Tastebuds in Heaven, Feet in the Earth
Rachel Hammond of Hammond Charcuterie
A recent newsletter of Fred’s was sweetly poignant for me, bringing back blissful memories of weekend car trips to France, skidding to a halt on the gravel at a truck stop full of cooling camions and the restaurant full of happy, hungry drivers feasting on the superb local home-cooked food.
This kind of culture was exactly why I started making charcuterie in Scotland about ten years ago, I could see that the French believe that everyone deserves good food, it creates a crucial sense of well-being and pride, French country charcuterie was a huge inspiration, using just the minimum of salts to create tasty, healthy food.
Britain was unfortunate to suffer the worst of the “convenience food” invasion from America post-war, and we are still dealing with the aftermath; it is difficult to make the decision to divert household budget from cheap, tasteless supermarket commodities to decent, nutritious real food, but charcuterie is a good way to start. Adding a small amount of food full of taste and nutrition lifts one’s spirits and health at the same time.
We are also re-discovering that pigs are good for the land, they are natural rotavators, helping woods and forests to flourish by keeping down the undergrowth, their movements spreads the wild flowers and their dung fertilises the soil, supporting insect growth and the birds and mammals that need them to live.
In addition it is revealed in recent research on isolated vitamins that we are missing something; a solo nutrient in capsule form is intuitively and demonstrably not as good for us as consuming natural vitamins in combination with the trace elements with which they are naturally found; watercress will be better for us that an iron tablet and vitamin C capsule, for example. The same follows for meat; the most compact form of nutrition and one of the most pleasurable things to eat.
How the pigs eat has a direct effect on their meat - the fat profile of a well-raised pig is almost identical in monosaturates to that of an avocado, the beta-carotene finds its way into the fat, making our skin glow with health, and that’s just for starters. None of this is possible with industrial, supermarket food.
The pigs that become my charcuterie are rare; they must live outdoors (with warm cosy shelters) and access to natural forage and water, and must be dispatched in the kindest way. These might seem like sentimental criteria but as well as being compassionate they are why the meat tastes so much better and is more nutritious. There are very few farmers who care enough to look after their animals as well as that; an example of the very best husbandry was the writer of one of the previous l’escargot newsletters, Charlotte Blacker, who raises the best pigs, in tune with nature, check out her newsletter here if you missed it and see her lovely website.
Rachel Hammond crafts artisan speciality meats from the lush banks of the River Tweed and the green hills and wooded valleys of Berwickshire in Scotland. She makes air-dried hams, cured meats, chorizo, salamis and other fine charcuterie. Visit her website Hammond Charcuterie for more info.