SC - Pigs revisited-long

[Ceridwen]

Sort of an off the wall thing, what if the somestic pigs
were bread for fattiness and were used for american style
slab bacon, lard for cooking and the rest of the meat not
for cooking as roasts but for ground into forcemeats and
sausages? At least since Ras refers to the particular liking
of the upper class for boar as the roast of choice, and the
peasant scum using pigs for bacon, ground or stewed little
bits and all the recipes that never got written down but use
the scraps, fatty meats and oddments in the most economical
way? Sort of a 'best of both worlds' deal. That way, yes
they bred the beasties for the fat, and had an alternative
for the large roasts that when the lifestyle underwent a
change didn't change quite as quickly.

I know I have had the chance to try a roasted javalina [some
form of wild boar found in the west] that was great as a
roast, with good marbling but not the really large fat
deposites we find in the ones from the grocery or butcher. I
have also had homegrown [russian boar- a cull from the texas
a&m aggie station, many thanks to a buddy who went there..]
and home grown holland-china. The russian boar was the
closest to javalina, but had more of a fat deposit, due to
less exercise I would surmise, and the homegrown holland was
nicely marbled, but definitely fatter. If they[H-C's] bred
for meat rather than fat, they didn't succeed. Sam had a
very fatty batch of bacon, the fat back was maybe at most
10% meatier than the storebought fat back. I did find that
the acorn mast and apples, with leftovers instead of pig
chow made a good difference in the overall taste of Sam,
almost adding back a large degree of the 'gaminess' of the
javalina. I would like to get a javalina, a russian boar and
a comparable heirloom breed of porker to try to raise them
on the same diet and conditions, and try to emulate a more
medieval diet for the beasties to see how they come out. All
I have to do is convince Rob into building the pens and
getting them for me, but he doesn't want to try to livetrap
a javalina, something about the attitude problem they
have...
margali

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