This operation is great fun to do, and most soothing. It adds to the tenderness and flavour of the meat, and looks sensational: What more could one ask?

LARD

(Saindoux)

When the pig has been split in two, after the insides have all been removed, a sheet of fat can be seen lying on the inside of the ribs. It’s easy to rip off, and from it and the hard fat underneath the skin the best lard is made. At the bacon factory, other fat parts are included in the final lard, the mesentery is one of them. But if you have a good fat bacon pig, keep this flay fat (panne) apart from the rest. For one thing it melts at a different rate, and if it catches, it is spoilt. Of course you can, if you wish, amalgamate the two kinds of lard once they have been melted and are off the fire, but not set.

If you want to have a bladder of lard to hang up in the larder, you will have to soak the cleaned bladder in water until it is soft. Don’t pour in the lard (best quality only) before it is half-set. Tie the bladder up so that there is no air space between the lard and the string, and leave it to cool off completely in cold water. Keep it hung up in a cool dry place.

Preparation of Lard

NOTE: DO not add salt (it merely falls to the bottom of the melting-pot), or herbs and spices (you may wish to use the lard for recipes where such flavours would be inappropriate).

Panne, or flay in English. Remove fibres and any blood-stained part of the fat. Cut into suitable sizes for passing through a mincing machine—an electric one saves a lot of time and strength—then soak it for five hours in cold water, ¼ pint water to 1 lb. fat.

You can omit the soaking, and put the minced fat into a heavy pan (cast-iron or enamelled cast-iron) with about quarter of an inch of water in the bottom to stop the fat sticking.

If you’ve soaked the fat, you will need hardly any water in the pan. Just a little to start it off.

Now set the pan on a very low, steady heat. Do not hurry this part of the process, or you will end up with a grimy-looking grease instead of beautifully snowy lard.

Pour off the fat as it melts to a milky liquid, through a strainer straight into sterilized glass jars. Even stoneware pots are too porous for the long-term storage of lard, and I do not suppose that most households have suitable metal containers, such as charcuterie handbooks recommend. In any event fill the jars right to the brim; the fat contracts as it hardens. Do not cover for forty-eight hours, then use jam-pot covers, with a final cover of silver-foil tied on tightly with fine string.

Lard Gras Dur. It is easy to see in a piece of loin or belly of pork, how the fat between the skin and the first bit of lean meat divides into two layers quite noticeably. The outer layer is easily pulled off, and makes excellent lard.

Skin it, and mince it as for the panne above. Then leave it to soak for five hours in cold water: if you have a pound of fat, soak it in a quarter of a pint of water.

You will find that this melts much more slowly than the panne fat. Whatever you do, don’t hurry it along. If you doubt the thickness of your pot, use an asbestos mat to be absolutely sure. The little hard bits, the grillons as they are called, may take on a light brown colour, but this is all right. Just keep pouring off the liquid lard through a strainer, into jars, or into a large bowl if you intend to use it fairly soon. It can be mixed with melted lard from the panne, or flay, at this stage. Charcutiers whip the fat electrically as it cools. If you have an electric beater you could do the same. It makes a very light and delicate substance.

Soft fat, and scraps of fatty meat, the mesentery, can all be used to extract fat for quick consumption. Cut it into rough pieces, skin and all, except for the mesentery which should be cut into six-inch lengths. Soak the pieces for five hours in cold water as in recipe above, and use the same method of cooking. With the golden-brown pieces left in the strainer you can make:

GRATTONS, OR GRILLONS

The simplest way is to salt and pepper these bits, and eat them hot with mashed potatoes, or cold on bread as an hors d’oeuvre. You can keep them too, by packing them closely into sterilized stoneware pots or glass jars, and covering them with half an inch of melted lard. If you’re not going to eat the frilly mesentery separately, chop the pieces to a uniform size with the other grillons. A moment or two in an electric blender produces quite a satisfactory result, somewhere between a laboriously-acquired chop and an unsatisfactory mush of mince.

VARIATIONS

Leave the remains to cool down properly. Chop them small (or whirl them in an electric blender, dropping them through the hole in the lid onto the fast-spinning blades—but don’t overdo it to a purée), and season with salt, freshly-ground black pepper, quatre-épices or other spices, some chopped mild onion and crushed garlic and thyme. Put a glass of white wine in a heavy pan or casserole, add the meat mixture and let it simmer gently but steadily for an hour and a half. Be sure it doesn’t catch. The best way to do this is to stir it often with a wooden spoon, and put the pan on an asbestos mat if you are using gas.

Unless you have had a marathon lard-making, there will not be enough grillons to keep. But you can always pot it in sterilized jars, and cover it hermetically with half an inch of melted lard.

Grillons Fines

These are really a sort of rillettes, because you don’t just make them from remains as in the other two recipes above, but from fresh meat. But as they are known as grillons, I give the recipe here.

You need equal quantities of lean pork and the hard fat beneath the skin. Chop them roughly and leave them overnight in a mixture of salt, pepper and quatre-épices (or your own mixture of spices). The proportion of salt should be 2 oz. to 3 lb. of meat and fat together, with pepper and spices according to your own tastes but about one-eighth of the amount of salt.

Next day put a wineglass (4—5 oz.) of dry white wine in the cooking pot—proportionately more if you have over 3 lb. of meat. Add the meat, after washing it in a colander under the tap, and leave to cook very slowly for three hours, giving it an occasional stir with a wooden spoon to make sure it isn’t sticking. About an hour before the end of the cooking time, correct the seasoning. Add more spices, and some chopped mild onion and garlic.

When they are cooked, strain off the fat, pack the grillons into sterilized stoneware pots or glass jars. When they are co’d, melt the fat again which you strained off and cover the grillons to about half an inch deep, at least, better three-quarters of an inch. When the fat has hardened, cover with a close layer of silver foil and keep in a cool, dry place. This way they will last for months.

Grattons, or Gratterons

Larousse Gastronomique gives this recipe for Grattons, or Gratterons, from the Île de la Réunion. It is a huge success with children, and anyone who likes crackling.

Ask the butcher for a sheet of pig’s skin with about three-quarters of an inch of fat attached. In other words the skin and layer of hard fat I was talking about, that can be separated quite easily. Ask him not to score it for crackling. Stress this: most butchers do it quite automatically.

Cut the skin and fat into 3-inch squares, and score the fat side only into smallish diamonds.

Now set a heavy pan on a gentle heat, and melt 2 oz. of lard. Add the pork, fat side downwards, and transfer to a gentle oven for about 4 hours. The skin will look quite transparent. Now turn the heat up and leave the skin for another half an hour, watching that it doesn’t burn. The idea is that it should swell into golden, crisp bubbles—a crackling de luxe.

When they are done put them in a dish, well-drained of fat, sprinkle with salt and serve.

As this dish can quite well be cooked on top of the oven—remembering not to cover the pan at any stage of the cooking whether you do it in the oven, or on top—I often serve it as an accompaniment to a piece of roast pork.

PRESERVED PORK, GOOSE, TURKEY, DUCK AND RABBIT

(Confits de Porc, d’Oie, de Dinde, de Canard, et de Lapin)

Nowadays confits d’oie are particularly associated with the south-west of France, but the goose is traditionally under the protection of St Martin of Tours (? 315—97), that most untypical Roman soldier who halved his cloak with a beggar one freezing night, and who was loved and commemorated in churches all over Europe from his lifetime onwards (even in far-off Galloway, St Ninian built a church dedicated to him in about A D 400).

Back in not-so-far-off England after a good vintage in our small Loir village, I like to make confits d’oie et de porc for the winter ahead, soon after his feast day on November 11th in the golden days of St Martin’s Summer. Even in the time of St Martin and St Ninian, Gaul had long been celebrated for its hams. Did these great ascetics occasionally profit by Touraine’s tradition of charcuterie? I hope so; and I am sure that later pilgrims did, who stopped at Tours on their way to St James at Compostella. Without doubt they ate confits and drank Loire wines on freezing nights, in memoriam Sancti Martini, as a shield against the weather outside.

BASIC METHOD FOR ALL CONFITS

Use boned pork from the hind loin. Cut it into large pieces and tie them with button thread so that they will not lose their shape in cooking.

Joint the birds and rabbit. Do not bone.

Leave the meat to salt for 24 hours, in the proportions of 2 lb. meat (boned pork, unboned birds and rabbit) to a mixture of 1½ oz. salt, a good pinch of saltpetre, half a teaspoon of thyme and half a bay leaf, and quarter of a teaspoon of freshly-ground black pepper. Rub the salt mixture into the meat, then leave it. Meanwhile assemble your pots: stoneware (not earthenware, it’s too porous) or porcelain or wide-mouthed glass preserving jars. Wash them with boiling soda water to make sure they are absolutely clean, then sterilize them when the meat is nearly cooked and ready to be potted. Also prepare some wooden sticks by boiling. You need to lay two crosswise in each pot, so that the fat is able to encircle the meat completely.

Although one can in theory use large jars, and remove the preserved meat over a period of time at intervals, I have never pushed this too far. I use lidded stoneware storage jars of the kind sold widely in household bazaars in France, of a size to hold about six or seven pieces of meat, or even less.

Set a heavy cast-iron pan or large casserole on a gentle heat and melt in it half the amount of best lard that you have of meat. If you are lucky enough to be making confits d’oie, use the fat from the goose, and make it up to half the weight of meat with lard if necessary.

When the fat is hot, add the pieces of meat and cook them gently for between 1¼ and 2 hours. The way to judge when they are cooked is to pierce them with a knitting needle. If no liquid comes out, they are cooked; try the pieces at 1¼ hours, then at 15-minute intervals, because you do not want to overcook them. They will look pinkish because of the saltpetre, so don’t be put off by that.

Put some strained fat into the jars you intend to use, up to the top of the cross of sticks. Then pack in the pieces of meat, leaving 2 inches at the top of the jar. Pour over the strained fat right up to the brim, remembering that it will contract as it cools.

When the contents are quite cold, cover the jars with silver foil, pressing it right down onto the lard. Untouched the meat will keep for six months to a year.

To remove some meat from the jar, stand it at the side of the stove when it is warm, until the lard melts enough for you to spear the pieces. Put the jar back into the cool, and cover with a fresh piece of silver foil when the lard has hardened again. Make absolutely sure that all the remaining pieces are still well covered with a thick layer of lard.

As the meat is cooked, you can eat it cold with a salad and new potatoes, or a potato salad. More frequently it is eaten hot (having been heated in a frying pan with some of its own fat), and accompanied by mashed potatoes. Odd pieces find their way into cassoulet (particularly goose confits) and potée, which is halfway between soup and stew.

You can insert pieces of garlic into the pork, rabbit and goose before cooking them; and eventually serve them hot with a sprinkling of finely chopped garlic and parsley.

See also Cou d’Oie or de Dinde.

BELLY OF PORK

(Poitrine de Porc)

In France, belly of pork is either salted and smoked for bacon, salted and boiled to be eaten cold (petit salé); or else cooked slowly in lard and turned into rillettes and rillons. Both can be preserved for a long time under a deep layer of lard, but, in the charcuterie, rillons are usually sold soon after they are made, and rillettes as well. The difference between them is one of size (rillons being solid cubes of golden brown, and rillettes being a solid mass of pounded and succulent fibres); they can quite well be cooked together in the same pan:

BASIC METHOD

1 lb. belly of pork, cut into 2-inch cubes

1½ lb. belly of pork, cut into small strips about 1 inch long and ¼ inch wide (you can use shoulder of pork instead)

1 lb. flair fat cut into smallish pieces (use the hard fat from under the skin, if you can’t get flair fat)

Salt, pepper, spices, thyme, bay leaf

Using a heavy pan, put in the pork pieces and 2 oz. of water, so that the meat doesn’t stick. Cook over a gentle heat, or in a low oven, covered, for four hours.

Separate the cubes of pork (the rillons) from the rest, and leave them to brown in a hotter oven, uncovered, or in an open pan on top of the stove.

Whilst they are finishing off, deal with the rillettes.

Put a larger strainer over a strong earthenware bowl, and pour the meat and fat from the cooking-pot into it. Press the meat gently, so that as much fat as possible falls through the mesh of the sieve, and transfer it to a mortar so that it can be pounded. Finally put it back in the sieve, and tear it apart with two forks into an even mass of fibres.

I cannot pretend that this is quick or easy, but the success of rillettes depends on it. You can eliminate the pounding by dropping the meat onto the fast-whirling blades of an electric blender. This demands judgement, because you must not reduce the meat to a porridge-like slush.

But whatever you do, don’t put rillettes through the mincer, either before or after cooking.

Now season with salt, pepper, quatre-épices or other spices, a little garlic and thyme. Flavour is needed. Return to the pan and give the rillettes a quarter of an hour more on a gentle heat, so that the seasonings are well distributed. Pack lightly into sterlized stoneware (or glass or porcelain) pots, and cover with the fat from the cooking melted to a pouring consistency. Be careful not to include the meaty juices when you take the fat out of the bowl. A depth of half an inch of lard will preserve the rillettes beneath for six months to a year.

Next day, cover the lard with a close covering of silver foil, and another piece of it over the top of each pot, tied on with string. If you intend to keep the rillettes for a day or two only, no lard covering is required.

During all this, keep and eye on the rillons; put them to drain when they are an appetizing brown all over. Eat them cold, like rillettes, as an hors d’œuvre.

Alternatively, you can pot rillons like confits. In that case they are best heated through in an open pan when you come to eat them, in a little of their preserving fat, and served with mashed potatoes and a tart apple purée, or baked apple rings.

Rillettes de Paris

1 lb. belly of pork

1 oz. good lard

½ oz. salt

Pepper and spices according to taste

The point of this recipe is the very prolonged gentle cooking of the pork, so that it is in the most melting condition possible by the time you have finished—and not ‘dry and sandy’.

Cut the meat into pieces about 1 inch or 1½ inches long. Put them on to cook with the lard in a heavy pan on a very low flame indeed. Keep stirring so that the meat colours evenly to a pale gold.

Pour off the fat, and leave the meat to go on cooking for a further five hours on the lowest possible heat. From time to time pour on a little water to prevent the meat sticking.

Let the meat get quite cold. Then drop it onto the blades of an electric blender, if you have one. Otherwise you are condemned to chopping and pounding. The final result is a smooth, ‘unctous’ pâté, which you season with salt, pepper and spices, and add according to your own discretion as much of the drained-off fat as you like. ‘Too high a flame will fry the pieces of meat and harden them’, so this is the point to watch.

Rillettes d’ Angers

1 lb. fresh pork

2 lb. boned goose

½ lb. of best lard

1 oz. salt, pepper and spices to taste

Follow the Basic Method.

Rillettes du Mans

1 lb. fresh pork (shoulder)

1½ lb. speck fat from the back, skinned

1 lb. chicken or rabbit, boned when weighed

1 oz. salt, pepper, cloves, bay, thyme

Follow the Basic Method, but include the bay leaf and thyme from the start of the cooking, and the cloves too.

Rillettes de Lapin

2 lb. young rabbit, weighed with bone

¾ lb. belly of pork, not too lean

¼ lb. speck fat from the back, skinned

Pepper, spices, and salt as required

Follow the Basic Method. The meat is cooked when the rabbit falls from the bones easily.

You can use salt pork for this recipe—if you do, you probably won’t need to add extra salt at the seasoning stage.

Rillettes d’Oie, de Dinde, or de Canard

2 lb. of goose, turkey or duck, jointed but not boned

2 lb. of flair fat (panne)

Salt and paprika

Mince the flair fat, put it in the cooking pot to melt slowly. When it runs add the meat and 3 oz. water. Cook for six to eight hours, so that the meat simmers in the fat and juices rather than fries. The bones should fall out. Drain off the fat, and pound the meat (or use the electric blender, see basic method) until it is smooth. Season with salt and paprika, and add a proportion of the drained-off fat to taste. Hot it through gently for 15 minutes and pot.

Rillettes d’Oie, or de Canard

Same ingredients as previous recipe, except that you have to bone the goose or duck before weighing, and have an equal quantity of flair fat.

Set the fat to melt, then pour off the liquid and add the goose or duck to the grillons left behind. Put in 4 oz. of water to every 2 lb. of poultry.

NOTE: For economy’s sake, pork is often substituted for part of the poultry.

Keep this cooking at a simmer for five to six hours. Reduce by pounding and chopping, or by means of the electric blender, to a smooth mass. Season with salt and paprika pepper, add as much of the drained-off fat as you think the mixture requires. Heat through for 10 minutes; pot, and keep in the cool, in the usual way for rillettes.

NOTE: Poultry and rabbit rillettes can afford to be very smooth indeed—the texture almost of English potted meat. But I find that most people prefer pork rillettes to be a lighter, thready texture. All rillettes should be well-seasoned, and served with salt, butter and hunks of crusty bread or toast.

Quiche Tourangelle

SHORT-CRUST PASTRY, to line a shallow 8½ inch diameter tart tin (tourtiére).

8 oz. plain flour, sifted with a tablespoon icing sugar, and a good pinch of salt

5 oz. butter and lard, rubbed into the flour, etc.

Enough very cold water to mix to a dough

Line the tin, brush with white of egg, to keep pastry crisp.

FILLING

4—6 oz. of rillettes (pork), spread about ¼ inch thick

6 oz. rillons, no bones, cut into small dice, and laid on the rillettes

¼ pint boiling milk, poured on to 2 beaten eggs, and whisked together

2—3 oz. thick cream added to the milk and eggs, with a seasoning of salt, pepper and parsley

Pour this custard onto the rillons etc., and bake for 40 minutes in a gentle oven (Mark 4, 350°F.).

Serve warm, not hot from the oven, or cold.