Northwest-Style Prosciutto?

Oregon Live.com:
Portland's charcuterie-obsessed chefs are prompting local farmers to feed hazelnuts to hogs, in the quest for a distinctive Northwest-style prosciutto

Motoya Nakamura
For a special-occasion splurge, a roast of hazelnut-fed pork is hard to beat. Local chefs say the nuts create lots of sweet, almost nutty-tasting fat that makes for super-succulent meat.

Bacon fans, it's time to meet the new pig in town.
Get ready for hazelnut-fed pork, the latest entry in a hog-happy food scene that echoes what can only be called a national obsession with swine.
Nuts and pigs have nurtured a happy marriage for centuries -- think paper-thin slices of Prosciutto di Parma from pigs fattened on chestnuts and whey, or Spain's incomparable Iberico ham, from free-range hogs that gobble acorns as they roam.
Recipes included with this story: Pork Carnevale, Basic Pork Roast

The reason: Pigs that eat oil-rich nuts in great quantities, especially in the last months before butchering, build up extra (and extra-tasty) fat; that's especially true for old breeds with genetics that encourage it. A well-marbled leg, with months of curing, becomes a succulent ham streaked with sweet, some say nutty-tasting, fat................
As for the cured meats, Brownlow and Silverman don't want to duplicate Italy's product so much as develop a Northwest prosciutto, unique in flavor, texture and appearance.
The pigs, a cross of Duroc, Berkshire, Yorkshire and Landrace, are raised according to their specifications by Pure Country Pork near Yakima, an established producer certified by Food Alliance for its sustainable and humane practices. Silverman worked with a nutritionist and rigorously tested the feeding program to come up with the right balance of nuts to grains for ideal weight gain and flavor......
Where to find nut-fed pork
Nut-fed pork typically ends up as dry-cured hams, but the well-marbled fresh meat often is more tender and juicy than standard pork. Fresh pork from Northwest hazelnut-fed pigs, if you can find it, costs a few dollars more per pound than premium pork. Here are some local sources:
Chop Butchery & Charcuterie, in City Market
(in the meat case every two to three weeks, call for availability)
735 N.W. 21st Ave.
503-221-3012

Eastbank Farmers Market, at Tails & Trotters booth
Laurelhurst Market
www.laurelhurstmarket.com
Long's Meat Market
81 E. 28th Ave., Eugene
541-344-3172
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Welcome to the Food Revolution

Slow Food Nation Gathering in San Francisco

AlterNet.com
We need to remember that the fresh, unadulterated, minimally processed, locally produced foods that Slow Food Nation is showcasing were our pantry staples, before the military-industrial complex annexed our food chain a half a century or so ago in the name of progress.

Our great-grandparents would be flabbergasted to learn that grass-fed milk in glass bottles bearing the local dairy farm's logo is now a rare luxury item available to only the affluent few who are willing to pay $4 for a half-gallon of milk.

Back in the day, our breads were fresh-baked and free of high fructose corn syrup, and our eggs and bacon came from chickens and hogs that rolled around in the dirt and saw the light of day. The word "farm" still evokes nostalgic pastoral images for most Americans, but there's nothing even remotely benign or bucolic about the fetid, brutal factory farms that supply us with most of our meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products today. And unmasking this unsavory reality is as much a part of Slow Food Nation's agrarian agenda as dishing out local delicacies.

This focus on economies of scale, and the illusory "efficiency" of a food system dependent on cheap fossil fuels and perpetual subsidies, gave us, the richest nation in the world, the cheapest food. And we are all the poorer for it.

Along the way, we lost hundreds of different kinds of plants and animals; currently, "at least 1,060 food varieties unique to North America are threatened, endangered or functionally extinct in the marketplaces of the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico," Gary Paul Nabhan writes in Renewing America's Food Traditions, a new book that celebrates the distinctive culinary regions of our country that Agribiz almost obliterated in recent decades.

But Renewing America's Food Traditions is not just a book; it's an alliance: Called RAFT for short, it's a collaborative effort from Slow Food USA and six other sustainably minded organizations. RAFT's mission is to inspire what the folks at Slow Foods USA call "eater-based conservation" by preserving and promoting the culinary heritage and extraordinary biodiversity that blessed this country for centuries before we shifted gears and became a fast food nation.

Don't know what a "foodshed" is? Don't worry, nobody else does, either -- the word is still so obscure it hasn't earned an entry on Wikipedia. It means, essentially, the area through which food travels to get from the farm to your plate. That would have been a pretty short trip a few generations ago, but in this era of globalization, our foodshed now encompasses the whole world, more or less.

This far-flung food chain has enslaved us with a false sense of abundance, turning the produce aisles of our supermarkets into a seasonless place where you can find berries and bell peppers all year round. But this apparent bounty diverts us from the fact that industrial agriculture has actually drastically reduced the diversity of the foods that our farmers grow.

As small and mid-size farms got swallowed up by the massive monoculture operations we now call "conventional," the varieties of fruits and vegetables grown on those farms got whittled down to just those few that shipped the best and had the longest shelf life. Breeders chose to focus on species of livestock and poultry that fatten up the fastest, such as big-breasted but bland Butterball turkeys so top-heavy they can't reproduce naturally and have to be artificially inseminated. For this we give thanks each November?

.....more