of hairy pigs and bloody butchers

On Sunday Vlad and I awoke early to drive to his friend Milu’s home in the hills near Belgrade. There was a special event: this was the morning one of his prized mangalitsa pigs would be slaughtered and we, at the restaurant, would help prepare and preserve a fair part of it. Sadly we were not early enough: by the time we arrived the blood was already spilled, the pig skinned, and mostly hacked into individual portions. We

managed to salvage a bone-in (but skin/fat-off) loin, a leg and the skinless jowls. The rest that we took with us was already cut into pieces. So, after much stress about nothing, I realized I need not have worried about it: the parts we had left would dictate their own uses. The scrap and leg, I marinated and made into rillettes and sausage (much of it destined for Milu’s freezer). I’ll use some of the jowls’ fat to enrich the sausage, as much of the fat had been trimmed. The loin, we will roast whole tomorrow for Milu and his party of fifteen. The rest of the jowl, we haven’t figured out yet; hopefully tomorrow.

Milu, an investment banker and lover of food, has taken it upon himself to save some of the Balkans’ rarer breeds. He has a herd of indigenous Buša (pronounced: boosha) cows, a breed that is full-grown at 200kg and will eat grass throughout the winter, digging up to a meter in the snow to find vegetation food. He has sheep and goats that are nearly extinct (I lack the details on their breeds).

Both sexes of the sheep grow long horns. And there are, of course, the mangalitsa pigs, one of the most primitive swine family members, with a short, stocky body, and hairy coiffeur (generally dark brown, though I took pictures of a couple he has that are blonde—a recessive gene, Milu explained). These pigs are suited for charcuterie, with 3:1 ratio of fat to meat, I’m told. I really admire what he’s done (though I did not see most of the animals, as they’re tucked away on a mountainside pasture he has purchased to raise them), and we talked for a bit about the logistics (and challenges) of harvesting and selling some of his livestock. Serbia, it turns out, might not be ready for these fancy animals, as they likely would not fetch their true value on the market, so for now, he continues to grow the herds rather than harvesting animals.

In any case, we made the best of our time up in the hills. I had a chance to meet some of Milu’s animals: long-haired mangalitsa pigs, geese, chickens, and turkeys. I ate fruit fresh off his pear and fig trees, and ate the four raspberries I spied desiccating on the vine. We sampled their tomatoes and grapes, and I marveled at their beautiful abode just up the hill from the mini farm/in-laws’ house.

Their home is beautiful: an old 18^th century home transplanted from an old village in Serbia and added onto with some modern touches, yet keeping its vintage charm in the first floor sitting room (photos to come). His wife Mila taught me her ajvar recipe (more on this fantastic food to come in a separate post), as I loved her version, and we drank green tea while snacking on their fruit preserves (straight out of Christine Ferber’s great book, Mes Confitures).

Back at the farm we picked up our still-warm pork, but not before gorging ourselves on the cracklings left from the lard that had been rendering over a wood fire all morning. This country is great. We’ll be returning at the end of November to slaughter four more pigs, this time with more planning, and hopefully some prosciutto by the end of next year if all goes well… In any case, I left mesmerized (and on my way to a full blown cold, which I love complaining about; no shock to those of you who know me), with a new slow food hero to add to my list of people I admire.

Coming soon: I’m officially a tv star and the truth behind wonderful, mystical ajvar!