THE COLOMBIAN EXCHANGE: THE PIG

About the pig as food—about pork—many sayings have been said, and phrases turned well.

“The only thing you cannot eat of the pig is its squeak,” goes the most common. The origin of the international cooking and restaurant movement called “nose-to-tail eating” is the hog. There is, too, the door-slam definition of the word “edible” from Ambrose Bierce: “Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.”

The pig that we eat, Sus scrofa domesticus, evolved 8,000 or so years ago out of the wild boar of the Fertile Crescent and southwestern Asia, an area in which nowadays, intriguingly, it is largely shunned.

But the pig that we eat is new to the New World, having piggy-backed (sorry) on only the second of the sailings to Hispaniola of Christopher Columbus in 1493, and later coming to what is now the United States via Spain and Hernando de Soto in 1539.

The English, particularly John Smith, ramped up the colonial pig population at Jamestown in the early 1600s and off—and offal—we were. As such, Sus scrofa is part of the Colombian Exchange, the discovery in the New World of foods from the Old, and vice versa.

Unlike the dog, about which you could argue we domesticated it (from the wolf), I like to think that the pig domesticated us.

There we were, with our woods full of nuts and our piles full of garbage and our larders empty of lard, and the wild boar—the quintessential opportunistic omnivore—said to itself, and us, “Nice. Don’t mind if we do. We’ll eat for a while, thanks, and then you can just take some of us for yourselves.”

It has been a good relationship. Not only did the pig prove to be the village’s best disposer of waste, it also became the farmer’s great hedge against the uncertainty of crop failure, and all (meat) eaters’ store of surplus. We treat it so up to today, if even in scabrously industrial mode.

Everyone all over the globe, if an eater of meat and released of religion, loves pork. The fat does the trick, of course, but so too do the huge diversity of cut, and a unique and unmatched amenability to so many different methods of fire and amendments of flavor (from the German’s caraway, to the Frenchman’s apple, to the Italian’s fennel, the Jamaican’s jerk, the Mexican’s cumin, the American’s smoke—endless turns).

No other kitchen protein enjoys such affinity to that culinary mainstay, salt. It is true of the meat from the animal that, when cooked, it is like the animal itself, an omnivore, consuming and turning into deliciousness nearly anything stored in the pantry, on the cupboard, or from the cooler or cellar: cabbages, onions and garlic, all the greens, the fungi, spuds, any pulse or bean, all manner of fruit (pineapple!), any herb or seed—truly, nearly anything edible tastes better with pork (as the pork tastes better with it), cooked with pork, adorned with pork.

And, so, we have bacon ice cream. Quite reasonable.

I offer no admonitions on cooking it other than to encourage you, the cook, to purchase it from those who have beforehand raised it with care, as a fellow creature along the eater’s way (the way we treated each other, we and the pig, for centuries, until the modern age). Such producers are rare these days, but available.

And to care for it in the kitchen once taken home. Pork is both simply misunderstood and easily maligned when subject to heat. The proper temperature to which to take it? Decide for yourselves; you’re adults, not Babes.

RECIPE: Goose Sorensen’s Pork Loin
Longtime Denver chef Christian “Goose” Sorensen says that you may use either a boneless pork loin or a pork tenderloin or 2 for this recipe. Serves 12 (if using a large boneless loin)

Ingredients
1 pork loin
Dry rub (see recipe)
6 slices thick-cut bacon, roughly chopped
1 rope dry-cured chorizo, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
2 tablespoons regular paprika
2 tablespoons cumin powder
8 quarts of chicken or pork stock
2 cans drained and strained white beans
Achiote packed red onions (see recipe)

Directions
Rub the pork loin all over with the dry rub.

In a large stockpot, over medium-high heat, render the bacon and chorizo; add the onions and garlic and sweat them together, 4-5 minutes. Add the spices and sweat them with all that, 2-3 minutes more. Add the chicken or pork stock and bring to a boil, lower heat then simmer for an hour.

Add the white beans to the liquid mixture and, if need be, add some cornstarch slurry to slightly thicken and adjust for chile heat and salt and pepper. Meanwhile, grill the pork to medium-rare or medium, as desired; let rest and slice into serving pieces.

To serve: Put beans on plate, pork on top of beans, and achiote-packed red onions on top of that.

Dry rub
Makes a little less than 2 cups; stores well.

Ingredients
1/3 cup dark chile powder
1/4 cup kosher or sea salt
1/4 cup ground black pepper
2 tablespoons cumin powder
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Achiote packed red onions
1 red onion, peeled and slivered

Boil 3 cups wine vinegar with 1 cup sugar and add 1/4 cup achiote paste and 1 cup orange juice, stirring until sugar is dissolved. In a sealable vessel, pour over the cut onions. Put lid on vessel and let steep for at least 3 hours.