Cole Ward

Cole Ward – PORKTASTIC guest blog:

Hey pork people, we have a guest blog for you today.  It’s from master butcher Cole Ward, known to his many fans as The Gourmet Butcher.

Cole’s culinary passion began, at age 14, stuffing sausages for 20 cents an hour.   Wanderlust soon took him to LaFrieda Prime Meats in Los Angeles, where his clients included Billy Crystal, Bernadette Peters, Edith Head and Raymond Burr.  Cole, a country boy at heart, returned to Vermont after five years.  Passionate about reviving the butcher’s craft, he recently released The Gourmet Butcher – a first-ever DVD set that makes his culinary butchery course for chefs, farmers and foodies available to everyone.  His episode on pork was enough to intrigue us, therefore we are offering it to you as well.

So… we asked Cole if he had any neat ideas for pork – and wow, did he. Here’s what he had to say:

HAM HINTS – for a fresh take on a cold cut classic

I like to seam out a fresh ham, breaking it apart into cuts like eye of the round, top round, bottom round and sirloin tip.  That’s creating four superb cuts out of one ham.

And you can prepare each one in a different way for much more variety:

• steaks for the grill;
• thin cutlets which I dip into buttermilk, bread and saute in olive oil;
• boneless roast pork; and
• butterflied roast stuffed with dried fruit, garlic and jam.

See what you can get from just one ham?

Now I’ve noticed that Porktastic has some wonderful bacon ideas (a big shout-out to that bacon pie!), and I want to say off the bat that – as far as I’m concerned – bacon is one of Nature’s basic food groups.  However, as much as I like bacon, my absolute favorite is unsmoked, uncured, fresh bacon – which we call “side pork” in Vermont.  Delicious simply fried with salt and pepper.  You can usually find this in stores labelled “fresh pork belly” or “fresh side pork”, or “fresh bacon”.  Y’all ought to try this some time.

Speaking of terrific eating, let me share one of my best recipes with you.  I call it Pig in a Flanket.  It combines pork with beef and is delicious.

PIG IN A FLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 flank steak, butterflied by you (if you’ve taken my course), or your butcher

1 tablespoon Montreal Steak Seasoning

8 ounces of fresh spinach

5 to 6 roasted red peppers

4 or 5 rectangular slices of cheddar cheese

1 pork tenderloin

DIRECTIONS

Lay out the butterflied flank steak and season with the steak seasoning

Layer evenly with one-third of the fresh spinach

Then layer with cheddar cheese

Then layer with one-third of the spinach

Press down with both hands (important)

Lay out the roasted red peppers evenly

Finish with a layer of the rest of the spinach

Place the pork tenderloin at the edge of the flank steak nearest you, and tightly roll everything up with both hands, tucking in loose spinach as you go

Tie the center of the roll with string, then tie string around each end.

Finish by adding string around the rest of the roll, making sure that each (future) slice of 1.5 to 2 inches thick has at least 2 strings around it

Slice and place into a baking pan

Into a 350 degree F oven for approximately 30 minutes

Let rest for 5 minutes and serve.

Thanks a lot, Cole.  And if you’d like to read more from the master butcher himself, try his blog Coles Cuts.  It’s not just about meat!

Here at Porktastic, we love fun and exciting ways to work with pork, so we want to give you Cole’s DVD set… FREE!  Porktastic is giving away 2 DVD sets of The Gourmet Butcher to the first 2 people to post their favorite pork recipe on our OhioHogFarmers Facebook page. Click HERE to get to our Facebook page!

READY . Set . GO!!!

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