Bay Area Chef Takes Down Some Swine
Thursday, May 28, 2009 | Updated 1:15 PM PDT
Nate Appelman and the boys get a little too friendly with their subject.
Magazine pieces that worship at the porcine altar are by no means novel concepts, but this month's edition of Men's Health assembles a rather impressive pantheon of chefs to explain—and show—how to dissemble and cook an entire pig. It's a pretty good read overall, and all the chefs get individual assignments to breakdown the 230-pound Berkshire pig from Pennsylvania.
Naturally, Nate Appleman, chef and owner of A16 and SPQR restaurants in San Francisco, takes the role of butcher and is tasked to break down the entire pig.
"We waste nothing," he tells the magazine. "Even the skin is stuffed with herbs and bread crumbs and braised."
While Wylie Dufresne, who runs the Manhattan restaurant wd-50, gets the loin ("It wouldn't be our first choice, but we'll make it work"), Lidia Bastianich ends up with the shanks/trotters, and so on.
"People love the loin because it's tender, but it doesn't have the flavor you find in the more-used muscles, like the ones around the trotters," Dufresne says.
Surrounding the print piece is a full "Eat Like a Man" guide with cameos by Bourdain, Colicchio, and (duh!) Gossip Girl's Jessica Szohr. Not from the story, but if you want to learn how to take down a pig yourself, in person, Ryan Farr's butchering class is underway right here in San Francisco.
