We are very excited to be able to now offer retail cuts to you, the fine public. We have both Mangalitsa and Gloucester Old Spots pork available. Click on the link below to check out the price list and be sure to contact me for meat reservations. Cheers!
Never before have I been to an event like that of Cochon 555, held this past weekend in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The seemingly dull college town of which Oklahoma State University claims as its home, is located an hour’s drive north of Oklahoma City and seemed quite the unlikely destination to hold such an affair—that is until one understands the magnitude of what OSU is attempting to accomplish. As has been noted here and here, Cochon 555 is competition held in ten destinations around the country. It invites five chefs from various regions that focus not only on quality ingredients, but chefs that also source those ingredients locally—pigs in this instance—and pride themselves by utilizing every part. Ideally, the chefs choose farms to work with that supply heritage pork to their respective restaurants. Then, they compete first for the regional prize, Prince of Porc, and eventually the grand prize at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado, King of Porc.
Cochon 555
The Beast
To say we are excited today would be a complete understatement. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that our first Mangalitsa pigs will be delivered tomorrow afternoon to what, in my little opinion are some of the finest restaurants in Houston–Catalan, The Grove, Feast, and Stella Sola. Without having officially confirmed their intentions for the pigs, my assumption is that most, if not all of them will be used for various charcuterie-driven purposes. Although Mangalitsa is absolutely delicious when eaten fresh, curing takes it to an entirely different level.
For some time now, I’ve not really known what to think about the big controversy in cured meats—the one revolving around nitrates/nitrites that are often used during the preservation process. A lot of information that turns up in Google searches is not only difficult to sift through, but without doing a significant amount of homework, the task of determining what data is legitimate and what is more agenda-driven can seem impossibly complicated for a layman like myself to understand. Fortunately for all of Houston (and whoever outside of our fine City chooses to follow this li’l blog), we have one man in particular that we hold in the highest esteem for his ability to pour through scientific journals and studies in search of unbiased answers based in scientific fact, and then explain it in a manner that we (I) can understand. That man of course is known to many of us as Dr. Ricky. People have summed up Dr. Ricky best by describing him as Houston’s own Harold McGee. With that in mind, I felt that there was not a better person to dive into the hot topic of of these preservatives and how they may OR may not effect our bodies, than Dr. Ricky. Most of the time, Dr. Ricky’s food-related writings can be found on his blog, Dude, you going to eat that?, but today, after a serious amount of begging, he has graced the Revival Meats blog with a fascinating guest-post. Fortunately for us all, we now have his take on the story.
Charcuterie Case. Salumeria Rosi. Manhattan
When I woke up this morning and quickly blew through last night’s Tweets to see if I missed anything world-changing, I was excited to see a ton of conversation surrounding an article that ran in the New York Times Online yesterday. For anyone that has a remote interest in what is going on in Houston’s more “chef-driven” food scene, it is no secret that even within that tight-knit community there are passionate lovers of the local goings-on as well as its fair share of despondent folks that have differing opinions.
Texas Wild Boar Ragu, Stella Sola
