Pig-Tales III: Trial by Fire

Many tales have been told,
Now before you go to cook, eat and make love
Here is a tale of caution
For all intrepid cooks.

The first time was as tension fraught as a primeval hunt. I felt like primitive man crashing his way through a hot and steaming jungle in hot pursuit of his prey – in this case – a wild boar.

Armed with my shiny meat cleaver, it was me on one side and the pile of raw pork belly on the other. The dead pig looked as if it was going to jump out of my colander at any moment and all the chunky pieces would piece themselves together into a ghastly reconstruction of its former self. Terrified by my own flights of fancy, I could imagine this monster pig suspended five feet above the ground, at eye level with me, carrying with it the memory of its recent murder as well as a millenia of stored vengeance.

At that particular moment, I felt as if the burden of the worlds' crimes against this animal rested squarely on my frail shoulders. I stopped short in my tracks. I turned and fled from the kitchen. That, was the first attempt.

Five minutes later, I calmed myself down sufficiently, uttered a little war cry and entered the kitchen again, waving the cleaver in front of me like a holy talisman.

The pork belly lay washed, pink and gleaming in the humidity of the summer evening.

My blueprint for the meal lay spread out in uneven piles of recipes.  A vindaloo and a pork roast with gooseberry sauce jostled for space on my tiny table. I walked towards the sink in slow motion. The whirring blades of the fan blew scraps of paper all around me with pork emblazoned on them in different fonts.

I chose to be ambitious. It was gooseberry season and the vendors had appeared at street corners with baskets of the succulent golden yellow fruit screaming "rasbarry rasbarry" . Hailing from a tropical climate I had never really seen a fresh raspberry. My younger and naiver self actually thought that these orange fruits might metamorphose into the beautiful pinkish red drupelets that were the stuff of English tea parties and European cupcakes.
When I finally discovered that these were an entirely different species, I just scoffed at the vendors for getting the taxonomy of berries completely wrong. I thought that they were just using the more exotic name to trick people into buying the raspberry's relatively plainer country cousin. That was before I had ever tasted a gooseberry.

Many summers later when I finally tried this fruit, I was in love. One bite caused a whole explosion of flavours in my mouth. There was a sharp tartness mixed with a sweet undertone and a lovely musky smell. It was around this time that I also realized that what the fruit seller was screaming was not a vernacular variant of raspberry but the perfectly correct "rasbhari", an apt and evocative term for this juicy fruit that remains quite underrated.
My memories of this fruit had stayed in storage till I decided to cook my first pork dish. In a flash of what I thought was sheer genius, I imagined delicious chunks of well cooked meat with a tangy and spicy gooseberry sauce. I imagined fame and accolades at the prospect of this award winning combination, only to come back to earth after Google informed me about dozens of roast pork recipes with myriad gooseberry sauces, relish, preserves, toppings, and jellies.

A Recipe for Disaster.

Step One:
I was on my knees scraping off a fragrant gooseberry paste infused with an especially piquant, freshly ground red chilly powder from South India, fresh basil and some lovely balsamic vinegar from my cream coloured walls. I had shifted the mixer to my dining table in the living room and somewhere in transit the cap had come loose and well, you know the rest. There was an explosion of gooseberries over my table, my walls, my lamp and my pretty summer dress (it was supposed to be a romantic dinner with the husband).
I managed to rescue 45 percent of my gooseberry sauce.

Step Two:
90 minutes later the top layer of the fat pieces of pork had turned a strange dark brown while the bottom remained a pasty raw pink. My oven was emitting strange sounds as the metal expanded and contracted but the pork refused to cook.  The husband was home by now. Hungry and harassed. The pork was light years away from edibility.
Fried pork could somewhat mimic a roast. Assuming that it could at least finish up the job, I quickly transferred the meat to the frying pan.
I was inspired by an unforgettable pork dinner at this quaint Korean restaurant called Gung.
The pretty girls serving us were from the Northeast, dressed up to look like Korean belles. No knowledge of English and fantastic sign language abilities helped perpetuate the illusion.
One of them came to our table with a portable gas stove, a few pieces of garlic, a handful of mushrooms, and some lovely pork belly which she then proceeded to cook with such skill and speed, that in precisely 7 minutes, we were consuming the softest and most delicious pieces of meat wrapped in tender lettuce and dunked in sauces of our choices.
While that was a dream meal, my own pork looked increasingly like a distant mirage.
My memories of the Gung pork assumed mythical proportions and my tired self began to envision the pretty fake Korean girl gliding through a vast, arid plain carrying a samurai weapon in one hand and a huge dish of the pork belly in the other, conquering all the lands she walked through.

Frying pork in a non stick pan in lukewarm oil is a dangerous idea.
I dropped the pork in and the oil jumped out of the pan and attacked me with the sharp sting of a desert scorpion.
I bounded out of the kitchen like a whipped whelp and made my way into a dark corner to nurse my wounds. However, time and frying pork wait for none and soon I could smell, the terrible smell of scorched meat.
I ran back in to see the pan smoking.
At the speed of lightening, I flipped the pieces that were still unstuck to the pan on to a plate.
I managed to rescue 60 percent of the roast/fried pork.


Step Three:
The twice-cooked pork still remained inedible. I was a second away from taking the half-done meat, tearing it apart with my bare hands and throwing it to the neighborhood dogs.
The meat sat in the pan raw, rubbery and stubbornly refusing to yield to my prodding fork.
Some false hope bubbled through me as I spotted the pressure cooker from the corner of my eye.
I dunked the pork into the water in the cooker, added some fresh herbs, a dash of salt and pepper and fixed the lid.
Hunger often makes you do terrible things. My hunger usually yielded a vindictive self torture mechanism. I was thinking up the best pork curry, I had eaten, Lightly seasoned, flavoured with typically local herbs, shoots, leaves and the fieriest chilli in the world, the Naga Pork Curry with Raja mirchi simmered on the fire till the all the different ingredients diffused into each other and then opened up in your mouth clearing the last clogged sinus in your body.

My eyes glazed over and I had teleported myself into the colourful food stalls of Delhi Haat, when my nose began to twitch. The by now familiar smell of scorched meat filled my kitchen. Cooking in a pressure cooker with inadequate water and the flame on high, is always a bad idea. Today, it was the final nail in the coffin. I yanked the lid open to find ashes.
I managed to rescue 10 percent of the roast/fried/boiled pork.

Time: 1:00 am.
Background score: The constant ticking of the clock gradually growing louder and ominous electronic music by the Flaming Lips.
The scene: The candle had nearly burnt to the wick and the bottle of red wine was empty. The crockery and cutlery lay untouched. The kitchen looked like it had been hit by a tornado. There was an exhausted, greasy and drunk cook standing over the stove. A ravenous and drunk husband was standing behind her somehow managing to be supportive and egging her on to the finish line. The cook's hands moved furiously. Then the two of them stood hunched over what looked like a single plate emitting some kind of an unearthly glow.


There were precisely three pieces of pork, drizzled with a dark orange gooseberry sauce and nestled in a bed of crisp iceberg lettuce. Four herbed baby potatoes lightly roasted along with a slice of mandarin orange and a sprig of mint tried to cover up the empty spaces in the pristine white plate. The sheen of tender fat around the meat truly glowed with an otherworldly light.


I had started cooking at 9 pm. Four hours later 1 kg of pork had whittled down to fifty grams. The intended indulgence in gluttony ended up being an exercise in molecular gastronomy.


Four hours later, we settled down to our dinner tired, weary, drunk and miserable.


We sat with the plate between us and took our first mouthful almost simultaneously with our forks. A strange goofy smile spread across the husband's face and I looked up to see the same expression mirrored in his spectacles.
Roasted, fried and boiled, the pork melted away in our mouths with a slightly charred top. The gooseberry sauce was perfect and everything was as fresh, tiny and perfect as a newly unfurled leaf.


We went to bed wondering why some of the best things in the world came in extra small sizes. 

Postscript:
I still struggle with pork. Maybe I shall write a fourth pig-tale when I win this battle.

Pig-Tales II: Initiation

Pig (noun): An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.

Edible (adjective): 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.  

from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

The pig has remained a curious creature, wallowing in the no man's land between the sacred and profane. On the one hand the pig and the swineherd have St. Anthony as their patron saint. The same religious canon declared the pig as unfit for consumption in Book of Deuteronomy which laid down acceptable food habits for the people of Israel. Confusing contradictions seem to have coloured this animal's often tragic and bloody history. 

Early Chinese dragons had faces resembling those of wild boars. Pigs were symbols of the fertility in Celtic mythology with the sow goddess Henwen. Pigs were associated with the worship of Demeter and ritually sacrificed at her altar. The Egyptians feared the pig as a creature of the underworld. The chosen sacrifice for Thoth, God of Wisdom and the Moon and Osiris, God of the Afterlife, this animal became associated with the gods on whose altars its blood was spilled. Nuit, Goddess of Night was often represented as a sow.

Why did the sacrificial lamb become the greater icon? Why did 'scaping' the goat become the practice rather than the pig? After all the pig did carry the greater burden of the sin of human gluttony since the beginning of time.

As a religious icon and the favourite sacrificial animal,  the history of the pig remains one that has bloodied the annals of time. 

However, like all transitions from the sacred to the profane, the pig as a lesser deity vaulted its way through the multi-hued warps of time and space and fell from the skies right on to cold steel tables of "Porkopolis" Cincinnati around the early 19th century. 

Demystified and far away from the inner precincts of any temple, the pig now appeared on labels stuck on cans of luncheon meat and cocktail sausages.    

Meanwhile, my own history with pork was yet to be written.

On a hot summer day in Delhi circa 2004, I visited a shop that would help heal my tapeworm-ringed nightmares forever. 

It was a particularly lazy and aimless afternoons just after classes had ended. Impending boredom made me accompany my environmentally conscious, vegetarian, conservationist friend on his jaunt around the city running errands for his mum. It was slightly ironic that his chores included buying the family's weekly supply of meat. The journey through the city wound its way through my friend's shopping list, with stops for dog food, laundry and other sundry domestic items. 

Finally, we reached a little shop tucked away in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood in Jorbagh. This was an elegant neighborhood, home to little blue-eyed American babies on their tricycles; tall German sophisticates with little dogs in their handbags; grey-haired Indian writers taking an occasional walk in the neighborhood park, chewing on the end of their cigars.

It was a charming market selling carpets, books, cheese and pork. Lots and lots of pork. One could miss the little shop altogether if you didnt stop to actually peer in. The door swung open and I was inside Pigpo. 
I remember thinking that "Po" seemed the perfect oriental suffix to be tacked on to the pig. 

This is the shop that brought the western concept of a charcuterie and a deli into the culinary vocabulary of this city. No butcher shop I knew was this inviting. All the whispers of "dirty animal" in my head got left outside Pigpo's door. All the fears of tapeworm somehow got exorcised the moment I entered. 
The clear glass shop windows overlooked a pretty children's park with animal shaped swings and slides. Nestled in between a eclectic stationary store and a quaint furniture shop, Pigpo like its grand old neighbours reeked of character. 
The room inside had gigantic freezers, cool marble table tops and warm woodwork on the walls. Woodwork in a meat shop! The only wood I had ever seen a meat shop before this, was the roughly hewn stump of a tree that was used as the butcher's chopping block.

While my friend buried his nose in the shopping list and tried to avoid making any kind of eye or body contact with anything in the shop, I simply soaked it all in. My pork-starved self was suddenly in pork paradise. Every imaginable cut of the meat, sausages of various shapes, sizes and flavour, salami, ham, frankfurters, pepperoni, was laid out in all its nude glory.

 

Always overcome by a slight wave of nausea upon entering a meat shop with its cloying odour, its flies and my proximity to the chopping board, this was the first shop that didn't overpower me with its raw smell of death. A big framed picture on the wall had a fat porker drawn on it with arrows pointing to the different parts of its body and the corresponding cuts it would yield. It was a big picture chart designed to catch your attention. I stared at it with all the wonder of a ten year old entering the science lab and viewing the human skeleton for the first time.

This was the first time a meat shop made me feel hungry. I wanted big bagfuls of all the goodies.
I felt like a child in a sweet shop where I was only allowed to look and smell. I remember leaving
empty handed that day but Pigpo remained a firmly embedded memory. 

It was a cold and bright winter day in Delhi circa 2008, when I returned to the shop. Christmas was around the corner and I wanted to replicate just a little bit of mother's grand Christmas lunch that had been an enduring family tradition back in Calcutta. Armed with a good old-fashioned recipes from Julia Child and other stalwarts and dreaming about honey glazed ham and sausage stuffing, I entered Pigpo.

However, I braced myself for the now familiar disappointment that I had faced upon returning to this city since my college days. I had seen the slow death of favourite corner stores, standalone bookshops, age-old restaurants and movie theaters as the malls overran Delhi. We had become a generation of mall rats scurrying through bright glass and chrome corridors. 

Nothing had changed. The shop stood frozen in time gathering its unique character and serving dilliwallahs quality fresh pork that completely surpassed its frozen cling-film wrapped counterparts in swanky department stores. These icy cuts of tenderloin and pork chops looked like alien body parts that had lain frozen for centuries in deep underground vaults in secret locations in the middle of a desert. Or, they could be a potential murder weapon for a neurotic wife. They were so far removed from Pigpo's  fresh and tender pork that they disappeared from my horizon of fresh meat altogether.

   

Pigpo's display made my eyes light up with joy. The prospect of those fat and fresh sausages, chunky cuts of healthy pink meat edged by layers of snow-white fat, succulent bits of tenderloin, elegant strips of lean pork, gigantic pork chops, peppered salami, twice cured salami, incredibly plump bacon wrapped sausages, honey-glazed ham during Christmas and much much more made my brain go into overdrive. I did a mental flip across the pages of my cookbooks skimming over the the vindaloos, the brandied pork chops, the pork roast, and other exotic half remembered names and leaving a dribble of spit on my imagined flight across the glossy delectable photographs accompanying the recipes. 
I felt like a star chef in a Corsican village market waxing eloquent about the freshness and quality of the meat. This time I did leave with an armful of goodies. 

Since then I have returned to this shop many a time.

The men behind the counter are fast with their blades. They handle the meat lovingly carving the fatty layers into gourmet cuts with a few deft motions and occasional flashes of steel. They are quick with advice and even quicker at closing a an exceptionally large order, especially one that you did not plan to buy.

There is one particular man behind the counter who is a permanent fixture here. He is a nondescript man of indeterminable age. He offers advice about the best cuts for a curry or roast. Shares trivia. Sometimes scoffs at you if your purchase doesn't meet his rather exacting standards. 

He claims that he is as old as the shop. Since I can never quite guess his age, I don't know exactly how old Pigpo is. What I do know is that it has survived the turning tides of time.