Sept 25 & 26 - Mangalitsa Pork Belly Waffle Debuts at Monsoon (SEA)

On September 25 & 26, you'll be able to get a Mangalitsa pork belly waffle at Monsoon on Seattle's Capitol Hill, made with pork from Heath Putnam Farms.

It is a waffle with braised pork belly - essentially, a super-premium version of a McGriddles, a dish that McDonald's invented for breakfast.

By combining salty, sweet, fatty and meaty flavors - there may even be something sour in there - the Mangalitsa pork belly waffle delivers extraordinary satisfaction.

Chef Josh at Monsoon woke up from a dream with the idea of a pork belly waffle.*

He first executed it with their non-Mangalitsa pork. I delivered some Mangalitsa the day they debuted it, and there was a receipt from a table where four of four guests had ordered it, leaving a note like, "best idea ever! Really, we are serious!"

Ever since then, I've been angling to get a Mangalitsa pork belly waffle at Monsoon, and it's finally happening - September 25 & 26.

I've been pushing and pushing for this because I want to be able to eat the thing - and I know it will be a hit with people. Monsoon already has fantastic waffles, thanks to some culinary collaboration between Eric Banh and William Belikis. The thought of adding Mangalitsa pork belly to those waffles is just too much.


* Perhaps he ate a few McGriddles and then took a nap.

Mangalitsa Sirloins - Shortage - Economics

There's a cut we sell that corresponds to a "striploin" on a beef.

We call it a boneless sirloin - although it is a lot smaller than the "sirloin" on a pig, because ours is just the meat of the pig's lower back, without any of the pelvic meat.

It's very popular with fine dining. The typical customer is Corton, 2 michelin stars, in New York City. We produce enough for them and a few other restaurants.

Why is it so popular? For instance, from the top of the pig, I'll eat the "Schopf" - aka Heath Putnam Farms Austrian Pig Neck every time. That's the cut most Mangalitsa farmers will eat, including my friends at the Herbfarm.

I think the boneless sirloin is popular because it doesn't have big veins of fat. It is a block of (hopefully) very marbled meat. Fat phobic people eat it without feeling guilty or nervous.

Anyway, there's not enough of that to go around right now - from coast to coast. Foods in Season is out until next week, and DeBragga is out. The next best substitute is from Spanish Iberico pigs (assuming they are labeled properly).

I just got a call today from a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. He knows that I know where all the sirloins are.

The guy is very busy. He isn't calling me to be friendly - although he was very polite and friendly. He's just exhaustively searching for what he wants.* The fact that he's calling me is a sure sign that there's a shortage!

What does this tell me? It tells me the price is too low. We need increase the price on that stuff. We also need to produce more - but in the short term, all we can do to allocate the parts to avoid a shortage is to increase the price.

Why won't I raise the price immediately? Because it will irritate my distributors and customers. I promised them we'd hold prices at certain levels for a while, to get demand increasing, in preparation for the bigger kills in the Fall.

If we set the price at the level where the market cleared, people - customers and distributors - would be maximally irritated. So long as I'm in this business, I need to have good relationships with my customers, because it is a small world. Also, if I set the prices too high, I'd have inventory building up, which is expensive and hurts cashflow - and it stops people from eating the stuff.

This illustrates something about economics that many economists don't understand - consumers (distributors & chefs) bear grudges, and they hate price volatility and especially price increases. As much as I love liquid markets, most markets aren't liquid and impersonal. It means you need to be very careful whenever you quote prices - if you quote too low and then have to raise them, people will scream.

* I've seen pigs do this - they'll go over to the feeder and look under the lids, to see if there's any feed.

Thomas Keller, Johnston County Hams, Suisun Valley Farm

Suisun Valley Farm's Mangalitsa Pigs

I've got Thomas Keller on the brain tonight, for a few reasons:

1) Per Se is buying Mangalitsa hams from Johnston County Hams. Month ago, I sold the fresh hams to Johnston County Hams. They paid a small fortune for those hams. Rufus Brown cured them into their current form. Now Rufus is selling them to the best restaurants in the USA.

2) Per Se's sister restaurant, The French Laundry, is buying five ridiculously fat (approx. 285# carcass) Mangalitsa pigs from Suisun Valley Farm. I bred those pigs and sold them to Suisun Valley Farm. My first Mangalitsa pig that I killed went to The French Laundry. Several years later, they keep buying Mangalitsa pigs. Despite them being ridiculously ugly and fat, they keep buying them - because they taste the best.

3) Per Se regularly buys our Mangalitsa loins from DeBragga.

Mangalitsa ham.

Basically, Keller's staff loves Mangalitsa pork. The fact that they buy all this stuff tells everyone that Mangalitsa pork and Mangalitsa hams (from Johnston County Hams) are the best. Why do people think that?

Because of things like this article on Thomas Keller. There were a few parts that had special meaning for me:

He weighed out and smelled Australian winter truffles the size of softballs, each worth approximately $1,100. "You see how this smells a little off?" he asked me, holding one up to my nose. I didn't. "I'm going to send it back."

Ouch! What are those guys going to do when the truffles come back in? Is an imperfect truffle worth even a few hundred bucks? Someone is about to lose their shirt.

Heath Putnam Farms (aka "Wooly Pigs") produces great stuff. But sometimes, for one reason or another, the stuff isn't as good as it should be. When someone working for Keller or Paul Liebrandt sends something back, you pay attention. You give them a credit. You apologize for wasting their time - and you try to make sure it never happens again.

What I've learned:

1) As much as possible, avoid mistakes. Part of always being the best is avoiding unnecessary mistakes.

2) As long as you make the very best, you are in a strong position, because there's always some people who want the best, and have the money to pay for it. As soon as you aren't the very best, it isn't any fun.

3) Develop markets for the less-than-perfect stuff. Prepare yourself for the pain of discounting the stuff to clear it out. As you are selling it off and feeling the pain, figure out how to avoid ever being in that situation ever again.

Here's another quote from the article:

I remembered what Keller had told me the previous night: "I don't discuss price with my suppliers." If you want quality, you pay. And if you're Thomas Keller, you can. Unlike most restaurateurs, Keller doesn't struggle to keep his restaurant afloat: dinner service at the French Laundry stays at a "predictable 74 each night," said Keller - in the height of summer, in the dead of winter, always filled to capacity.

Keller will pay the most for the very best stuff. The fact that he'll pay what it costs doesn't mean you can ream him - because it isn't like you can sell him and someone else the same thing, but charge Keller more just because he'll spend more money.

If you produce a luxury good, there's some price at which all the stuff will get sold. That's approximately what you'll sell it for (maybe a bit less, so you don't get stuck with inventory). It is no fun when you produce too much of a super-premium product and have to discount it deeply to sell it all. Among other things, as your circle of customers widens, you deal with increasingly unpleasant people, whose checks are more likely to bounce.

Keller likewise limits supply to get his desired outcome. His dining room is purposefully small (or, you could likewise say, his prices are purposefully low).

Were the room bigger (or were his prices higher), he might not sell out all nights. That would make it difficult for him to run the restaurant, because he'd have to increase/decrease staff accordingly, and he'd have more wasted food. Most importantly, on emptier nights, guests wouldn't feel so lucky and special to have a spot in the dining room.

Bauchspeck Recipe

Here's our Mangalitsa speck recipe. It is the same for bellies or jowls:

100# de-ribbed & beveled Mangalitsa bellies
2.5 lbs salt + 4oz Sure Cure (6.25%nitrite)
12 oz brown sugar
4 oz #14 Black Pepper
4 oz Ground Corriander
4 oz Ground Ginger
2 oz Granulated Garlic
2 oz Crushed Juniper berries

1. Rub both sides of each belly, stack in vat meat to meat, skin to skin for 3 to 4 weeks (10 days if bellies are previously frozen).

2. Brush off excess cure mixture.

3. Hang on smoke racks and cold smoke for 6 hours. We use applewood.

4. Let hang to dry age.


As I mentioned before, the details of the speck process don't really matter. I really might as well have said (as I explained in previous posts):

1. Make a cold-smoked, dry-cured bacon, with pepper, ginger, coriander, garlic and juniper.

2. Dry it until it is shelf-stable.

The key to this is using the bellies of old Mangalitsa pigs that have eaten the right feed. Unless you get that right, your speck will be mediocre, because your meat will be relatively flavorless, and your fat will be heavy and probably rancid.

That's why so many of the best restaurants in the USA buy our stuff; we optimize the variables that matter, consistently producing the best.

Why give away the recipe? There's two reasons:

1. We sell the bellies. Giving away the recipe helps to sell the bellies.

2. It hammers home the fact that the quality of the raw material is so important.

Typical Mangalitsa Experience

I found this quote in a chatroom:

I met up with a friend for dessert at one of the best restaurants in town. It turns out she knew the chef, and we ended up with 5 courses and three desserts, including some off-menu stuff and my first taste of mangalitsa pork.

It was amazing, but I had already eaten dinner because I had only planned on having dessert out. Then I thought of you, and I finished every delicious bite. I hurt all the next day, but it was worth it.

The incredible quality of Mangalitsa pork sells itself.

Dining in Budapest

A quote from a website about Mangalitsa pigs in Hungary:

Speaking of mangalica pork, I will end this post by saying that that meat is unlike anything I have ever seen. The flesh of this Hungarian breed is dark rosy, verging on red. The meat is well-marbled and boasts at least four inches of fat on the back and belly. I’d say it’s worth traveling six thousand miles for that pig alone.

Upcoming Four-State Wiesner Tour

The Wiesners are touring the USA soon. They'll visit New Jersey, Texas, Michigan and California.

The events held in New Jersey in January 2010 at Mosefund farm attracted a neat bunch of people, who went out to New Jersey for three days so that they could learn how to kill, cut up, cure and cook Mangalitsa pigs.

In early 2009, there was a small class in Woodinville on similar topics. One student from that class is now building a USDA-inspected plant in his house's basement. This is one instance of a general phenomenon - the people with the interest and ability to pay to learn how to kill and process the best-tasting pigs known to mankind are often able to do things that normal people can't.

If you read his blog, he's saying he'll start with sausage. Sure - that's how he'll start. Then he'll add more HACCP plans and more products. It is a big deal just to get up and running. It isn't so hard to add more products later.

That illustrates what I'm talking about - the guy is building a USDA-inspected plant in his basement, on a shoestring. If I didn't know that David was doing it, I might think it was impossible. That fact that David says he'll do it tells me that not only is it possible, but that he'll almost certainly get it done.

At the Mosefund class in January (held on the farm of a famous Wall Street investment banker), besides an artist (with work hanging at the NY Met), there was a doctor, several guys who run meat processing operations and many respected chefs.

I don't know much about the various classes that will take place later this year, but I do have some advice for people:

• If you just want to get a lot of practice cutting up pigs with seam butchery techniques, you can do that at the slaughterhouse Heath Putnam Farms uses (and had the Wiesners train). Obviously interested parties - like some of St. Louis's best chefs - have a big advantage over people living farther away.
  

• If you want to attend any Mangalitsa class, you need to send the organizers your money to reserve a spot. A lot of people say they'll attend. The ones who pay first are the ones who get what they want.

Nipples & Udders, Deadhead Boars

A bunch of sows got culled for damaging their nipples. They probably stepped on them or snagged them. Obviously, if they don't have nipples, they can't feed their pigs.

Others are getting culled for drying up. It is terrible when a sow dries up and can't feed her pigs naturally.

These sows that have the problems have particularly short legs and low-hanging bellies. They have some of the best bodies, but if they can't do their job, they get culled.

There's a boar who is getting culled for not being able to consistently get his penis into a sow's vagina. The guy has one job to do - breed the sows - and he can't do it competently.

It is tough on the pig breeder - he hand mates the sows, so he has to watch the trainwreck unfold every time he tries to use this boar.

If the boar lived in the wild, he'd have it a lot tougher. He'd have to spend most of his time proving to the other boars that he was the toughest. We take all that pressure away - all he has to do is breed those sows. He's one of the best looking boars we've got - but if he can't do his job, he's got to go.

Raw Meat vs Cured Products

I saw a blog entry about a Chicago food business by Andrew Huff. He writes:

City Provisions' meats are all from farms within 200 miles of the store, and are butchered and cured on site, such as wonderfully smoky pastrami (which I had on dark rye with mustard), bacon and lardo.

Yet if you look at their sign, they've got meat products from La Quercia and Fra Mani. Those are both 200+ miles from Chicago - and one assumes their meat comes from farther than 200 miles from Chicago.

I found where the author might have got the 200-mile fact:

The raw meat case--with made to order cuts of meat (smoked on site)--contains meat raised from within a 200 mile radius of Chicago, and butchered on site.

"I believe it is important to know where your food comes from and what goes into getting it to your plate," said owner, Cleetus Friedman. "We want to be a focal point for the community and be a source for education about the local food movement."

So apparently they are just claiming the raw stuff comes from 200 or fewer miles away.

One thing I've noticed about people who buy cured products is that they'll make up reasons to buy and eat things if they taste good enough while ignoring reasons to not buy. You see people do that with Italian products, Spanish products, etc.

I think the tendency of people to break the rules on cured products, but not raw meat, is directly related to how addictive the products are. When the products are exceptionally good - e.g. Mangalitsa or Iberico - people don't demand that the stuff be local, sustainable, organic, humane, raised by macrobiotic Zen Buddhists, etc. If they bring that stuff up, its after deciding to purchase.

For instance, I've seen people eat Mangalitsa speck, decide to buy and then ask, offhandedly, ".. and the pigs are naturally & sustainably & organically raised and all that, right?"

I would presume that most drug dealers, even in Berkeley California, don't ever hear, "and this is organic, right?" or "was the crack made from fair trade ingredients, cooked up by staff given full health benefits and pensions?"

I've noticed similar attitudes in Trader Joe's customers. From what I've seen, their most important concerns are taste and price. They don't dig much deeper than that - perhaps because it might things more difficult. For example, from this article:

Some of that may be because Trader Joe's business tactics are often very much at odds with its image as the funky shop around the corner that sources its wares from local farms and food artisans. Sometimes it does, but big, well-known companies also make many of Trader Joe's products. Those Trader Joe's pita chips? Made by Stacy's, a division of PepsiCo's Frito-Lay. On the East Coast much of its yogurt is supplied by Danone's Stonyfield Farm. And finicky foodies probably don't like to think about how Trader Joe's scale enables the chain to sell a pound of organic lemons for $2.

By no means am I attacking Trader Joe's or its customers. Trader Joe's does a great job giving its customers what they want. Trader Joe's customers are practical, which is good.

What's great about Mangalitsa is that the stuff tastes wonderful enough - and truly different - that most customers stay focused on things like price, availability and other practical matters. That's even more the case with cured products, like these cured Mangalitsa hams and shoulders.