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Rooting around with wild boars continues with their back door arrival
…Just days earlier, the boar that arrived at Niche were foraging wild in the hill country near Ingram, Texas. Without time on the feed lot, their diet mainly consists of nuts, berries, grasses and tubers as they roam in groups called sounders. Always on the move, their meat is lean and leads to dark meat throughout most of the cuts. The population of wild boar in Texas hovers around 2 million and is regularly thinned out to control populations by licensed trappers. North of San Antonio in the central part of the state, Broken Arrow Ranch prides itself in high quality meats handled and butchered by professionals. A bit to my dismay, due to strict state regulations, I wasn’t allowed many of the parts of the animal that are enjoyed as delicacies by many.
When the usual delivery truck arrived last Friday morning, I carefully lifted the wild boar out of their shipper and watched my regular delivery guys’ eyebrows raise either in sheer curiosity or utter shock. No matter how much research or experience comes flushing back, chefs tend to be most creative when they are able to look at and feel a product much like any other artist and their mediums. Its light rose-colored meat lightly laced in cotton-white fat along with other more graphic in nature yet bright colors showing its freshness, spurned ideas of how we would carefully prepare it. Within moments, ideas of flavors and textures began to run rampant and riddle my brain, but more of that to come later. . .
Rooting around with wild boars cont.
First and foremost, the boars themselves are due respect. The times in my career when whole animals were brought into the kitchen, a sense of reverence settled into the truest of cooks and chefs. Albeit we tend to be a bit more calloused in our humor, we feel a duty to respect and utilize everything we are given to make great food to be shared by many. Along the way, I have learned that to appreciate the “fruit” of the foods we eat, learning about its roots in the cultures and cuisines from around the world leads to true understanding.
Alright, let’s go deeper into the roots and way back when. Wild boar were loaded onto ships and brought to this side of the pond through the early shipping routes taken by the Europeans soon after Columbus. The boars served their purpose on the ships well. Brought aboard early in weight and size, they would eat the remnants, leftovers and any spoilage of the crews “culinary delights.” Their continued growth led to some tasty meat by the time they entered the Caribbean and the shores of Mexico and ultimately changed the diet of the land they soon roamed wild. The usage of boar meat in cooking spans all borders of the world. With a texture very similar to pork and a flavor similar to lean dark meat, it crosses all culinary boundaries and is simply interchanged with pork. Enough with the history lesson, let’s get to the boar that arrived at the back door of Niche.
Rooting Around With Wild Boars
Recently, we were fortunate to procure two wild boars from a ranch in Texas. What follows here is the first in a thread that will unravel the path of these boars from the Texas hill country to the plate here at Niche Restaurant. In the coming days and weeks, you can catch a glimpse of the creative process in the kitchen at Niche through a collection of history, photos, anecdotes, recipes, global methods and techniques. We welcome and encourage you to leave your thoughts and questions below.
…Sipping my coffee with early morning bleary eyes here at Niche last Tuesday morning, I answered a call from Tom at the Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram, Texas. I chat on the phone with Tom every couple of weeks to keep up with what is coming off the ranch in the Texas hill country. I first began working with Broken Arrow Ranch for the American Bounty Dinner at James Beard’s home last year, where I served their Sika venison loin. After a quick chat with Tom and a little Texas hospitality congratulating me on the new addition to my family, he let me know that he was going to have some fresh whole wild boar ready to be shipped on Thursday if I was interested. With a few hours of thought, I talked to Chris, the creative culinary engine of the kitchen, about the idea of butchering and cooking them in as many ways as we could come up with. I could see the cogs and springs of ideas running through his mind along with a pensive yet budding excitement. Over another few slugs of creamy and sweet coffee the following morning and a bit more of his Texas hospitality, Tom assured me that he had picked out a couple hogs for me that and that they would arrive at my back door the next morning.
