Imagine a golden pile of crispy chicken McNuggets - innocuously cradled inside their colorful cardboard packaging. For many Americans that is the definition of good wholesome food. It's like the Disney Movie of the dining world - free of sex and violence - clean wholesome fun for the entire family.
Now take a look at the picture........ What kind of sick individual would contrive such a thing?
In actuality - when you get past the media fueled hype of what good food is- you begin to realize that this picture represents a far more humane and sustainable dining culture.
Devil's Gulch Pig- The skull in this picture started out as a sixty pound pig. It spent its days wandering freely between grapevines and orchards along the Sonoma coast. When it's time came it was taken to a small local butcher where it was killed, cleaned and shipped.
The first day we removed the pig's head and made a roulade- or Porchetta out of the entire body. We seasoned the meat with dried fruits and fresh herbs before slowly roasting it in the oven until the skin became crisp and translucent.
We took the trotters and bones from the pig and used them to enhance our stock- gradually extracting the gelatin to give our demiglace a velvety smooth consistency.
Finally we boiled the head with spices and made a terrine from the brain, ears and cheek meat. While our customer's aren't fond of this preparation- our kitchen staff enjoyed it with grilled garlic bread and grain mustard.
By the end of the week all that was left was the pig's skull - picked clean- just like nature intended.
Duck- Take a good look at the duck head in the picture. You will notice how the eye appears to look at you and the yellow around the beak is still vibrant. It looks like the duck could almost be alive. If you get beyond the sentiment and emotions it is easy to understand that while it may be uncomfortable to look at a whole duck like this- you can at least tell that it led a decent life. Sure a package of ambiguous duck breasts might be easier for the average cook to stomach- but merely being presented out of context doesn't change the reality of where they came from. At least when you get the whole animal you can determine to some extent the way it was treated. When I look at this duck I would like to believe that it had a happy and humane life before it made its way into my kitchen.
There is nothing quite like cooking a whole animal. I don't mean a chicken that you get at your local grocery, I'm talking about an animal that looks back at you when you open the box. When you come face to face with an animal you can't help but acknowledge the sacrifice that goes into the food we eat. Every item that we consume, whether it be a soy bean hidden within some processed food or a duck breast at a fine dining restaurant, has a history. Simply failing to acknowledge that history or its implications do not make us exempt from the consequences that result from our dining habits.
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