I was talking with a friend the other day about menu development and ingredients, cheeses and different curing techniques. I don’t know a lot of people who I can have really good food discussions with, so I love my talks with Jason. He is a very creative Chef in Austin who works with local farmers and does everything he can in-house. In one of our talks more than a year ago I told him that I found the best Bacon in the country--Benton’s Bacon, I gave him some and asked his opinion on the product, and in turn he told me he liked it. We talked about the flavor and I asked him what kind of bacon he uses. He said I make my own. If you can do it yourself, you do.
In my operation making my own bacon does not make sense. So fortunately Benton’s is for me. In our talk he said he found a pig blood source and he was making sausage and other things, which made me think that of the times I have used pig blood. I have not used it to make sausage before and it is on my things to do list. I have used it mainly in braises and in thickening sauces. Our conversation about pig blood took place the time I was writing the French Dinner menu.
We did this dish Pork Civet. Civet means thickening the sauce with blood. It is an old French recipe where you cut up pork shoulder and marinate it in red wine and mirepoix for one week mixing it every day. You braise the pork in the same wine you marinate it in and thicken the sauce with the blood after the pork is cooked. I used pork cheeks for this menu thinking better flavor. However, finding the blood was not as easy as I expected it to be. My meat providers were of no help, so I called up one of my cooks on his day off and asked him to go to the Dekalb Farmers Market and pick some up. He sent me a text three hours later with a PC of the blood that said: “Do you love it?” I responded back "I love it." the thickening of the sauce happens when the blood coagulates, so you need to temper it in.
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