Fine Swine
Fatty Crab's pig has taste. (all photos by Side Dish)
Cochon555, held this past Sunday at Hiro Ballroom in NYC and hitting other major cities on both coasts—Portland March 1, Seattle March 8, Boston April 5, D.C. May 31 and San Fran June 7—, manages to be just about the most exciting live festival going. It’s like an ATP for pork. In cased you missed the hoopla, the series goes like this: Five local chefs meet five heritage pigs and prepare them every which way. Throw in five winemakers for a night of pork-filled madness verging on a porcine version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
Chefs Mark Ladner (Del Posto), Corwin Kaye (Fatty Crab), Bobby Hellen (Resto), Juan Jose Cueves (EighyOne) and Michael Clampffer (Mosefund Farm) made the most out of their 70-plus-pound pigs, concocting everything from whipped lard to “innard and head cheese” paté to cracklins. Yes, pulled pork sandwiches wrapped in foil flew through the air like end zone screen passes, landing in the hands of happy guests, and yes, the evening was capped off with bowls of popcorn that had been dipped in chocolate-covered bacon (yes, it was good). Fatty Crab took home top honors (based on a combination of the 20 judges’ decisions and audience votes) and Corwin Kave was handed some sort of gold statuette. He said something, too, but god knows what it was; he and his team, including Zak Pelaccio, had been guzzling PBR all night (a Pabst can adorned their Six-spotted Birkshire from Newman Farms; which, if you’re interested, is one of Britain’s oldest pig breeds and is an early-maturing black pig that produces a rich creamy meat with a hint of nuttiness — yes, it was all sort of like a contest Lord Emsworth might have been involved in, except at the end of instead of weighing the fatted pigs they eat them.) Fatty Crab’s pulled pork was the stuff dreams are made of, but Chef Juan Jose Cuevas of EightyOne deserves some sort of honorable mention for the pork meatball with a side of tripe he plated for the masses. (Cuevas worked with a Red Wattle from Holthaus farms, which is, of course, so named for it’s ruddy color and the wattles that hang from its chin. It should be noted that the breed is one of the most at risk in the US. It should also be noted that it’s delicious.)
photos after the jump.
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[...] 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 [...]
Handicapping the odds on chefs competing at Cochon 556 New York | The Butcher Blog added these pithy words on Feb 20 10 at 1:00 pm
