Weds
3/27 |
Carl Edgar Blake II
Owner, Rustik Rooster Farms
RustikRoosterFarms.com
@Rustikrooster
NYTimes profile
DesMoines Register profile notable:
He’s a WWE-wrestler of a guy, a tree trunk in overalls with one buckle hitched down low and work-worn hands that could palm a prize-winning watermelon.
He’s also a college graduate with years of computer consulting and tech startup businesses under his expansive belt. And a guy who describes himself as a voracious reader, who turned Macintosh computers into aquariums, and builds Indian motorcycles from scratch...Right now, though, it’s all about the pigs. “The best-tasting pig in the world,” Blake claims.
Since 2007, the 48-year-old Blake has been working on crafting the most delicious pig in the country. Research, tracking down actual pigs to work with and breeding them has consumed the intervening years. Now, he says, he’s found his porcine paradise in a rejiggered version of a prized German pig, the Swabian Hall...The rare heritage breed is beloved by chefs for its richly flavored red meat marbled with plenty of fat, and Blake’s Iowa Swabian Halls have racked up culinary contest wins...
In another of his off-the-beaten-track ventures, Blake feeds the pigs not standard commercial feed but mostly hydroponically grown barley, living grains and canary grass. The pigs are not confined, so are free to graze and root in the dirt, where they gather nutrients and immunities.
Though this type of feeding system has its detractors, something seems to be working, and Madison’s Chef Fox is not the only fan of the rich, unfashionably fat Iowa Swabian meat that Blake is producing. Among foodies, meat experts and chefs, there is a growing push-back against the lean meat of what Blake calls “pink pigs.”
MacAquarium
WCFCourier profile notable:
Iowa leads the nation in pork production, and the vast majority of pigs live in climate-controlled confinement buildings. While it is an efficient way to raise hogs in large quantities, the Blakes said the white meat of Duroc, Hampshire, and other common breeds today is too lean and dry.
The Blakes' hogs have the exact opposite traits. The meat of the Iowa Swabian Hall is red in color and has ample fat marbled in.
"They have to be the ugliest pigs ever; they look like Chinese Shar-Pei dogs," Carl said of his Meishan breeding stock. "The skin just hangs off of them, they are so fat."
Fat enhances the flavor of meat. The Blake's hogs have garnered rave reviews on the national and local levels...Just because the hogs have a lot of fat doesn't mean they're unhealthy, Ankrum and Carl Blake said. The men said the monounsaturated fat is similar to olive oil. It's high in good cholesterol and low in bad cholesterol, and high in Omega-3 fatty acids.
"In theory the bacon is good for you, which sounds bizarre," Ankrum said...
Local food advocate Kamyar Enshayan of Cedar Falls recently ordered an Iowa Swabian Hall pig after sampling the meat at the Northeast Iowa Food and Farm Partnership dinner. He not only loved the taste, but liked how the pigs are raised. They have access to the outdoors, no antibiotics or growth hormones on market hogs and the animals are fed grain, peanuts, rye, barley and canary grass.
blog mention: "it looks like someone grafted the face of a shar pei onto a black pig" |