Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 - (Page 37)

pig head, and pig feet, and pig ears.” John said, “Thank you boss.” John killed hogs for about five years that way; that’s what he got for his pay. Then John moved on back of the place and got himself three hogs. Old Master didn’t even know john had a hog. Next winter at hog-killing time, Old Master went down after John. Old Master: “John?” John comes to the door: “Yessir.” Old Master: “Be down to the house early in the morning, I want to kill hogs. Be there about five-thirty.” John asks, “Well, Old Master, what you paying?” “I’ll pay you like I always did. I’ll give you the heads, all the ears, all the pig’s feet and all the tails.” John said, “Well, Old Master, I can’t because I’m eating higher on the hog than that now. I got three hogs of my own and I eat spareribs, backbone, pork chops, middling, ham, and everything else. I eat high on the hog now!” It is fitting that the expression finds use in the 19th-century South. According to Samuel Hilliard’s Hog Meat and Hoecake; Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1870, between 1840 and 1860 on average two hogs were raised for every man, woman and child south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Hogs were tagged but still allowed to forage and to run wild. At hog-killing time, farmers reclaimed their livestock and proceeded to slaughter them. Meat was then smoked over a variety of woods from local hickory to pecan and cured according to various family recipes. In Louisiana, it’s hog- up their holiday pigs and served them accompanied by condiments that might have been recognized by Père Labat, the Dominican friar who journeyed the Caribbean in the 17th century and who wrote a four-volume treatise on what he saw. It is to him that we owe one of the first descriptions of barbecue. However, he doesn’t use the term barbecue, but the word boucan to refer to the method of preparation — a wooden grill was prepared and on it a pig is laid on its back, stomach opened, spread out and held in this position by sticks. The cavity of the pig was filled with lemon juice, salt, and hot chiles. When the pig was fully cooked, it was served with two sauces — one from the liquid from the cavity of the pig, the other a concoction of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and chile. The gourmet father partook liberally Chitterlings are cooked pig’s intestines. Rico. There, on the outskirts of the town known as Bayamón, small stands are set up on the side of the road where enterprising natives sell the chicharrón that has made their town famous. The Puerto Ricans have a saying,”tan tostado que el chicharrónde Bayamon” (as crispy as the cracklin’ of Bayamón) for chicharrón is more or less cracklin’ by Louisiana standards. In Bayamón, it is sold in larger pieces and less dense in texture than is de rigeur in Louisiana, but the crunch and the delicious rush of porcine flavor are the same. Chicharrón de cerdo is interpreted differently in the Dominican Republic, where the spit-roasted porker is usually served up at rural barbecues accompanied by boiled yuca and a homemade hot sauce. Haiti has its own swine specialty in griots de porc, tasty marinated pork bits that are served in a tangy sauce. Barbados enters the sweepstakes with souse, a lime-juice and hotchile pickled pork from the less noble parts of the pig— ears, snouts, trotters, and tails — that is traditional Saturday fare and accompanied by black pudding. Cuba trumps many of the other islands with its roast pig. I once watched in amazement as my friend Maricel Presilla cooked one to falling off the bone flavorful perfection in the invention known as a caja china (or Chinese Box) that allows one to pit barbecue in the backyard. When it emerged, skin crisp, meat succulent and Hog maws, chitterlings, headcheese and souse meat remind some not only of hog-killing time, but also the privations of not living “high on the hog.” killing time almost all year-round. The glories of pork are celebrated with the Boudin and Cracklin’ Festival in Carencro, the Grande Boucherie Cajun in St. Martinville, the Cochon de Lait Festival in Mansura and the Sorrento Boucherie, along with numerous other family and community gatherings large and small. Louisiana residents to this day eat more pork per capita than people in any other of the 50 states. We may be the pre-eminent pig lovers in the United States, but we share this love of pork and of celebration around pork with our culinary cousins in the Caribbean. I will never forget being in Guadeloupe near the end-of-the-year holidays and hearing the constant twacking of cleaver on wood as my friends and their neighbors cut and reminded guests that boucan necessitates drinking often because “the rules demand it and the sauce invites it.” The Caribbean porcine connection includes Jamaica, where jerked pig was the war food of maroons (former slaves of the Spaniards who escaped when the British arrived in Jamaica). They added their fillips, met up with the boucaniers (known in English as buccaneers) and continued the tradition of boucan that Labat described. At the pork pits near Boston Beach in Port Antonio, the place that is best known for its jerk, pig is slow cooked over a fire of allspice wood and tended with the care that would make a North Carolina pit master proud. Thoughts of roasted pig remind me of another road in that zone, this one is on the road leading west out of San Juan, Puerto flavorful, I savored every bite. It’s not all about the Caribbean back in New Orleans. There’s ample pig to sample at Donald Link’s Cochon restaurant or one can partake of a cochon de lait sandwich at Lüke or a Cuban sandwich at Liborio. This winter, I’ll get my friends to bring me back a big old bag of crackling from Breaux Bridge and keep my promise to journey out to the country for a boucherie. This New Year, I’m going to say a silent prayer to the pig gods, put my cardiologist on speed dial, and dig in. I want a bumper sticker that says, “I brake for pig!” Life’s too short not to live high on the hog when you can. Jessica B. Harris, Ph.D., is the author of eight books documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Winter 2008-09/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 37

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 Contents Friends Editor's Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Prospect.1 New Orleans The Historic New Orleans Collection The Enduring Performance of Michael P. Smith Jazz Notes Louisiana Foodways Birds of a Feather: Windfowl Carvings in Southeast Louisiana Louisiana Association of Museums Louisiana Architecture O. Winston Link in Louisiana The Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Colfax Massacre Louisiana State Museum Unlocking the History of Greek Key Architecture Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

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