November 10th – 13th 2022 New Berlin, PA
Join Hand Hewn Farm at the farmstead of Jim Chlebowski in this 4-day adventure into pork gastronomy. Nestled in the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania, Jim Chlebowski has been raising pigs for over a decade and has been seeking their best culinary uses ever since. Along with Hand Hewn Farm, Jim is opening his farmstead to host this epic event. Over 4 days, attendees will be able to participate in every part of the process from the slaughter all the way through to seasoning and stuffing salami. This is a true nose-to-tail, farm-to-table experience that simply cannot be found elsewhere.
Hand Hewn Farm has been teaching hog slaughter, butchering, cooking, and curing for 7 years from their home in Ohio and has worked with Jim on multiple occasions. For this event, they have teamed up to create an event that will enlighten, enliven, and empower others to step away from the norm and delve into the culinary possibilities of pork.
Day one will feature an on-farm, humane slaughter of one of Jim’s pastured raised, Tamworth pigs. From there we will harvest the blood, scald the pig, scrape the pig of its hair and eviscerate the pig to retrieve the nutrient-dense organs like the liver, heart, and kidneys. We will prep a dish made from the blood of the pig and start the process of utilizing the head of the pig. Meals on day one will feature house-cured ham hock and bean soup for lunch and schnitzel with offal and mushroom cream sauce for dinner.
Day two will feature the butchering of the pig from day one as well as an additional pig. The butchering instruction will focus on the best utilization of every part of the pig. Traditional, American-style butchery, as well as different types of European butchering, will be addressed. Aspects of the curing process will be discussed as we make our way through the butchering process as well as the best ways to use the trim for sausages, pâtés, and other dishes. The ribs will be used for our dinner that evening and our lunch will be composed of a blood-based dish for lunch.
Day three is when we will explore sausages, salami, whole-muscle cures, uses for skin, and bones. Selection of meats from the butchering process will take place to best utilize each piece. During this process, students will have multiple hands-on opportunities including making emulsions, seasoning and stuffing salami, and mixing cures for whole muscle cured meats like capicola, culatello, speck, etc. Our evening will be rounded out by a wine pairing with Tyler Kay. Tyler is a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers as well as a Certified Specialist of Wine through the Society of Wine Educators. He has worked at the 3-star Michelin restaurant Alinea in Chicago among other things and is a shepherd/pig farmer at his farm in North Carolina. Tyler will be pairing 5 different wines with 5 different vintages of hams from the collections of Jim and Hand Hewn Farm. After dinner, we will party and make pizza in Jim’s wood-fired oven to round out the evening.
Day four is our last day to finish any loose ends from our work over the weekend and explore derivations of all of our work up to that point. We will have a breakfast of goetta, a Hand Hewn Farm favorite that is made with the stock and meat from the bones and the head of the pig that is similar to the more widely known scrapple. We will then have the opportunity to dig into the larder of Hand Hewn Farm and Jim Chlebowski to build an exclamation point of a charcuterie board for our final meal together.