La Matança del Porc

The Matança or pig killing is an annual event in Catalunya, and usual is an excuse for a party, albeit only after the hard work has been completed.
There is an element of ritual surrounding the day, but in reality, it is the summation of a year’s investment in animal feed and the provision of meat for the year to come.
Our neighbours had been rearing two pigs, and mentioned that they would be holding a matança, enquiring whether we would like to come and help. There is always a lot to do, and the more available to help the better. A cold, clear day is best and so I duly trotted down the road at the appointed time to meet the matador (slaughterer) and the pig’s owners, and lend what assistance I could.
The actual killing of the pig (with no name) was very simple, fast and quiet.
No stuck pig here, and within a matter of minutes we were loading it’s carcass onto a van to transport it 400 yards away to prepare it for the pot.
Scraping the skin with a knife, having first singed it with a blowtorch revealed a covering of smooth milky white fat  and then the work began. Skilfully, the butcher split the body into two halves, extracting the various ‘bits’ which were put on one side for one purpose or another. It was eerily like watching an episode of ‘Silent Witness’ as they remarked that most of the internal organs were similar in size to that of a human body.
No doubt the origin of the phrase ‘long pig’ in the cannibal language.
Having extricated the necessary pieces to take to the vet for analysis, the two sides were put on a table and covered, to be left for the night, and ready for the sausage fest the following day. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that only 90 minutes had elapsed – they work fast especially where something as important as food is concerned.
I was exhorted to bring my family the following day, and by the time we turned up, a cauldron was on the go (my daughter would not even look into it) full of suspicious-looking pieces of skin and bone, together with some bits you thought you could recognise, but would rather not.
The best meat – fillets, chop, pancetta  and steaks – had already been whisked away, and we were left with the making of the sausages, a serious business. We helped cut up, mix, and prepare the various piles of meat that grew ever larger. There was a remarkable air of calm and busy  endeavour as it all slowly began to make sense. This meat goes into making that type of sausage – these bits we will barbecue now – put those over there for making fuet, and where is the parika?
When it was judged that we had processed all the meat possible, we had a break for breakfast – a glass of red, bread with oil and a rib or two, together with some pieces that tasted delicious and fortunately were unidentifiable having been barbecued. My son (el carnivore) almost had to be dragged from the table.
Vast bowls were now assembled, spices were mixed and the sausage machine was brought out, together with a bowl of casings that had been soaked overnight. We made chorizo, bottifara – black and white, plain sausages, sobrasada and fuet – salt and pepper here, more paprika there. A hint of chili, some sugar to balance it, and some eggs to add some richness.
Each type of sausage had it’s own cut of meat, and therein lies the tricky part, knowing which bits to put into what sausage.
  Next we fed the sausage machine, having primed it with the casings, and then cut and tied them off into the correct size according to the recipe. The botifarras were then boiled in the cauldron, for twenty minutes and hung out to dry, under the careful eyes of two ever-circling dogs, waiting for their moment.
Once the work was over, we cleaned up and retired into the farm-house with a roaring fire and a table groaning with beans and various pork-derived products. It is traditional to serve beans with the pork at a matança, and cooked with pork fat, these were some of the nicest I had ever had.
The texture of the meat and it’s flavour, was astonishing, quite unlike anything we had tasted before, and the sausages had an undefinable quality which attested to their freshness.
We left in the late afternoon, replete and honoured to have been asked to share in this fiesta – we admired the skill of the butcher and his knowledge. Later that evening, our neighbour called in with several kilos of meat as a gift  for helping – it’s traditional apparently and I have no argument with that tradition.

There are at least seventeen officially recognised varieties of sausage in Catalunya, and we made four types.
Botifarra – the most common of all – white botifarras are medium coarse in texture and were seasoned with salt and pepper with a few eggs stirred into the pork. Black botifarra is a blood sausage using bread soaked in the blood of the animal and sometimes rice is added.
They are boiled for 20 minutes to ‘set’ all the ingredients, and hung out to dry for a couple of hours.
They are traditionally served boiled and sliced, although I much prefer the fried a la Northern Black Pudding from the UK.
Sobrassada is a smooth almost pate-like sausage flavoured with garlic and paprika, and is the speciality of Mallorca.  It is bright orange.
Spread on toasted bread, it is very rich, and a little goes a long way. It is dry-cured – we have been given one which has to hang in our kitchen for at lest two weeks before we can use it.
Chorizo – heavily reliant on paprika, in our version they included garlic, salt and pepper. Another one to dry but for much longer than the sobrassada.
Fuet – again dried – this sausage contains mixed meats and only salt and pepper. It is dried and then sliced as a cold cut.

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Posted by editor on 2010-03-01 Filed under March 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry