Turner - Hog: Proper pork recipes from the snout to the squeak

by Fergus Henderson

Why are we so good to eat, why? oink oink oink oink

You can brine us then smoke us for bacon, thats the Gloucester Old Spots lot

Cure our limbs and youve got ham oink oink oink oink

Looking for fat, how about that, middle white, lard on legs

Get on up like a lardon machine oink oink oink oink

This is what you do to me charcuterie

Put your horses bone in my thigh oink oink

The onomatopoeic lop, flavour is loppishish, needs an Alice band for those ears

The giant orange sofa Tamworth, ladies and gents oink oink oink oink

Trotters bring unctuous sticky, tails that go crispy

The little things like chitterlings, poo pipe, woohoo!

Roast chop sandwich, raised pork pie

Ears cheeks and nose I tell no lie, pigs head is the tops woohoo woohoo!

The table is laid, your number is up, its dinner time pig oink oink squeal squeal!

Sizzle, woohoo woohoo!

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The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.

MARTINA NAVRATILOVA

The pig, the most perfect of all animals, never stops giving. From its snout to its tail, its chops and its cheeks all the way down the jellied feet that float in brine atop seedy American bars, the pig epitomizes the commitment of carnivores not to waste one bit of living flesh. What you cant use goes into sausages, and what cant go into sausages goes into scrapple. Eventually nothing is left but fat (ones own) and happy memories.

Which isnt to say that just anyone knows how to cook pork.

Like any animal, a pig is made up of many muscles, each one adapted to a different task the shoulder for propulsion, say, or the tail for expression, and they cant all be cooked the same way. Each is made up itself of multiple disparate elements: muscle tissue, collagen, sinew, nerve, bone, fat and tendon. Each one cooks at a slightly different rate, and of course, no two animals are ever exactly alike. The real pork masters, from Hong Kong to the Carolinas, dont so much cook pork as draw it out, as one might a shy girl on a first date, or a glass of Scotch that needs just a few drops of tap water to be its own best self.

A great pork cook uses hot fires, slow fires, salt, a few spices here and there, and thats it: the rest happens more or less by itself. And the rest, at its best, can easily be astounding. The Tamworth and Berkshire hogs sourced by Richard Turner for his restaurants have creamy, firm and fragrant fat, the kind that you could spread on toast if you needed to, the kind that secretly powers half the good things that come out of the worlds kitchens. The meat is red and strong, and tastes like the animal its from: a hardy, independent-minded forager, fearless and inexhaustible. Those massive, all-consuming jaws are powered by some of the densest and most delicious muscles in the animal kingdom; the hams come from legs that jump and strut, big powerful muscles that are in almost constant motion, at least in the wild. The best pork, of the sort Turner sells at his craft butcher shop, comes from pigs that feed in the sun, copulate freely and live a good life. Sadly, though, I have to admit a melancholy fact few conscientious meat eaters will admit openly: even the worst pork is still pretty good. The murder mills of the United States are an atrocity, but the bacon they produce affects even sober men like marijuana, and their cheapest blade chops seethe with sweet juices and soft, pillowy pockets of fat.

As I write this, in the next room, leftover spare ribs, stiff from the refrigerator, are slowly softening and sizzling in a toaster oven. They come from commodity animals, and are being cooked in a cheap appliance weighing less than the book you are holding. I just ate one, and it was better than any tournado; two others are still warming and crisping as the time clicks away, and all I need to do is continue ignoring them. Pork is the most forgiving of meats, and for that reason the best for beginning cooks. It takes a lot to ruin it.

It is possible, of course. I never get over how many recipes assume otherwise. Modernist cookbooks are especially wrongheaded, assuming pork to be the raw material for the chefs creative genius, or the virtuosity of his technique. But the pig doesnt need geniuses or virtuosi. It doesnt need to be in tuiles or cocktails. It doesnt require its image on the forearms of oversexed line cooks. No, all it needs is love, and patience, and a deep but invisible skill on the part of the person cooking it. Such a person is Richard Turner. Listen to what he says, follow his instruction faithfully, and you wont go far wrong. The pig will see to that.

Josh Ozersky
Restaurant Editor, Esquire

I know when Richard Turner is in my house. The photography for his books is done here and I have to hide upstairs in my study as the smell of pork, in all its wonderful guises, drifts up through floorboards and open windows and makes me weep with hunger. Occasionally I venture downstairs and embarrass myself. The kitchen is so full of luscious things I know neither where to start nor where to stop. His terrines: the most perfect I have ever tasted (French men! Hang your heads in shame!). His pork burgers: I ate one with so much enthusiasm that the juices dripped down my chin and had to be mopped up by Richard before I left the house. His ham in cola: my children loved this so much they begged me to marry him. His deep-fried pickled mushrooms: how the hell did he even think these up (and why didnt I get there first)? Rillettes, Scotch eggs, quiche, you may think youve tasted good versions of these, but Richards cooking makes you think again about such classics (as well as bringing new dishes to your life). And this big bourbon-drinking, porcine-loving hunk is also great at salads (Ive paid him the ultimate compliment by stealing many of them).

Im pretty fussy, hard to please. Nobody ever seasons well enough for me, or they get the flavour balance slightly wrong. But Richard Turners food sends me. He simply has an amazing palate. Hes touchingly (and unexpectedly) modest too. When I go Oh my God Richard, that is so good! he says (blushing) Really? Do you think so? and he means it.