Letters To Bourdain

Dear Chef Bourdain;

Not all your recipes are very clear. In fact, some of them are fucking mysterious. Take the pork rilletes, for instance. I got all the various kinds of pork required, pork belly, pork shoulder and pork fat – and followed your instructions; “Put it in a pot covered in water and cook for 6 hours. Shred, cover with fat in a dingus, wait for three days.”

Yeah. Well, after six hours, there was no way that pork was going to shred, and I didn’t know if that meant it should be cooked longer, or if it was too late. I poked around on the internet and some other people jacked the heat up for an hour or so at the end. I tried that. Still wouldn’t shred. Some sage advice from my future mother-in-law, who is a dab hand at cuisine a la Francaise, told me put a lid on it and let it sit on low heat for a while.

Even that didn’t work – the fat on the pork bellies had never melted and was still really firm. So fuck it, I threw it in the processor. It shredded. There was nothing in your recipe about knowing when it was done, what it would look like when i was done, etc. If it weren’t for La Grande Dame, I just wouldn’t have known what to do, and the whole thing would have been a waste. I’m still not sure that, with the fat slices raw on top, it’s really going to turn out right…but apparently when it cooled down in the pan, the little bits that were left tasted right.

So maybe it’s ok. I dunno, I just can’t tell. But…it’s pig jam. PIG JAM. I will eat that, even if it’s not right.

Davy