The Belted Pigs of Siena

The Belted Pigs of Siena

We’ve had two Mulefoot hogs, a breed once considered too fatty to be desirable. Now, Mulefoot and other largely ignored breeds are becoming cherished for their excellent flavor which is due, at least in part, to their fat content.

In Italy, the Cinta Senese breed was, like the U.S. Mulefoot, in danger of extinction…until a few producers took it upon themselves to rescue this breed and feed their delicious meat to the world.

Outside Siena is Spannochia (http://www.spannocchia.com/), a farm that, among other things, raises Cinta Senese pigs, so called because they have a white “belt” (in Italian, cintura) around their mid-section, and they come from around Siena (thus Senese).



After we visited with the Cinta Senese pigs, who seem to be enjoying life high in the hills outside Siena, we went to the main house to eat some products made from these pigs.

Our guide presented me with a platter of larder, rigatino, prosciutto, capocollo, salame and sopressata.



Of these, I was most impressed by the lardo, flavored with rosemary, juniper and bay, and the sopresatta, made with traditional baking spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, anise, etc.), very tender and delicious. What makes these pigs and their products so tasty, of course, is their beautiful and tasty fat.

After our tour of Spannochia, we went back to Montestigliano (http://www.montestigliano.it/), where we were staying.



A few days before, I’d walked along another leg of this Cypress walkway, late at night, listening carefully for cinghiale, the wild boar that seems more of a nuisance to local farmers than a food stuff.

I saw a stuffed cinghiale at La Specola (http://www.msn.unifi.it/CMpro-l-s-11.html), one of Florence’s most odd and disturbing museums.



You probably don’t want to be alone and in the woods when you run into one of these tusked creatures, unless you’re armed, but they roam quite freely in the Tuscan hills. Male cinghale sometimes mate with Cinta Senese, but Cinta Senese males seem to never mate with cinghale. The cinghale, as you might suspect, are wild and fierce, and so are free to have their way with the more docile and domesticated Cinta Senese.

My understanding is that there are so many of these boar in the area that people frequently don’t eat many of the ones they kill. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time before the culinary possibilities of cinghiale are fully explored and appreciated, and their meat becomes as valued as other breeds once considered less desirable.

Hammond,

Lovely piggies! Lovely countryside! New slogan for the Localists: "Mange local, mange cinghiale!" Bet those suckers are L E A N!

TODG and I have had three pastured, completely organic Large Black pigs, two females and one male. The first female produced some of the finest pork I've ever had; the male was impossible to 'titrate' on the stove--always over- or under-done. The second female was intermediate. We finally decided that quality control is difficult for a farmer with only a miniscule herd.

Geo

Geo wrote:We finally decided that quality control is difficult for a farmer with only a miniscule herd.

Hey Geo, here's another quality control issue related to Cinta Senese: they are frequently belted but are sometimes all-black; people want only the belted ones for breeding even in situations where the all-black ones might actually be better physical specimens; thus a cosmetic preference can sometimes lead to offspring that are not optimal.

A bad case of eating with the eyes, eh David?

Did you taste any of this cooked, e.g., roasted, grilled, etc? The thing that makes the Large Black, and other heritage breeds, succulent is the intramuscular fat. Probably the Sienna is the same...

Geo

Geo wrote:Did you taste any of this cooked, e.g., roasted, grilled, etc? The thing that makes the Large Black, and other heritage breeds, succulent is the intramuscular fat. Probably the Sienna is the same...

I had it only cured in various ways, never cooked, but yes, it's all about the intramuscular fat.