Tuesday, February 7, through Friday, February 10
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Our thirteenth annual Whole Hog event will soon be here. Over the past twelve years Oliveto’s Whole Hog dinners have become a spectacular array of pork preparations, a delicious extravaganza, but also somewhat excessive, and in recent years much copied and well…very 2007. So Chef Jonah’s decision to [...]
New to this year’s Whole Hog Dinners, we’ll be wood fire roasting a different whole hog from one of our ranchers each night. Saturday, March 12th, will be Mac Magruder’s half Wild European, half Gloucestershire Old Spot heritage breed. Chef Jonah got pretty excited when he first starting…
This year’s event will be as fully developed and as decadent as Whole Hog dinners of the past, including such beloved items as choucroute garni, smoked and brined cuts, chops, meatballs, offal, braises, long-aged prosciuttos, and, of course, salumis of all stripes…in other words, pig from head to tail. Quite literally in fact: among Jonah’s new items…
After learning this past week of the sale of Niman Ranch, I called Paul Willis our Iowa hog farmer and co-founder of Niman Ranch Pork Company, to make sure he was OK. We were just beginning a week of Whole Hog dinners. The Niman Ranch name and the network of several hundred hog farmers who share animal treatment, feed and handling standards remain, but the company has not made it through this economy…
Paul Willis still lives on the farm where he grew up, in Thornton, IA about 100 miles north of Des Moines. Paul’s passions have always included animals and taking care of the land. It is this passion that led him…
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