France in Focus

we've just discovered the delights of air fryer cooked belly pork.
The meat was devine & the crackling was cracking.

I don’t eat pork but my mouth is watering

Just a tip for anyone pining for crackling but who can't find it in France...The supermarkets tend to separate the outer skin from the fat and sell it as 'couenne'. The fat, with a thin sliver of porc attached, is sold as lard. Couenne is useless for crackling but lard, when scored and cooked on high heat is a good substitute for crackling and infinitely less dangerous for the teeth (All irrelevant if you've got a pet butcher or you get your piggy direct from the farm, when you can specify what you want).

Quiksilver wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:02 pm (All irrelevant if you've got a pet butcher or you get your piggy direct from the farm, when you can specify what you want).

We're fortunate to have Eric le Sausage (your basement butcher) on our doorstep.
Chunks of pig available every week from locally raised animals. Dunno what a lot of them are called but with Eric's help I'm learning.
Interesting discussing piggy bits over copious free glasses of wine.

I used to have the privilege of half a farm-raised piggy each January The look of astonishment on the family's collective faces when I tried to explain crackling to them was hilarious. Georgette (Grandma) and I dealt with the pâtés, and the bottling of all the other various bits and pieces, the packing and freezing of joints etc while the chaps did the actual dirty work and made boudins. It was a lovely atmosphere (although the piggies probably didn't appreciate it) of cooperation, good-humoured hard work and the satisfaction of a well-stocked larder and freezers.