there is no better food than an egg fried in an iron skillet with bacon fat
or straight cold lard, Lee
"piedmont" > wrote in message
...
> Great article about lard,
> michael (piedmont)
>
> August 12, 2005
> High on the Hog
> By CORBY KUMMER
> Boston
>
> WHEN the New York City health department asked restaurants to stop serving
> food containing trans fats this week, it aroused anxiety in some diners
> but joyful anticipation in me. The stage might be set at last for the
> comeback of the great misunderstood fat: lard.
>
> Every baker knows that despite lard's heavy reputation (it is pig fat,
> after all), nothing makes a flakier or better-tasting pie crust. Lard also
> makes the lightest and tastiest fried chicken: buttermilk, secret spices
> and ancient cast-iron skillets are all well and good, but the key to fried
> chicken greatness is lard.
>
> Dainty eaters who pay dearly for prosciutto but leave the ivory-colored
> ribbon of fat on the plate infuriate Italians, who know that's where the
> flavor and succulence are. Italian food lovers now live for the recently
> revived lardo - salt-and-pepper-cured fatback, heaven on bread.
>
> In the United States though, lard has long been demonized. Whenever I
> enter a bakery (and I enter every one I find), I ask if anything is made
> with lard. Even in Mexican and Latin American bakeries with
> Spanish-spoken-only signs, where the bakers surely know that in their
> native countries the most savory empanadas and the airiest tamales rely on
> lard, my hopes are usually dashed.
>
> I recently got lucky at the wonderfully antiquated LeJeune's Bakery in
> Jeanerette, La. LeJeune's is famous for its French bread, which in
> Louisiana means a puffy white loaf particularly suited to muffalettas -
> the Louisiana version of the hero sandwich whose bread is soaked with
> olive salad and layered with provolone and meats like salami and ham. I
> wasn't surprised to hear the secret of LeJeune's exceptional flavor and
> soft but pliant crumb, but I was delighted: lard. The baker proudly led me
> to a tub of golden lard he had bought from the farm down the road. I was
> looking at a tub of joy.
>
> But when I went deeper into Cajun country, to bakeries down the highway
> from LeJeune's, or asked at restaurants where cooks once swore by lard for
> the lightest biscuits and fried catfish, I was met with the same
> misbegotten pride: "We only use vegetable fat, it's so much healthier."
>
> Vegetable shortening, of course, tastes like greasy nothing. And there is
> ample evidence, as the city health department knows, that it is anything
> but good for you. Vegetable shortening (vegetable oil that is partially
> hydrogenated to make it solid - the "trans" in "trans fat") did seem like
> a miracle in the early days of industrialized food. Indeed, early in my
> mother's marriage when she spent a month making a pie a day to perfect her
> crust-making skills, she used the fat she grew up on: Crisco, developed by
> industry to mimic the virtues of lard but relieve housewives of the burden
> of rendering their own fat. It was useful not just to kosher-keeping cooks
> like my mother but to city dwellers, who lived far from a reliable source
> of lard (any Italian cook will still tell you that the only trustworthy
> lard comes from a pig you know). Crisco could be used solid for baking, or
> melted for frying. It didn't need refrigeration, and it was inexpensive.
>
> Then came the damning conclusions of the first long-range studies of the
> national postwar epidemic of heart disease, and the countrywide fear of
> saturated fats. Butter, cream and egg yolks were the first to go, to the
> heartbreak of cooks just learning the glories of French cuisine, and lard
> soon followed. Besides, lard seemed old-fashioned - redolent of poverty
> and its companion cuisines.
>
> Now trans fats are considered the devil, and vegetable shortening is worse
> than butter could ever dream of being. After prodding by nutrition
> advocates, the Food and Drug Administration has taken the stand that there
> is no healthy level of trans fat in the diet, and as of January will
> require manufacturers to state the presence of trans fats on every food
> label. Now comes the call from Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York's health
> commissioner, for restaurants to "voluntarily make an oil change and
> remove artificial trans fat from their kitchens." What are beleaguered
> manufacturers and cooks to do? The loss of trans fats makes things tough.
> It makes pastry tough too.
>
> I have a suggestion for those Old World cooks who are wrestling with New
> World advice: take another look at the fat profile of lard. It has half
> the level of saturated fat of palm kernel oil (about 80 percent saturated
> fat) or coconut oil (about 85 percent) and its approximately 40 percent
> saturated fat is lower than butter's nearly 60 percent. Today's miracle,
> olive oil, is much lower in saturated fat, as everyone knows, but it does
> have some: about 13 percent. As for monounsaturated fat, the current
> savior, olive oil contains a saintly 74 percent, yes. But scorned lard
> contains a very respectable 45 percent monounsaturated fat - double
> butter's paltry 23 or so percent.
>
> As with all dietary advice, the fat of the day will change. But eternal
> truths will remain: food is always best with little or no processing and
> eaten as close as possible to where it is grown. This goes for lard, too.
> The artisan pig farmers whose fortunes have been revived by a new market
> for pork with real flavor should look into selling lard because the
> supermarket kind is processed and dismal. And Dr. Frieden's request may
> produce a burgeoning metropolitan market.
>
> The health department is suggesting alternative oils including olive oil
> and neutral oils like peanut, sunflower and cottonseed. Olive oil is a
> true gift of nature, of course, and good for anything on a grill or from
> the garden. But when it comes to cherry pie or fried chicken or French
> fries, excessive reliance on these oils has the potential to clear both
> arteries and restaurants. Chefs and short-order cooks can do everyone a
> favor - even the guardians of the public health - by reaching for the fat
> that everyone knows tastes the best: lard.
>
> Corby Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.