Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [67]
Yet even today, lard has a backwoods taint to it, not helped by epithets like “lard ass” and “tub of lard.” Rendering your own lard is easy, but it takes all day and will lend your house a unique perfume that some people won’t appreciate. Even so, I recommend doing it. You will probably have to ask your butcher for pork fat and this might entail a special order. I also recommend rendering a lot all at once and storing it in the freezer.
You want the fat from the back, kidneys, or belly. The highest-quality fat is called leaf lard, and usually comes from around the kidneys—it is brittle and will break into little pieces. But take whatever fresh fat you can get. This is one case where you really should seek out organic pork, because toxins accumulate in animal fat, and lard is nothing but.
Make it or buy it? Make it. You may not have a choice.
Hassle: Acquiring the pork fat is the hardest part.
Cost comparison: Organic pork fat costs about $3.00 per pound, and a 10-pound hunk yields 12 cups of ivory lard. Very few shops carry freshly rendered lard these days, but I found one high-end butcher an hour away that sells it for $5.00 per pound. I’d buy it if I lived within easy driving distance.
Massive hunk of fresh pork fat
1. Choose a day when you aren’t going anywhere or expecting company. In the morning, preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
2. Cut the fat into chunks the size of your hand and place in a wide Dutch oven or deep skillet with a cup or so of water. (The water keeps the lard from burning in the early stages of the process and will eventually evaporate away.) Place the pot in the oven and let the fat melt for 6 hours.
3. Midway through the afternoon, take out the pot and ladle some of the luminous golden liquid into a cheesecloth-lined sieve set over a large bowl. When you’ve extracted as much liquid as you can, return the pot to the oven where the diminished chunks of fat will continue to melt and shrink for a few more hours.
4. Remove the pot again, and pour the contents through the sieve, pressing down on the the greasy, shriveled bits. Throw away bits of fat that remain. They look as if they might be tasty with salt and lime juice—like chicharrónes—but aren’t. Pour the liquid lard into containers to cool and solidify, then store in the refrigerator for use in the next few months, or in the freezer, for longer. In addition to pie crusts, you can use lard to make tamales and fry chicken.
CHAPTER 10
HONEY
Happy is the man with a bit of land. To work with living and growing things is to work in partnership with the creator and have a part in shaping the forces that move the world.
—Frank C. Pellett, A Living from Bees
A hundred years ago, small diversified farms across America typically had a beehive or two, the same way there were a few chickens running around the yard, a hog, and some fruit trees. On my grandparents’ ranch in Wyoming, the bee boxes were fenced off with barbed wire so the cattle wouldn’t knock them over. One day when I was about fourteen, I was riding my pony near the boxes and a bee got caught in my hair and couldn’t get out. I shook my head and started kicking the pony, who started trotting, and as the bee buzzed louder, I kicked harder and the pony ran faster. I started to cry, and my parents looked at me with amusement, concern, and—I’m guessing now—shame. It was just a little bee. I’ve read that the worst place to be stung is on the tip of the nose, but until that happens to me, I’m going to stand by the scalp. My mother, who patted baking soda and water on the sting, told me the bee could have escaped if I kept my hair combed.
This is just to say, I was not born a bee whisperer. Bees make me nervous. But they also fascinate me. They are utterly mindless and yet brilliant, fundamentally gentle and communitarian, but capable of swarming, terrorizing and stinging. They vibrate with purpose, fertilize crops, make one of the loveliest foods you’ll ever eat.
My primary worry about