Category Archives: food

Ferme des Levées: the Happiest Pigs in France

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Anyone who has even briefly investigated livestock production at industrial farms knows that the process is wholly unnatural, with animals reduced to meat-generating machines, forced to live in dirty, cramped conditions.

At Ferme des Levées, owners Anne and Jacques Volatier firmly believe in treating their pigs with respect and raising them with traditional, organic farming methods. Jacques began raising pigs in 2000, and prior to purchasing this farm, he had no farming experience and worked as a civil engineer in town planning. “I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but I had an intuitive sense that I wanted to find a way to help grow the planet and start a project that would benefit the local economy. The intuition has now become certainty and a way of life in the countryside.” He attended an agricultural training program for a year, acquired the necessary capital and decided to launch a pig breeding operation because it was a product that could be raised and transformed entirely on the farm.
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Époisses: Durian of Cheeses?

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Le Renard s’en saisit, et dit : « Mon bon Monsieur, / Apprenez que tout flatteur / Vit aux dépens de celui qui l’écoute : / Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. » -Jean de La Fontaine

“Have you ever tried Époisses cheese?” I shook my head no. “Well, you know how they ban carrying the durian onto trains in Singapore because the fruit is so smelly? Époisses is sort of like the durian of cheeses.” With that in mind, I walked into the Fromagerie Gaugry cheese factory and my nose curled from the sharp olfactory assault of ripened cheese. The Époisses smell was pungent and earthy, somewhere between unwashed socks and West Coast hippies. As this NYT article highlights, its reputation and odor precede it. On the plus side, within a few minutes, my nostrils adjusted to the odor and I was breathing regularly again.

France boasts many stinky cheeses, but the Époisses is one of the most prominent cheeses of Burgundy, with production dating back to the 16th century. Over the years, Époisses has acquired the moniker “King of Cheeses,” and it was a favorite of Napoleon and famed gastronome Brillat-Savarin. At the 1815 Congress of Vienna, it seems that the delegates had a bit of free time after deciding what to do about Napoleon, and they held a tasting contest with 49 cheeses. Époisses came in second place after Brie, though one might argue that this was because Brie came from the Talleyrand region which sponsored the competition.

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Blood at Dawn: Meeting Your Meat

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The bucket of hot water burbled gently above a gas burner, just behind a weathered wood chopping block. Jutting out from the edge, the ax rose with elegant, curved lines, primeval and practical in function. The preparations were set; today, a living being was going to die.

There had originally been two turkeys at Barbialla Nuova, but the first one had fallen victim to a fox the night before it was slated for slaughter. The second turkey had been given a temporary reprieve because she had just laid a bunch of eggs. Though there was no male turkey in the vicinity and the eggs were unfertilized, Ken kindly snuck a few fertilized chicken eggs into the nest so that the turkey could see a brood of chicks come to fruition. Alas, just as the eggs were about to hatch, the turkey inadvertently crushed the emerging chicks and killed them. And so, the sole remaining turkey on the farm was getting a bit “clucky,” restless and lonely without her friend, and was now due to be given “the chop.”

Aside from my mother killing live lobsters, I had never seen the slaughter of a live animal before, so I asked Ken if I could tag along and watch the process. Bright and early the next morning, we gathered the necessary ax, sharpener, hanging hooks, and a large tub for holding hot water to dip the bird into.
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Swiss Eats: Cheese, Chocolate and…Pasta?

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Clockwise: Beef carpaccio and Swiss cheese rolls with olive oil and rösti from the Cafe de Paris (Interlaken); luxemburgerli from Confiserie Sprüngli; raclette with potatoes, pickles and pickled onions; confections to celebrate Swiss National Day (Aug 1)

“I might be done with cheese after this week in Switzerland,” I joked to the waitress. She looked at me with consternation. “Oh no, I could never be done with cheese!”

From soft to extra-hard, holey to solid, in all shades of white, amber and yellow, the Swiss love their cheese and produce about 450 different varieties of it. Whether melted in fondue pots or simply sliced in thin sheets and eaten atop bread, cheese is ubiquitous on menus and the core of most traditional Swiss dishes. Fondue is fairly common in the US so I bypassed that, but for a (relatively) less intense cheese option, you can order raclette, which is both a type of cheese and a dish featuring this cheese. The cheese round is heated, then scraped (from French racler, meaning “to scrape”) onto the diner’s plate, and usually served with boiled potatoes, pickles and pickled onions. Another popular Swiss dish is rösti, or grated, fried potatoes similar to hash browns. Be warned that if you order rösti, you will often get an entire plateful of potatoes, in the shape of the frying pan. The rösti can come topped with cheese, speck, onions or other condiments.

For those craving a sugar high, Switzerland’s other strong suit is their chocolates and sweets. If you are traveling in Zürich, be sure to grab some luxemburgerli, a confection produced exclusively by Confiserie Sprüngli. The luxemburgerli are delightfully airy, and look like miniature macarons about 1″ in diameter, with a sugar-based biscuit top and bottom, and creamy filling in the center. Traditional flavors include chocolate, vanilla, champagne and cappucino, and you can also get seasonal variations like lemon and raspberry. I tried the hazelnut and cassis (currant), and both were delicate flavor bombs, chock full of fresh, natural ingredients. Confiserie Sprüngli also produces fine chocolate products; don’t forget to try the Truffes du Jour.
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Hiking and Ruminating the Italian Alps

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Clockwise: Mural of a mountain goat and cow outside Fratelli Lussiana creamery, fresh wheels of cevrin in warm room, foothills of Piedmont, aging wheels of cevrin in cold room

A couple weeks ago while on the Piedmont stage, our class visited Fratelli Lussiana creamery, a cheese producer in Giaveno, about 35 km west of Turin. The primary cheese they produce is cevrin di Coazze, made with half goat and half cow’s milk and aged for 3 months. At the time, I was tired, hot and not in the mood to see yet another farm, but we all fell headlong in love with this cheese producer. After showing us an overview of the cheesemaking process and aging rooms, the lovely Lussiana siblings piled us into a hay-filled tractor and trundled us up a narrow, rocky mountain path, while we tried to keep our balance, yodeled and ducked under overhanging tree branches. Once we reached the mountaintop farm, we were greeted by a herd of seriously dexterous goats, placidly ruminating cows, and the friendliest donkey in the world (who kept sneaking into photos and nuzzling for attention). The farm caretakers welcomed us with fresh wheels of cevrin, salame, bread and red wine, and we ate cheese next to the animals who produced the milk for it, as the sun went down over the Italian Alps. It was one of the best days of my life.

Determined to recapture some of that high, some of my classmates decided to contact Fratelli Lussiana and ask if they would allow us to return for a second visit. Only, this time we wanted to see the cevrin making process, which happens every morning at 6 am. With the 90 minute drive from Bra, this meant that we would be setting out on a 4:30 am road trip. Totally worth it!

After duly waking up at a rather uncivilized hour, the first challenge was figuring out how to get back to the creamery. We were armed with an address of questionable accuracy (the GPS was telling us to go to a different town) and also a phone number. To complicate matters, no one present was terribly fluent in Italian. So, over the next hour, we called three times, and using an amalgamation of broken Italian and French, managed to get within a few streets of the creamery. As we drove through Giaveno, desperately looking for familiar landmarks, we spotted an elderly gentlemen walking briskly down the street. I rolled down a window and asked him for directions to Fratelli Lussiana, and he broke into a toothy grin and began to wave wildly. Seeing our blank reactions, the man said, “You know what, I’d better just point out the way myself, do you mind if I hop in the car?” And before I knew it, I was scooting to make room for a swarthy Italian man in the backseat. We explained that we were students at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, interested in cheesemaking, and he said “Ah yes, of course! Who do you know of the Lussiana brothers? Oh Luigi, yes I know Luigi!” Within a few minutes, he had steered us to the creamery. We thanked him for his help and asked if he needed a ride back. “No no, I walk a lot, 20 km a day! I’ll be just fine.” He stuck his head into the barn to say hello to Luigi, and sauntered off back into town.
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Recipe: Potato Salad with Prosciutto, Peas & Fava Beans

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Grad school being what it is, I haven’t had as much free time as I would like for inspired cooking, resorting instead to a weekly routine of nourishing (albeit slightly boring) pastas, salads and sandwiches. Compounding the problem is our apartment’s lack of oven, and my perennial struggle to find ingredients that are not readily available in Italian markets. (This afternoon, I searched high and low to find fresh dill. I miss the herb stand at Green City Market.) It would also be highly helpful to have a blender. As Danielle put it, never before in my life have I talked about food so much without really making it. O.o

Anyway, tomorrow night the class is hosting a potluck dinner for Mark Van Horn, director of the UC Davis student farm and research group, and expert in organic farming and soil management. I summoned some energy and put together an appropriately summery potato salad, using ingredients that were available at the farmer’s market this morning. I am pretty happy with the results, so hopefully it will go over well at the potluck. Recipe follows after the jump.
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