Whole Hog
Portland chefs carve out a regional style of charcuterie.
By Mike Thelin
Meat Market: check out our slideshow of Portland’s best charcuterie, including this, the prosciutto at Tails and Trotters.
View Slideshow »Blood sausage from Beaker & Flask
View Slideshow »Chorizo from Clyde Common
View Slideshow »Ciccioli from Nostrana
View Slideshow »Lamb prosciutto from Castagna
View Slideshow »Prosciutto from Nostrana
View Slideshow »Salami from Higgins
View Slideshow »Pork, chicken liver, and bacon terrine from Paley’s Place
View Slideshow »Testarossa from Paley’s Place
Call it by whatever effete moniker you choose, but when all a pig’s skin has been flayed, its intestines mulched, and its blood reused, artisan charcuterie is a splendid example of how one culture’s art can be born of another’s necessity. The alchemy of transforming raw meat into pâtés, salami, and prosciutto by salting, curing, smoking, and preserving it evolved out of two needs: to keep meat from turning rancid and to find a use for every part of the animal—right down to the marrow. The Italians, for instance, grew inspired to create legendary, though rather bizarre, pâtés from disparate bits like lard, pork belly, and pigskin. And the Spaniards have the proud adage: “Every part of the pig is edible, except for the oink.”
“Charcuterie and butchering go hand in hand,” says chef Adam Sappington of Southern-inspired eatery the Country Cat, in the Montavilla neighborhood. As executive chef at Wildwood restaurant in 1998, Sappington was one of the first local chefs to purchase and use entire pigs. He says his goal at the time was to save cash, but the result was the first so-called “Whole Hog” program in the city. His early forays into charcuterie yielded Wildwood’s tasty house-cured bacon and pancetta. Now he’s making Italian-style prosciutto and country ham, the latter a uniquely American-style prosciutto that combines traditional salt-curing with flavors derived from the early American sugar trade: rum, molasses, and brown sugar. “The crux of local cuisine has been farm-direct produce,” Sappington says. “We wanted ranch-direct meat, and so we learned to preserve the excess.”
New to most Portland chefs (although Greg Higgins has been curing meats since 1972), making prosciutto is an uncomplicated affair: cover a pig leg in salt; rinse it after a week or two; and hang it in a cool, humid space for up to three years. Despite the simplicity of the process, every defect can be tasted if the pork is inferior. As Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place cautions, “The flavor depends on where [the pig] came from and what it ate.”
Published: October 2009
