Nick Bergus

Death of a Pig on the radio

Sure it’s a couple months old, but I finally got a copy of The Exchange program on Iowa Public Radio I did with Jim Duncan and Ben Kieffer. It runs about 50 minutes and I make my first real appearance at the about the 15-minute mark.

I’d forgotten how hard it is to get depth on the radio — an hour just isn’t that long. But we had some great questions from callers, including one who thought it was ridiculous that I could kill a pig and write about it for a master’s degree. Slaughter was something she witnessed regularly growing up on the farm, so how silly is it that it has become esoterica that academia can exploit?

Well, it’s very silly.

Reader mail

Sometimes I get a questions here for the irregular “Reader Mail” feature in a form other than e-mail or comments. Because I ~~obsessively~~ dutifully check the log of Google searches that bring visitors to this blog, I know that some anonymous person came by wanting an answer to this question. And who am I to not help help out ~~my loyal readers~~ anonymous people on the Internet?

“When you butcher pig are there maggots on the inside?”

No. No, there aren’t. That would be absolutely disgusting and no one would ever eat pork.

Unless you are the younger sibling of, say, a 10-year-old boy, in which case the answer is a resounding yes, there are maggots inside pigs. Probably cows, too. And definately carrots and broccoli.

Also, anonymous younger sibling, you should probably believe everything else your wise older brother tells you, too.

Five pigs, eaten head to tail

Pigs aren’t just walking pork chops with bacon hanging underneath. They include plenty of nasty bits: ears, legs, tails. Thankfully there are those (unfortunately increasingly rare) people who know how to prepare an entire pig, nasty bits and all.

Preparing an entire animal — called snout-to-tail cooking because the cook finds a way to prepare as much of the animal as possible — is a feat that was once common sense but has fallen into obscurity. Who needs to learn to cook trotters when easy-to-grill chops are so cheap?

But snout-to-tail cooking is seeing some resurgence. San Francisco chef Chris Cosentino, who writes the Offal Good blog about (what else) cooking and eating animal guts, has hosted a head-to-tail dinner for each of the past six years.

And next weekend, the traveling head-to-tail dinner Cochon 555 will be in Des Moines. At each dinner, five chefs prepare five heritage-breed hogs and five local vintners showcase their wines. (What wines does Iowa have, besides those atrocious dandelion or rhubarb numbers from the Amanas? More than you might think.) The event has been touring around the country: New York, Boston, Atlanta, Napa.

I’ve been invited to judge. Aand by invited, I mean that I offered to come eat the pork feast for free. You can go, too, for $110 per person (though they’ve been offering discounts on Twitter and Facebook).

I’m not trying to shill for Cochon; I’m just excited to be able to to go and eat food raised by caring farmers prepared by talented cooks. I think the dinner highlights an all-too-rare culinary practice. See we waste so much when we only the best parts of our animals. And how disrespectful is that?

So I look forward to eating those nasty bit, bits that become magical in the right hands.

I will forever include prosciutto in lasagna

As much as I love eating cured meat by itself, when Sam and Laura gave me three pounds of cured pig, I quickly realized it would be necessary to find something else to do with all that pork. And while I wasn’t worried about it going bad (it’s cured, after all), it has been about a month since I popped the seal on the first pound of prosciutto Americano.

Something had to be done.

But what the hell are you supposed to do with prosciutto besides eat it in hunks? I haven’t really been served it any other way. Sure I’ve had it dressed up — wrapped around melon, stuffed in a fig, put with a salad — but not prepared differently.

But putting prosciutto in lasagna is apparently a real thing, though I’ve never had it that way before.

So we ground up around three-quarters of a pound of La Quercia prosciutto Americano (my 3-year-old thought meat wiggling around like worms as it came out of the grinder was one of the funniest things she’d seen in a while); threw in some speck — the smoked version of prosciutto — for good measure; and cooked some grass-feed ground beef with a little onion and garlic and tossed in the ground pig. We mixed together the obscenely creamy whole-milk mozzarella (and some part-skim to reduce the high-fat guilt) and the ricotta. And Laura whipped up some tomato sauce.

I have loved lasagna well enough and long enough to have carefully crafted a ceramic lasagna-specific dish in a high-school art class that my mother still uses. The prosciutto added a dimension — a smokey, cured depth — that lasagna usually doesn’t have.

I’ve struggled with an appropriate metaphor for this, but let’s try this: A couple years ago every body realized you could add foie gras to burgers made with good ground beef and have THE BEST BURGER YOU’VE EVER EATEN. It was sorta like that, only didn’t involve sticking a funnel down a duck’s throat.

Don’t look at the ingredient list

When my father returned from visiting his sister in southern New Jersey, he dutifully brought back scrapple. (I was told that Transportation Safety Administration employees at the airport were worried by the four foil-wrapped blocks he was transporting in his luggage.)

So breakfast this morning is quite the anticipated meal here, even if the ingredients are revolting and conjure images of The Jungle.

Tasty pork tongues. Surely rat hairs also slip into the mix.

Even with that list of deliciousness, scrapple brand is always a debate among aficionados. Two years ago, at a family gathering in Maryland, we had a scrapple tasting in an effort to end the family squabbles. I’m firmly in the Habbersett camp. But, sadly, my last trek east included scrapple from a sustainable Amish farm.

Sustainable, responsible, but not Habbersett.

I know I’ve essentially written this post before, but scrapple deserves some sort of pomp.

America’s Test Kitchen “grilling panel”

Some how I signed up to test recipes for America’s Test Kitchen, the publishers of Cook’s Illustrated, perhaps the best recipe magazine in existence. While I never actually manage to get around to testing the recipes, I would if I could. Really, I keep meaning to. Really.

Now they’re looking for people to form a “grilling panel” which might means grilling in the middle of winter. Never a bad thing to have an excuse to do. I’ll probably sign up for that, too, and, again, never get around to actually grilling.

The e-mail:

We’re starting a special grilling panel, and we need your help! Because we test recipes six months before they are printed in the magazines, we sometimes ask our recipe testers to buy produce off-season or grill outdoors when it’s the middle of winter. We want to create a new panel to which recipes that require grilling will be sent.

If you live in a climate that is conducive to grilling year ‘round and would like to join this panel, please fill out this survey. You’ll still receive recipes from the magazine that you currently test for, along with the additional grilling recipes.

Might as well give it a try. Nothing to lose besides buying expensive out-of-season ingredients and using possibly incomplete and faulty recipes.

Update
Apparently you’ll have to lie if you live in Iowa and want the recipes.

What “new-media journalism” skills do you need, anyway?

Combing through my RSS feeds earlier this week, I came across a post from Rob Curley looking for interns. I posted a link on Twitter, which then goes to FriendFeed and Facebook (which, sadly, still makes it impossible to find permalinks), since the Las Vegas Sun is doing really cool things and thought my students would do well to apply.

One of my current multimedia students shot me a message:

Read the description of his internship openings in his blog and I definitely feel like the student he’s talking about, that can write but has no other “new-media journalism” skills. In your opinion, aside from what we’re doing in your class, what more can I do to get up to speed with what’s going on in the profession currently and make myself more marketable after graduating? Any pointers would be appreciated!

It’s a good question, and one that a few years ago wouldn’t have been asked. (I think there are fewer students who go into journalism because they want to be “a writer” these days, but I have no hard evidence to back that up.) I though it would be worth posting my answer here.

This is a tricky question. A few years ago, knowing how to do a little bit of everything — writing, video, audio, photography, coding — could land you a job at a pretty plum news organization (I remember seeing a multimedia job at The Baltimore Sun a few years ago that was an entry-level position, for example), even if you weren’t great at any one thing. But multimedia production has become more specialized. Photographers tend to be the videographers and audio gatherers and SoundSlide producers. Lots of organizations have specialized data teams that include some heavy–duty coders (and talented journalists in their own right). But there is no such thing as “just a writer” anymore, for better or for worse, except for people such as The New York Times‘s re-write man Robert D. McFadden.

I think you’ll want to practice, hone and refine the skills we’re teaching in multimedia introduction (a five-week, 1 credit-hour course required of all majors that touches on HTML, video and audio collection and editing, blogging, social media, writing for the Web and multimedia packaging). You’ll want to understand cross-platform news production, how to package and re-package news for different platforms and products. Knowing how to code HTML/CSS/JavaScript would be helpful, too, as would learning how to put together an audio slide show. Understanding social media and how to use tools like Twitter and Facebook to find sources and stories — as well as promote your own work — is important.

J-schools don’t have the resources to teach all the new media skills you’ll need, so willingness to learn on your own will be key. But much of what you learn in school will be obsolete in a few years, anyway. Things will continue to change as technology changes. The move to mobile phones as the main news delivery device is getting closer and with that will come more stuff to learn.

So keep learning. Read industry blogs and follow interesting journalists and professors and college students on Twitter (and maybe even the crazy ones). Read, watch and listen critically. Be hungry. If you want it, you’ll find a place in this new media landscape.

Of course, a lot of it depends on what, exactly, you want to do. Photographers don’t need to know how to code in ActionScript, but some do. And the more you know, the easier it will be to get a job that you actually want when you’re finished school. But don’t forget the basics, the foundations. You’ll still have to know how to report, how to interview and how write. That’s not going to change.

Follow-up on foodies and farmers unite against “The Man”

The end of the story, for now, anyway.

----- Forwarded message ----- From: David Miller Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:35 AM Subject: Re: Foodies and Farmers Unite Against “The Man”

It was standing room only at the Johnson County Planning and Zoning Board meeting last night. I think it is safe to say that the numbers of e-mails sent to board members and the number of people who showed up to support Susan Jutz had a lasting impression on every policy maker in the room.

It is now clear to the board and administration staff that local agriculture is changing, and is no longer confined to the realms of corn, beans and hogs. Most importantly, they realize the relationship between farmer and consumer is not always protracted and abstract.

It took nearly two and a half hours for Susan and her supporters to explain to the Board what a CSA is, how small farms fit into the big picture, and how it is important for people to build a relationship with a grower–which includes on-farm tours and activities.

At the beginning of the meeting, the majority of board members seemed on edge and very negative about Susan’s appeal. By the end, however, the board voted unanimously to overturn a previous ruling. That ruling placed punitive financial constrictions on small farmers and made it nearly impossible to have those on-farm grower and consumer connections.

Just as seed dealers are allowed to invite people to their farms for seed-trials, small vegetable farmers are now allowed to invite people to their farms for educational and promotional events.

The vote was precedent setting, not only in Johnson County, but for the entire state of Iowa (and perhaps even in neighboring states) as many locales struggle with the same question: “What is a farm and who should receive farm exemptions?”

*Changing the minds of the board members could not have happened without your support.*

Thanks. Farmer Dave

Fwd: local foodies and farmers unite against “The Man”

I don’t usually do board-meetings-and-politicians politics here, preferring to deal with abstract food politics that don’t involve so many messy specifics, but this came to me via Matt Steigerwald of Lincoln Cafe. I haven’t done any fact-checking or looked into the background at all — nor do any really know any one involved — so take this for what you will.

----- Forwarded message ----- From: David Miller Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:14 AM Subject: Local Foodies and Farmers Unite Against "The Man"

Hello.

I just wanted you to know about a very important opportunity to stand up for local small farmers.

Tomorrow, many of us foodies, market gardeners and grain farmers will attend a Planning and Zoning Board meeting in Johnson County to show support for Susan Jutz.

Susan operates a CSA near Solon and every year she has held an educational event on her farm. Farm events are typically exempt from required “festival protocols” like big-fee permits, perimter fencing, crowd control. etc.

However Johnson County has suddenly decided that Susan does not grow on enough acres to constitute a “real farm.” Therefore, politicians there demand she follow festival protocols.

It is key that the board’s decision be reversed because it sets two very bad precedents in the state:

the decision could affect the availability of future ag-related educational events (not good); and
the decision allows a planning and zoning board to decide what is, and what is not an existing farm (a conflict of interest and really, really, really not good).

Tomorrow evening, Susan will appeal the board’s decision. Support from the public and fellow farmers is very important.

If you would like to overturn this bad decision, there are two ways you may help:

Attend the P & Z meeting tomorrow night at 5:30 p.m at the Johnson County Administration Building (913 S. Dubuque St. in Iowa City); or
Send e-mails to board members:

Rick Dvorak [email protected]
Terrence Neuzil [email protected]
Larry Meyers [email protected]
Sally Stutsman [email protected]
Rod Sullivan [email protected]
Pat Harney [email protected]

Also copy Susan on these e-mails so she may keep them in a file for future appeals/litigation. Her e-mail is: [email protected]

Feel free to pass on this e-mail (but please don’t do a broadcast spam). Thanks for your time and support.

[signed] Farmer Dave

Lincoln Cafe is one of the bright spots

The problem with using Casey’s General Store as a landmark is that every small town in Iowa has one. So when I was told I needed to turn right, down one of the many straight side roads running between corn and soy fields, when Casey’s was on my left, I wasn’t sure if this one or another.

I probably shouldn’t have been driving. It was dark and I was distracted by the sparse lights from the fields and houses. And the half bottle of wine I’d had with dinner. And the belly full of food.

Oh, yes, the food. Lincoln Cafe‘s food. Lincoln Cafe, a Mount Vernon spot offering a few locally focused dishes every evening, doesn’t count as a hidden gem anymore. At night, when the kitchen rolls out the small menu of features — usually three plus an appetizer — that extends the menu past burgers and fries, it’s still hard to decide what to eat.

Matt Steigerwald, the cafe’s chef and proprietor, is adamant about the local focus of his menu, preferring to pay a premium for locally produced ingredients. He’s part of the foundation Iowa needs to cultivate if we’re to move towards becoming a destination for foodies. (Matt graciously gave me a plate of house-cured meats, including a smoked duck breast, prosciutto and a particularly delicious coppa.)

As more locally focused restaurants and producers and markets pop up around Iowa, we’ll see fewer Casey’s and more unique spots worth traveling for.

I suspect Matt would love the competition.