Blame it on Rioja

. . . Without the Slaughter

By Taylor Cocalis

The second installment of Taylor’s dispatch of a piglet’s dispatch in the mountains of Ecuador, in which the animal meets its maker.

Halfway through the week, Berta, the woman running the dairy farm in Ecuador where I was fortunate enough to have found myself staying, informed us that they would be killing one of the piglets (age: 3 months) in our honor. I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone using that phrase in reference to an upcoming meal, but it seemed to merit gratitude, as well as anticipation of what was to come. She asked if we wanted to see the slaughter, and I thought it only appropriate that if we were going to eat the piglet, we should at least honor the creature at its death.

Now, we had already established some measure of intimacy with the pig. Although we hadn’t exactly rolled around in the pen with it, during each meal we would prepare a bucket of our scraps . . . crab shells, whey from cheesemaking, and the peels and pulp of the fruit that we juiced each morning . . . on which the pig could feast. So in a sense we had shared some meals together. Soon the animal would become our week’s most memorable meal.

The morning of the slaughter we awoke a few hours earlier than usual and rushed up to the barn when Berta indicated they were ready. I came prepared for some pomp and circumstance, but what we witnessed was swift and only slightly painful (for us and, more so, for the poor pig). Within 30 seconds of our arrival, Alvaro (Berta’s husband) punctured the pig directly under it’s left foreleg with a six-inch kitchen knife (for the record, I think an 8-inch knife would have more effectively reached the pig’s heart for a slightly quicker and less painful departure).

These next two minutes were the hardest to watch, as the bright blood dripped down the pig’s chest, in stark contrast with its white skin. But the shrieking squeals soon subsided as the pig was laid to rest. Within a few minutes, the farm hands had transported the pig to a wheelbarrow where they poured scalding hot water over its body in order to loosen the hair for removal. Their hands poured over the pig’s skin as they removed its hair by hand (for the record one of the farm hands did pull out a pink plastic Lady Bic razor further along in the process to ensure that there were no extraneous hairs left behind).

We then watched how, in a matter of minutes, they opened the pig up to remove the contents of it’s body, all saved to be used at a later date (”No, we would never let these good parts go to waste,” Berta assured us). My jaw dropped as the intestines literally poured out of the pig’s body, and I wondered how it all could have possibly fit in its belly just a few minutes before.

The whole process, start to finish, took a swift 30 minutes (perhaps Rachel Ray should do a special slaughtering episode), at which point they took the prepared piglet off to the tiny town of Pintag where a friend of the farm had an oven large enough to roast the whole pig at once.

Taylor Cocalis manages Murray’s Cheese Course at Murray’s Cheese Shop in New York City and should not be blamed for the death of this small animal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 11:16 am and is filed under General, Pork. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.