Last weekend I went to the farm for a very special occasion: Dominique and Cyril had butchered Peggy, their sow of 7 years, and were converting her into pate and boudin, or blood sausage.
They needed a hand, so I met Domi at the market in Muret on Saturday with Marissa and we stayed until Monday. They also had a very cool American couple of WWOOFers, Alana and Paul, staying with them that month, plus a French couple who came to help all day Sunday.
Friday night we went into Aurinac, the nearby town, because there was a short documentary that one of their friends had made that was being screened in the town's tiny theater. The documentary followed a week in the life of a typical farm family of the region, showing their daily customs in the hopes of immortalizing a way of life that is slowly disappearing. The film opened with 6 local men slaughtering a pig that they then boiled it and fiercely scrubbed off the fur.
After seeing that I had begun to question my capacities of what was in store for me the following morning. Thankfully, Dominique and Cyril had sent Peggy to a slaughterhouse for no other reason than they had, inevitably, become too attached over 7 years to do it themselves.
So Sunday morning we picked up the already halved and decapitated Peggy and went to work butchering the meat which lasted the entire morning and part of the afternoon, even with 6 people working at all times.
We separated the parts for the two dishes. Fat, flesh, and liver for the pate and essentially all the rest for the blood sausage: ears, tail, more fat and flesh, lungs, etc.
We used a meat grinder to make the pate to which we also added chicken livers and hearts, then made three batches of almost 20 lbs each which we seasoned with salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, ginger, rosemary, and thyme, placed in jars, and sterilized and sealed in a 2 hour bath.
For the boudin, we cooked all the aforementioned parts for about 2 hours in a giant pot with leeks, carrots and onions. We then separated the cooked fat from the meat, and put the cooked parts through the meat grinder. This too we seasoned with salt and pepper, and most importantly, several heaping ladles of blood. This too we placed in jars and sealed.
It was an all day affair that started at 8am and didn't end until well into the night. We stopped for a lovely lunch outside, there were 8 of us in total.
The photos are courtesy of Alana and Paul, who also have a blog of their just begun year of WWOOFing in France: playbigball.tumblr.com
They needed a hand, so I met Domi at the market in Muret on Saturday with Marissa and we stayed until Monday. They also had a very cool American couple of WWOOFers, Alana and Paul, staying with them that month, plus a French couple who came to help all day Sunday.
Friday night we went into Aurinac, the nearby town, because there was a short documentary that one of their friends had made that was being screened in the town's tiny theater. The documentary followed a week in the life of a typical farm family of the region, showing their daily customs in the hopes of immortalizing a way of life that is slowly disappearing. The film opened with 6 local men slaughtering a pig that they then boiled it and fiercely scrubbed off the fur.
After seeing that I had begun to question my capacities of what was in store for me the following morning. Thankfully, Dominique and Cyril had sent Peggy to a slaughterhouse for no other reason than they had, inevitably, become too attached over 7 years to do it themselves.
So Sunday morning we picked up the already halved and decapitated Peggy and went to work butchering the meat which lasted the entire morning and part of the afternoon, even with 6 people working at all times.
We separated the parts for the two dishes. Fat, flesh, and liver for the pate and essentially all the rest for the blood sausage: ears, tail, more fat and flesh, lungs, etc.
We used a meat grinder to make the pate to which we also added chicken livers and hearts, then made three batches of almost 20 lbs each which we seasoned with salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, ginger, rosemary, and thyme, placed in jars, and sterilized and sealed in a 2 hour bath.
For the boudin, we cooked all the aforementioned parts for about 2 hours in a giant pot with leeks, carrots and onions. We then separated the cooked fat from the meat, and put the cooked parts through the meat grinder. This too we seasoned with salt and pepper, and most importantly, several heaping ladles of blood. This too we placed in jars and sealed.
It was an all day affair that started at 8am and didn't end until well into the night. We stopped for a lovely lunch outside, there were 8 of us in total.
The photos are courtesy of Alana and Paul, who also have a blog of their just begun year of WWOOFing in France: playbigball.tumblr.com
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| Paul with half the pig |
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| Dominique after demonstrating how the lungs can be reinflated |
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| Cross section |
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| At work! |
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| Cutting up vegetable for lunch |
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| Cooking using a solar bowl and some spring flowers in bloom |
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| A much needed lunch break |
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| Spices for the pâté |
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| Working the meat grinder |
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| Liver |
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| Meat |
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| Spices ready to be ground up |
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| Pâté |
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| Fun with stomach lining! |
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| Paul and Alana jarring |
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| Jars ready to be sealed |
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| Dominique and I at sunset |
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| Corriander |
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| Pâté cooking after sunset |
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| Jars ready for lids |
This is absolutely fucking amazing. It's really sad for me to think about these kinds of traditions disappearing (and to realize that American farms used to be doing all the same kinds of things before factory farming took over). I really hope there will always be people like Domi and Cyril around to preserve this heritage!
ReplyDeleteYeah Lauren it was pretty amazing, and neat (actually kind of messy...) to see things full circle with Peggy. The night before we went to Aurinac to watch a short documentary that a Duch woman (Margot I don't think you met her) who lives there with her husband, following a farming family in the region who does this sort of thing regulary. In the film it didn't seem like the kids in the family were setting up to continue the tradition, I agree very sad.
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