served with air, it also makes an excellent lip balm. Its sweet, salty, porky flavor is impossible to describe, it must be tasted.


Oh, but I couldn't stop at Lardo, Bacon must be had as well.

I also purchased a belly of this same wonderful pig. As you can see, the meat is very red compared to domesticated pork. Signs that this is again a special animal

 Rulhman's bacon recipe was used, with the sugar being brown instead of white.

The meat is covered in cure.

Vacuum packed tight and aged in the refrigerator for a week.

After curing, the belly is rinsed and returned to the fridge to dry for a couple days.

At this point we have a well cured pork belly, but it is not bacon without smoke. The above is a Smoking Gun, it has a little chamber in which wood chips smolder,  the smoke from this is then blown down a hose into whatever vessel contains your food. Allowing one to cold smoke anything from cheese, to meat, to chocolate. All in a very quick and controlled manner.

 The smoked meat is then vacuum packed again for its date with the water bath.

 A dip in the sous vide for 24 hrs at 155 degrees F cooks the meat and begins to render the fat, allowing the meat to crispy wonderfully when pan fried.

The bacon is chilled in the bag, then sliced nice and thick. Ready to be fried up.

Fried to crispy goodness, this pig shows us what pork once was, and hopefully what it can be again.

Singapore, The Food.

 This spring I was lucky enough to be able to spend two weeks in SE Asia, 5 days of that being in Singapore.

I thought it a good destination for a Culinary Vacation being a small, well connected country with a diverse population. And I was right, I found food from India, China, Korea as well as dishes that are distinctly Singaporean. 

The Hawker Centers are an amazing concept, all the deliciousness normally found at street food stalls are brought inside to a building with proper electrics, running water and plenty of seating.  Just be sure to bring your own napkins, they won't be provided to you.

Singapore has many of these Hawker Centers and I found many of their best dishes in them.

Many of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese and the cuisine reflects this. There is no way I could pass up a stall selling Shark Fin Soup, this dish had noodles in a cornstarch thickened brown broth, with little nubbins of deep fried Fin-y goodness.  The texture of the fin was like a cross between the cartilage of a pigs ear and soft tendon. 

 I believe this to be one of the Singaporean dishes.  Noodles in a slightly sweet (tamarind?) broth with hard cooked egg and chunks of bread.

This particular bowl was a delightfully delicious welcome to Singapore in the airport. Research has shown that the best way to recover for 36 hrs of travel is noodles in flavorful broth. This also happens to be an excellent hangover cure... not that I would know anything about that.

I believe this to be a similar dish to the above, this time with some crispy shallot on top and some sweet spice in the broth.  The fried pie on the bottom right was filled with a savory vegetable mix.

This dish was ordered via the "point and what ever that is method" at a little cafe outside Little India.

These strange little things are pancakes filled with cheese, red beans and peanut butter. I swear the cheese was the exact same recipe as the  Kraft Singles of my youth.

 It is physically impossible for me to walk past a Bubble Tea shop without ordering some. This particular cup was a Almond Soy Milk.  It was quite vile. 

 

My first hotel in Singapore, Wanderlust, was in Little India. This dish was from a shop not too far from there, a spicy vegetable dish with cheese Naan.  Cheese and bread are a combination that is universally delectable.

America has pretty much the most disappointing airport food possible. This is not the case elsewhere, as this flavorful chicken curry with prata shows.  Prata is another iconic dish of Singapore, it is a layered, flaky flat bread, crisped up on a flattop right before service. Great for dunking in curry sauce.

Taro bubble tea is simple pleasure I can never get enough of. This cup was from Gong Cha, a chain famous for serving the fat-straw-slurpable beverage.

Many countries in SE Asia do variations of  crushed ice desserts.  Far removed and far more delicious than the artificially flavored, colors that do no occur in nature, American Snow Cones.

The example on the left was mango and coconut. On the right, red beans, grass jelly and taro. Both were a great way to cool off from the Singaporean humidity and  heat and humidity.

These examples were soursop (left) and creamed corn (right). If you ever thought that creamed corn over crushed ice would taste good, you would be just as horribly wrong and this shop that has this funky and failed dish on the menu.

Soursop is however quite delicious, what ever the hell a soursop is...

American breakfast also pales in comparison to the rest of the world. Why would anyone want a bowl of soggy corn flakes when you could have a hot bowl congee (rice porridge)  with nubbins of pork offal swimming through it?

Silkie black chicken are a breed just not seen in the US. This was a bowl of soup made with the bird. Many shops sell this as a Medicinal soup, and it tasted about as good a medicinal grape Nyquil....

 Soup Dumplings, why can't I find these little pouches of liquid love in the States?  Served at a temperature slightly higher than napalm, they are a lesson in patience delivered in a steamer.

Of all the famous Singaporean dishes, chicken rice is the most famous. By cooking the rice in the chicken broth, the rice is really the star of the plate with the chicken just along for decoration. A dish I don't know if I could ever get enough of.

And as perhaps my favorite food moment of the entire trip, Mangalitsa pork belly, griddled with kimchi and other Korean side dishes. 

But once I got to Mangolitsa I know you stopped reading and started drooling on your keyboard.