Boudin! Boudin! Boudin!

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you should know all about the importance of cooking "head to toe" ... or, in this case - snout to tail. Owen got to witness our little piggies (well... not so little) being slaughtered, bled and butchered last weekend, and then made his first-ever batch of boudin noir (blood sausage) using the fresh blood. So, without further adieu... (and WARNING: this is another gruesome one, folks)

There are our beloved KiKis, spooning and snoozing before the big morning-o-kill.

This little piggy is going to market.



















...but not without a bolt to the head. For those concerned - this was a very quick and painless death. No squealing was involved in the process... in fact, Anthony Bourdain's description in A Cook's Tour proved to not be true in the slightest.

Gabriel woke up at 6am to make sure the fire was going underneath the kettle, plenty of time to get water boiling for the cleaning.

Cleaning le cochon...















The whole crew (even Gabriel's daughter, Melina, on the far right!) helps shave and clean the piggy.








Shaving the pig.
















Most of the hair was taken off by a "cow bell"-esque razor. What they couldn't take off by shaving was done with a blow torch (see here).











Our tractor came in handy when it came time to split the pig in half. Voila!














Bon! Melina surprises the crew with a basket of hot coffee, shot glasses, and Calvados. Let the Celebration of Pig commence!

Cheers to the pig!

Now, it's time to make some boudin noir. After much searching, we found a good recipe online - perfectly simple for first-timers. First, O prepares some diced apples... he then minced about a thousand (we had to multiply the recipe x5) onions (which I unfortunately did not get a picture of... too busy crying).

All the prepped ingredients: onions cooked in pork fat (the tray in the back) - Calvados, blood (obvi!), 4spice in the coffee mug (white pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg), parsley (the green stuff), minced garlic and fresh ground pepper (to the left of the mug), ground fat back (to the left of the parsley), ground lean pork meat in the foil, diced apples sauteed in pork fat (to the right of the meat), and milk - obviously from our farm, duh!






Everything mixed together. Mmmm.









O had to get a little creating with the stuffing technique: since we didn't have a proper-sized funnel, he cut the bottom off of a plastic bottle... it worked perfectly!

After cooking for about 30 minutes in hot water - voila! Our 5x batch made about 24 links of boudin noir. Bon Appetit!

...and, as always, stay tuned... next up will be our visit to the castle Haut Koenigsbourg!