it’s not easy, being pork

Poor things, pigs are get­ting it from every­where these days. Of course swine flu is noth­ing to joke about, except that one must. Avery brought home this gem from school this week: “What’s the best treat­ment for swine flu? Oink­ment.” And my per­son­al favorite, sweep­ing my lit­tle cir­cle of friends, goes like this: “I called up the NHS Help Line for infor­ma­tion about Swine Flu, but all I got was crack­ling.” Which is a par­tic­u­lar­ly British jokelet because you have to under­stand both “NHS” and “crack­ling,” a phe­nom­e­non pecu­liar to the cook­ing of pork in my adopt­ed land. In Amer­i­ca, of course, we insist on call­ing pork “The Oth­er White Meat,” which means it’s com­pet­ing in every way with chick­en: bland, cheap and skin­less. No aver­age Amer­i­can is going to taint such a com­pelling list of qual­i­ties with any­thing resem­bling what makes pork in Britain so pop­u­lar: the thick lay­er of gor­geous fat and skin run­ning the length of our roasts. Cooks here score the skin and fat in any num­ber of attrac­tive pat­terns (I favor the criss­cross), sprin­kle it gen­er­ous­ly with sea salt and fresh black pep­per, and if you’re me, cov­er it all with fresh pur­ple sage leaves from your handy kitchen gar­den (as you see above), and roast it till the meat is soft and ten­der and the fat is, well, crack­ling. Lovely.

But even if it weren’t for the rather hys­ter­i­cal world reac­tion to swine flu (sev­er­al Lon­don schools have closed for the week with just one or two cas­es), pork has oth­er wor­ries on its mind. In my con­tin­u­ing quest to sup­port my beloved Gig­gly Pig sausage and bacon pro­duc­ers, I took a good­ly num­ber of a fla­vor called “Welsh Drag­on” with me on my cook­ery week­end away, and they went down a treat. I don’t real­ly know for cer­tain what the term “Welsh Drag­on” denotes, since sev­er­al sausage mak­ers use the title and the recipes all seem slight­ly dif­fer­ent, but I would guess the com­mon denom­i­na­tor is hot chill­ies. I say, I would guess that, but you’d be sur­prised at the num­ber of food pol­i­cy admin­is­tra­tors who seemed fear­ful that the Gen­er­al Pub­lic thought the main ingre­di­ent was… drag­on meat.

I am not mak­ing this up.

Seri­ous­ly, some gov­ern­men­tal body actu­al­ly has stip­u­lat­ed that any sausage called “Welsh Drag­on” must spec­i­fy that the main ingre­di­ent is PORK. When chal­lenged, said gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials had to back­track and say that they did not actu­al­ly rate the Gen­er­al Pub­lic as so mas­sive­ly stu­pid (or wish­ful) as to believe they were buy­ing ground drag­on… just to “clar­i­fy” for veg­e­tar­i­ans! So I guess drag­on meat, being myth­i­cal, would be accept­able to veg­e­tar­i­ans, but pork… WHOA!

All I can say in sup­port of these con­cerns is that Rosie says the best dish of our whole Here­ford week­end was this:

New Aspara­gus with Quail’s Eggs and Lemon Mayonnaise
(serves 4)

about 20 fresh aspara­gus spears, bro­ken off where they are ten­der at the stem
1 dozen quail’s eggs, hard-cooked (put in boil­ing water for 3 min­utes, then plunged in cold), peeled and cut in half lengthways

dress­ing:
2 tbsps mayonnaise
1 tsp Dijon mustard
zest and juice of 1 lemon
sea salt and pep­per to taste

Steam the aspara­gus JUST until it begins to smell like aspara­gus — per­haps 2 min­utes, no longer. Sim­ply lift the lid of the saucepan/steamer and smell. The aspara­gus will con­tin­ue to cook for a moment when you take it out, so be con­ser­v­a­tive and DO NOT overcook.

Lay the aspara­gus on a plat­ter and scat­ter over with quail’s eggs, then driz­zle with dress­ing and serve right away.

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Light, fresh, green, yel­low and white. The absolute per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of spring. I don’t want to gloat, but aspara­gus one’s picked on one’s own, min­utes before cook­ing, is pret­ty much the apogee of sat­is­fac­tion on a plate.

Then, too, for lunch today I made a com­plete­ly sim­ple and fresh sal­ad and I’d serve it to any­body, per­haps along­side the aspara­gus dish, for a tru­ly ele­gant spring luncheon.

Cray­fish Tails Sal­ad With Avo­ca­do, Rock­et and Lemon
(serves 4)

360 grams cray­fish tails
1 avo­ca­do, diced
two hand­fuls rocket
2 tbsps mayonnaise
zest and juice of 1 lemon
hand­ful chives, chopped
pinch sea salt and pepper

Drain the cray­fish tails and dry with paper tow­els (so dress­ing does­n’t get run­ny). Place in a large shal­low bowl. Toss in avo­ca­do and rocket.

Mix may­on­naise with lemon zest and juice and shake very well till mixed. Pour dress­ing over cray­fish, then sprin­kle over chives and salt and pepper.

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Again, this dish is wel­com­ing of spring in its bright col­ors and live­ly fla­vors. Tangy, creamy, sharp from the rock­et and firm­ly flesh­ly from the fish. You’ll love it.

More tomor­row on our adven­tures in Here­ford, which includ­ed a mas­sive bar­be­cue of lamb burg­ers, aubergine (egg­plant), toma­toes with har­vest­ed rose­mary, you name it. When I give you these recipes, you will not frankly believe that we cooked (and ATE!) it all in three days… but my swim­ming cos­tume on our trip to the pool this evening will assure you that we DID!