It’s all about the Pig

 

The delicious irony of Cochon 555 is it’s mission is to preserve heritage-bred pigs by way of eating them. Founder Brady Lowe, whose background is in marketing and eventually led to food and wine then to the niche of pork, professes that the only way to preserve these pure bred hogs and sows is to create a demand for them. Anyone who ever tastes one will feel the demand for more immediately. This is pork unlike any other I’ve had, and I mean that in the best possible way.

So what are heritage pigs? Well, as I stated, they are delicious. More specifically, they are pigs who come from bloodlines going back generations to a time when farmers raised livestock on the free range. The breeds developed traits based on the farmers practices and names were applied like Berkshire, Gloucestershire Old Spot, Mangalitsa, Tamworth, Red Wattle, Mulefoot, Guinea Hog, Ossabaw Island Hog, Hereford, Duroc, Hampshire, Lacombe, Iberian, Chester White, Saddleback, Yorkshire, European Wild, Poland White, Large White and Large Black.
Heritage pigs don’t come from an industrial pig farm. These pigs are livestock, not a commodity.
The pork they yielded is perfection, I promise.

The best thing consumers can do is ask for heritage pigs. Ask your grocer or butcher if he/she carries these pigs. If they don’t, ask them to start. Demand is the key to keeping this practice alive.
For more information, go here.

Now, as for the night of April 3, what a beautiful succession of interpretations. Winner Scott Romano of Charlie Palmer at the Joule in Dallas was first to deliver and his offerings stuck to the imagination over four competitors to take a narrow victory over my personal favorite, that of the the Big Kahuna himself, Kurt Fleischfresser. On my scored card, Scott got 14 out of a possible 15 while Kurt scored perfection. The difference to me was I found no missteps on Kurt’s menu while Scott’s two desserts were only good and fair. I did give Scott credit for creating desserts.  I also loved that’s Kurt’s menu was technically precise both from preparation to presentation. Both chefs showed advanced skills, drawing from all over the culinary map for inspiration. But Kurts presentation was symmetric. Each portion was the same size, aside from the inspired pork rillette porkcicle, which was served on a separate dish.

The other difference for me was that in the 38 samples I tried, Fleishfresser had 3 of the top 5 for me with the rillete, his Quail Egg Benedict was second. My favorite bite was Kahuna’s pork belly with cherry gastrique. After that, was Shepard’s pork belly on a turbinado stick, then Romano porchetta.

Curt Herrmann of Tulsa’s White Owl offered Mexico on a plate, but the results didn’t elevate the dishes. Rather, they were fairly standard interpretations. Tasty but perhaps too reverential and not creative enough for a competition of this ilk.

Here’s hoping we can draw Cochon 555 back to Oklahoma in the future. If we do, do not miss it. Were you at Cochon 555? Let me know what your favorites were.

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