“Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell walked a giant of a man that the miner’s knew well.” –Jimmy Dean, “Big Bad John”

This year the battle moves to Pier 60, from its surprisingly comfy home at Hiro ballroom, where last January Fatty Crab’s Corwin Kave took top honors. This time around he’ll be fighting under the Fatty ‘Cue mantle — and the restaurant may even be open by the time the competition comes around this year.

Kave will have his work cut out for him in defending his “Prince of Porc” title: The competition is fierce and this will be a contest to be watched. The winner of each Cochon is chosen by a panel of 20 judges, with a separate people’s choice winner determined by popular vote (which, in our opinion, allows chefs to stack the judges’ plates and save the most daring constructions for them, though most abide by gentleman’s rules of conduct and strive for equal representation on both sides of the table). The winner will go on to compete in the Grand Cochon against the winners from other cites.

This is the toughest field of chefs we’ve ever seen at a Cochon. There are a lot intangibles at play, though. The winner is not always the one with the most stars, or the best knife skills, or most time spent playing in the mud at farms. Herewith, the Butcher handicaps the odds on this year’s Cochon New York.

Corwin Kave, Fatty ‘Cue
Kave has his title on the line here and will bring all he’s got. The Fatty team is behind him as evidenced by the crew proffering the Tiger Special (Tiger beer, shot of whiskey, shot of pickle juice) to those who show support for their chef in the Cochon. Fatty ‘Cue has been in development for what seems like forever, so Kave has had his fair share of practice on the whole hog — what amounts to a solid year of training (and word is it’s paid off) — all of which gives him an excellent shot at repeating.
Odds: 3-1

Mark Ladner, Del Posto
Ladner is making a return trip to the Cochon and was barely edged out last year by Kave in a tightly contested battle for porc prowess. He must have been itching for a rematch after seeing the burly Crab crew take the stage last year, PBR cans in hand. The refined and reserved Ladner somehow made his bones in Batali kitchens, so he surely brings an interesting mix of brass and artistry to his work. As reserved as Ladner seems on the outside, he also has an edge to him. The fires of revenge, coupled with his kitchen craftmanship, could put him over the top.
Odds: 5-1

Adam Kaye, Blue Hill at Stone Barns
We must preface this by saying that Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns is one of our favorite restaurants and one of a very few reasons we can find to go up to Westchester. Kaye, who comes from a long line of butchers — his great-grandfather was a butcher and his grandfather ran a butcher-supply shop — began working in the kitchen at Stone Barns 10 years ago as the “meat cook” and worked his way up to chef. A lot depends on what pig he’s assigned (this has not yet been determined), as he’s most familiar with working with the Stone Barns house-raised Berkshire. If he pulls the Berkshire it could be a walk.
Odds: 5-2

Gavin Kaysen, Café Boulud
We’re not sure about this one, to be honest with you. For starters, Kaysen has been on television, which is a little suspicious. And he told Food & Wine, in his 2007 “Best New Chefs” interview, that spoons, his favorite kitchen tool, are “like the ultra-utility knife.” Hmm. It’s hard to believe that a man who came to fame as a chef at El Bizcocho, a restaurant in a golf resort and spa in California (the land of fruits and nuts) and thinks that spoons are like knives stands much of a chance of prevailing here. Though he certainly has the chops and could pull off an upset.
Odds: 10-1

“Have you dreamed of being published in print? Want to see your writing in a book?”

And with that, we lost our lunch.

We are all for “blogs to books,” or blooks as they are somewhat annoyingly called. We see the impulse-buy nirvana of “This is Why Your Fat” and even think there is a place for the best online food writing to be curated and published, but this contest — and they are calling it a contest — sounds like some ’50s-housewife-entering-a-radio-jingle-to-win-a-prize bullshit.

But really, what more can you expect from a website that willingly calls itself Foodista? Unless they are a liberation army of Nicaraguan rebel chefs they should change that name immediately.

The idea for the Foodista cookblook, apparently came out of a blog-to-books panel at Foodista’s International Food Blogger Conference (which we won’t even get into), and it should have stayed there.

So we now have a bunch of people ripping recipes out of cookbooks and cooking them, putting the recipes on their blogs, and now they are coming back into book form? No wonder publishing is dying.

Now we don’t judge. You can wear whatever strikes your fancy under your clothes. Perhaps you are a masochistic version of Ed Wood, who, played by Johnny Depp, loudly proclaimed, “I like to wear women’s clothes! Panties! Brassieres! Sweaters! Pumps!” and you are just itching (no pun intended) to get yourself a chain mail bra. And like the industrious Mr. Wood, why stop there?

Yes, chain mail panties are within your reach, big guy. And practical, too. In the Atlantic story where he introduced the tantalizing specter of the butcher bra, Tom Mylan also warned of the danger of genital mutilation being a job hazard.

They are a couple of ways you can go about this. You might want to make your own garb, for, you know, the sakes of privacy and propriety. There are some pretty thorough tutorials on how to make and assemble pieces of chain mail, but exactly how to turn them into lingerie is up to you. But be creative. Since the untimely passing of Alexander McQueen the fashion world is hungry for fresh talent.

However, you need not do it yourself. As we mentioned previously, German supplier of butcher equipment Stahlnetz makes about every article of clothing out of “chainmesh” you can imagine, and what they don’t have (aforementioned panties and brassieres) they are only too happy to custom make. (Just as the Stahlnetz man seems only too happy to demonstrate how his glove will work.)

Take it from the Stahlnetz man, and be “safe and comfortable from head-to-toe.”

In this video made by Liza at Food Curated, proprietor Jake Dickson outlines a few other good reasons to shop at his store. No. 1 probably being that he visits all the farms that he works with to ensure that they live up to his standards (which he outlines), and No. 2 probably being that he describes the taste difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef like he is a sommelier talking about the difference between two Riesling grapes.

Tune in next week when Dickson’s chef Gabe Ross makes terrine. (No, seriously.)

Well sort of, since the article that has captured our fancy exists only in online form, so we may not spread it out on the counter and drip our blood on it after we accidentally cut ourselves while attempting simultaneously to read its instruction and slice meat (the piece, incidentally, spends far more time on the former than it does on the latter).

We are speaking, of course, of “How to Wield a Knife” by Mr. Tom Mylan, published by the Atlantic online. Mylan’s method, which he pretty much sums up as “ways to horribly wound yourself,” is, like the renaissance in butchery he helped ignite, a basic-is-best approach.

Mylan is a deft writer, and the short piece, one part instruction, one part memoir, and two parts warning, is a must-read for anyone who has ever spent too much on a knife forged in Japan by the descendant of some ancient swordmaker out of a Tarrantino film, or who just wants learn new ways to slice off pieces of his or her thumb.

“I am an expert,”  writes Mylan. He is not, however, referring to butchery. This declaration follows the subhead “Cutting yourself.” In this section we learn one of the secrets to Mylan’s success: his butcher bra — a chainmail chest piece he wears while working that keeps major arteries safe from sharp blades. (You can get yours through Stahlnetz, a German manufacturer of all sorts of bizarre butcher equipment.) While this piece of equipment might be excessive for the average home cook, most of Mylan’s advice — self-effacing, informative yet not instructive — can be applied to your kitchen.

No doubt, the publication of this story will really piss off Julie Powell (who seems to feel she has some sense of ownership over Mylan, as if he were a  band she ‘discovered’ in high school that now all these assholes are listening to). But we are all for things that piss off Julie Powell, so please read it.

It was, however a valiant effort. As we said, the roasting of a lamb over a pit of flame (or in the case of Brooklyn, an improvised cinder block pit since you don’t want to dig in and disturb the toxic soil) is not easily done. The animal takes constant attention least it burn or dry out. A pig is pretty much the set-it-and-forget-it school of backyard cookery. The lamb is another matter. The butchery of the lamb is also another matter, and unlike the pig, a lamb needs to be skinned. Luckily there are places in Queens that have taken care of all this — and done it in accordance with Islamic law to boot.

The cooked lamb in this case was an impressive and commendable feat. Hours of careful preparation (and, may we add, some very judicious seasoning) net you what looks to all like a the charred remains of a dog on a table, a couple of racks of lamb still attached to their host (which it seems is what every backyard barbarian goes for first, tearing at the ribs to get to what they continually assure you is “the best part”), and a whole lot of people squeamishly attempting to slice what else they can off. This creates a bottle neck, and the Butcher can tell you, that what is really needed in these situations is someone with a sharp knife and modicum of expertise.

We could have said all these things, and not said anything about the fact that the word “hat” in the title of the article triggered a contextual ad for “hats for cancer patients.” (Do they really need special hats?) We could have done all of those things. And yet we didn’t. Because what fun would that have been?

That’s right. The New York Times, our newspaper of choice for cradling fish and chips or mopping up the seepage from a hanger steak (let’s see you do that with a Kindle), has declared that butchers are the hotness of the culinary universe.

Sure chefs are the rock stars, the paper reasons, but they are in the arena windmilling and grinding out cock rock, while the butcher, well, the butcher is in a back room bathed in blood, sulking and flexing his muscles. To hear the Times tell it, butchers are a cross between Danzig and Bright Eyes, while chefs (especially Daniel Boulud) are Def Lepard (and of course Mario Batali is Meat Loaf, but that’s too easy).

They even have this quote from a butcher groupie:

“Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”

The article (yet again, as if New York magazine wasn’t doing a good enough job of this already) lovingly caresses Marlow & Daughters butcher Tom Mylan, who the paper calls “broody” (maybe he’s Morrisey). But then the writer unearths Ryan Farr, of San Francisco, a, um, rather colorful butcher who calls himself a “producer of porcine pleasure”and gives cutting demonstrations, complete with cocktails. For $30, Farr followers can drink at a local bar while he butchers a pig (and soon, a lamb and a quarter of a steer). And then there’s this fantasy he has about Mylan, which we don’t know quite what to make of:

Mr. Farr has a dream. “I want to throw a 300-pound pig in the middle of a room full of people and just tag-team it with him,” he said. So far, Mr. Mylan hasn’t set a date.