The Honest Plate

Good old-fashioned lard.

Lard has been making a come-back in the past few years.  Credit Mario Batali with kicking things off with lardo (cured fatback) back in 2003, at his Otto Enoteca Pizzeria in New York City.  Since then, chefs and pastry experts have embraced lard, and food writers such as Corby Kummer, Nina Planck and Melissa Clark have all but declared it trendy. 

And, as long as you don't buy lard in the dairy case in the supermarket (which is hydrogenated), real lard -- made from the hard, saturated fat surrounding the pig's kidneys -- is a real food.  There's minimal processing, it's traditional, and you can make it yourself.  Our grandparents and great grandparents knew that lard was good.  Lard is what makes pie crusts flaky/crunchy/melt-in-your-mouth; it's what makes anything fried extra-good; it's the ingredient that can make a lean dish taste magical.  What they didn't know (or probably care about) is the nutrition science of lard; in spite of the bad rap it has suffered until recently, lard is actually rich in monounsaturated fat, the kind that lowers LDL cholesterol and leaves HDL alone.

But what about rendering lard?  Much has been said and written about this process -- that it's messy, smelly, and time-consuming (taking up to eight hours).  But we uncovered a very easy, much faster way to render lard.  And no corners were cut with this recipe -- it yields an excellent product.

Rendered Leaf Lard:

1)  The first step may be the hardest:  find someone who can sell you leaf lard.  We've had luck at farmers markets; pig farmers carry it and will happily sell it to you.  For this recipe, we used a 2 lb portion.   
2)  Trim away any bloody or meaty-looking bits and discard.  Then, with a chef's knife, cut the lard into fine dice, e.g., 1/2 inch squares.
3)  Put the diced lard into a round or oval oven-proof vessel (we used a large Le Creuset pot).  Remember, you need to pour the liquid fat out -- a rectangular dish could make it a little tricky
4)  Place uncovered into a 325 oven.  No need to pre-heat; the pot and the fat can to be brought up to temperature with the oven.
5)  Allow the fat to render for about 2 hours; stir every 30 - 45 minutes or so.  When finished, you'll have quite a bit of clear, rendered pork fat and a good amount of golden-brown "cracklings"
6)  After removing from the oven, carefully pour the hot fat through a fine mesh strainer, and into a large ceramic bowl to allow it to cool.
7)  While still hot, dump the pork crisps onto a plate and season immediately with sea salt (paper towels placed on the plate can help absorb the excess fat.

The cracklings alone were nearly worth all the effort -- immediate gratification.  We used them the same way you'd use cold bacon:  salads, burgers and sandwiches.

But the lard itself will be used to make pie crust, a topic on which we'll post shortly.

Eating less meat: a how-to.

One of my favorite contributors to the New York Times' Wednesday Food Section is Mark Bittman.  A few weeks ago, he wrote a great feature on eating less meat.  The recipes in the article aren't particularly special, but his ideas on meat's place or priority in cooking are worth the price of admission.  For example, he points out:

"Remember that most traditional styles of cooking use meat as a condiment or a treat...meat is seen as a treasure, not as something to be gobbled up as if it were air." 

Since reading the article, we've been using the meat-as-condiment "lens" for nearly every meal we've made at home.  What's so interesting are the places to which this perspective leads you -- the ingredients are the same/familiar, but he ratios have shifted or are upside-down. 

Shopping the farmers markets, we've been picking swiss chard, bitter greens, zucchini and beans as the center of the plate, and we've built up from there.  Early summer vegtables like these are transformed with small (teeny!) amounts bacon, prosciutto, lamb, or grass-fed beef.  Citrus, nuts, raisins, and aromatics (onion, mint, garlic, cilantro) have also been playing a role.  Pino Luongo's Simply Tuscan has been huge source of flavor ideas and techniques.

The perspective that Mark Bittman outlines seems big; it's almost as if the forces that could drive a genuine shift in meat consumption -- price inflation, short and long term health risks, environmental concerns, ethical issues -- are gathering, forming a perfect storm.  His article is a sign that its edging its way into the mainstream...or at least a sub-stream. 

This will be interesting to watch.