Feral Pig Ravioli

After going many years without tasting pork at all (I refuse to eat factory-farmed pork for ethical reasons), its been nice to have some wild pig meat to experiment with. We're gradually eating our way through a pig that my father-in-law, Bob Smith, killed on a recent hunt in Georgia. I didn't bag a pig of my own on that trip with Kiera Butler of Mother Jones magazine, but I did get to butcher Bob's pig. Call me crazy, but I really enjoy the butchering process and learning about the anatomy of different animals while taking some pride in doing the best job I can of turning them into food.

Our latest wild pork experiment has been with ravioli. It turned out really well. We used this recipe for the dough. The béchamel sauce was based on this recipe, but we nixed the clove and added half a cup of white wine.

The filling that we came up with contained:

1/2 lb of minced wild pork
2 tablespoons of fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cup of freshly grated ricotta
1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan

The pig that I butchered for this was on the younger side. It weighed probably around 70 pounds, making it much smaller than most pigs at the time of slaughter in commercial pig production. The meat is all very tender. Though it was a male, there was no trace of 'boar taint' in an animal that was probably between four and six months of age. It was unfortunately too small and lean to get any bacon out of. I approached the butchering in a fashion almost identical to how I butcher a deer, with the exception of having sawed out the ribs for barbeque.

Please excuse the light posting of late. In the first place, I am in the middle of moving house. In the second place, I am working on the income of a subsistence hunter. Which is to say that I am desperately trying to pay for health insurance and groceries while planning my next expedition to hunt, kill and eat interesting things. The worrying consumes a remarkable amount of time that seems to detract from writing.

Last night we ate a dinner of pork backstrap cooked with peaches, butter and thyme for dinner. It was from a pig that I brought back from a recent hunt in Georgia and butchered. It occurred to me while eating it that I have never eaten any species of critter, whatsoever, that wasn't good.

Literally. Everything tastes good. Iguanas, lionfish, snails, mussels, deer, wild pigs, bluegill, starlings, doves, wild turkey, armadillos, elk, both red and gray squirrels, turtles, smelts, spiny lobsters, conchs, rabbits, and everything else. I have eaten all of those things in the last year or two and all of them can be hunted and eaten in North America.

All of it is good to eat. While I have many creatures left on my list of things to eat, I feel that I have hunted and eaten -- and usually also killed and butchered -- enough critters to be qualified to say that pretty much everything that moves is good to eat. It is really just a question of exactly how one butchers and cooks it. Handle any dead thing properly and and it will make a capital dinner.

While I am going about the travel required to finish 'Eating Aliens' (which is now under contract with Storey Publishing), I am making a point of seeking out native small game along the way. Porcupines and gophers and snapping turtles and so forth. Very quietly I have been gathering material and writing chapters for a book on small game for the past year or so. As I crisscross the United States to finish 'Eating Aliens' I hope to also put in the field hours necessary to write and publish the definitive guide to hunting, butchering and cooking small game in North America.

My deer book will be launched this September and 'Eating Aliens' will follow. Both of these are very important books, I think. My guide to small game will hopefully be equally important. I hope to inspire people who have never hunted or fished for food before in their lives to pick up the necessary tools and take up hunting for their own local food in their own backyards.

If anyone has any suggestions for species that ought to be included in a book of North American small game, I would love to hear about it. For this project, the species can be native or invasive. It just has to be present in North America, not endangered, and edible. But of course everything is edible...

A Philosophy of Butchery

During a two day class that I was teaching this past weekend I noticed that I seemed to be teaching quartering and butchering differently than I used to. When I first started teaching I gave a great many very specific instructions about how to cut this piece or that piece and I was very fussy about the finer points of it all.

Some students had a hard time remembering it all. Through course after course and various butchering demonstrations I have performed outside of a formal class setting, I have come to settle on a much simpler way of approaching and explaining the task of butchery. There are a very few simple rules that you can follow which will see you successfully through the butchering of probably any medium-sized quadruped. All of this assumes that you are working with a sharp knife as your only tool.

Work from the bottom (as in the belly side) of the animal upwards. Hacking at the quarters from the tops of the shoulders and hindquarters will be more work and result in less attractive-looking meat.

Always endeavor to cut close to the bone. Straying from the bones means wasted meat.

Long, smooth strokes are better than many short slices. A long stroke with the knife will produce a smooth and continuous surface on the meat. If you make many little cuts to accomplish the same thing then you will find ragged edges on the meat. Those ragged edges will form an uneven rind if aged; cooking unevenly and generally wasting meat in any event.

Carve your steaks and medallions against the grain of the meat. This makes the meal easier to cut on one's plate.

If you follow these simple guidelines then you will do a good job of butchering. Sure, there are many other little things to know about the finer points of the anatomy of any animal that you are turning into food. You will notice these finer points as you work and then you'll do an even better job with the next one.