The writer recently sampled a variety of fats on bread. Pictured: duck fat plus duck confit fat on bread.
(Globe Photo / Erik Jacobs)
Our waistlines may be appealing for restraint, but demon appetite, with its sharp little pitchfork, seems to prod us ever harder this time of year. We have barely begun winter; we still face its cold dark heart, and our atavistic selves feel the need of caloric stockpiling. In more traditional societies, we would be guiltlessly girding ourselves with bacon and sausage from the smokehouse, with potatoes fried in the silky fat from confit or the Christmas goose. In Italy, some lardo - salt-and-spice-cured fatback - is nearly ready.
Fat, seductive animal fat, sets our hearts racing (and my cardiologist's blood pressure soaring, if he's reading this). The season seems right for a carnival of fat. Indeed, America's Mardi Gras city, New Orleans, indulges dietarily before Lent takes gumbo with duck and andouille off the table and replaces it with gumbo z'herbes. Salads are for spring; in winter, we want fuel.
Local chefs seem to be doing their part. Pork belly, familiar from the last two or three winters, again cuts a prosperous figure on restaurant plates. We're seeing plenty of Berkshire pork - a deliberately less lean animal than the "other white meat" that commercial pork had become in order to appeal to lard-fearing Americans. The French Canadian treat poutine - french-fried potatoes, cheese curds, and gravy - is staining a number of white tablecloths. Every other restaurant kitchen seems to be turning out house-made charcuterie.
This year's "belly" dish is lamb. Sean Canny is not the only chef offering it, although he may be the only one with enough confidence to serve it to suburbanites. Among his clientele at Bistro 712 in Norwood, he says, he's "known for being a little out there" and he believes his customers will appreciate lamb belly as a cold-weather comfort food, akin to short ribs and lamb shanks.
Canny says, "Fat equals flavor in my head." Michael Fitzhenry, chef at South End Formaggio, calls the fat from a pork roast, plus a little of the crisp skin, "the ultimate treat." He thinks Formaggio customers go for fattier dishes this time of year and describes a recent big seller: braised Chinese-style bone-in pork belly. "You're getting bacon and spare ribs simultaneously," says Fitzhenry, "with a big layer of crackling on top." (He points out that a sensible portion of 3 ounces of meat with fat may be more satisfying than 12 ounces of lean.) Rob Evans, chef-owner of the Portland, Maine, restaurants Hugo's and Duckfat, likes to use house-cured lardo in place of pasta as ravioli skins; he pops the filled ravioli in the oven for a minute and the fat "gets translucent, you can see the filling, and you get nice warm lardo flavor."
If there is a foodie fat-is-back movement these days, it includes low-status cuts like pork jowl and lamb's ribs elevated to, well, perhaps not haute cuisine, but certainly cuisine in the urban-centric sense - a set of fashions and enthusiasms codified by restaurants and restaurantgoers. Along with these new stars, there's a humbler level of indulgence worth recalling: animal fats, rendered or cured, and often served on bread. These exist throughout European foodways, in the form of lardo, or griebenschmalz, or rillettes, etc.
Much of our contemporary dietary consumption is defined by what we discard - including fat. Provincial and folk cuisines do not discard, but husband. And then enjoy and exploit (thus pot likker; thus chicken gizzards). From that viewpoint, what effete fool says no to a delicious fat on bread?
We said yes recently to a half-dozen such, mostly drawn from venerable European cuisines. Here's what we had - and yes, this was a tasting; no, you wouldn't really chase goose fat with Ukrainian salo (fatback). Though frankly, none of our tasters demurred at any point. We were suburbanites, but each of us only two or three generations removed from Eastern Europe or rural America. As we gathered on an icy evening, it was easy to imagine our forebears collected around the table to eat one of these fats on bread with a bowl of hot broth for a meal.
We began with chicken schmalz. And no, you don't have to be Jewish. And that would be schmalz with the griebenes (plus a little fried onion). The rendering of animal fat produces, besides the creamy whitish part that you can buy at a butcher's, assorted solids, or griebenes (or, depending on who's describing, cracklings or greaves or scratchings or just "bits"). In Eastern European Jewish cooking, griebenes may specifically refer to chicken skin separated from the meat, then fried, often with onions, in chicken fat, and served as a crispy treat. But more generally, griebenes describes any of the solid remnants from melted chicken fat, and they are a big contributor of flavor. You don't see schmaltz jars on Jewish deli tables these days the way you once might have, but a schmear of it from our friend Mark's kitchen is homey and disarming, sweet from the onions and meaty from the griebenes. Mark says, when it comes to bread, don't fool around - chicken schmaltz goes on New York-style seeded rye. Like all the fats we sampled, it should be served around room temperature.
Griebenschmalz is the Germanic analogue, but from pork rather than poultry. There are Hungarian, Austrian, and other variations. Around here, you will find Polish smolec (pronounced SMALL-etz, not so far from schmalz) at Cafe Polonia in South Boston. It's offered in glass jars on the tables, to be eaten with the contents of the bread basket; you can buy it to take home at the Baltic European Deli across the street. Anya, a Polonia waitress, told us a typical smolec is made from lard, of course, bits of meat possibly including bacon and sausage, onion, marjoram, paprika. This was the best-scarfed item by our fat fete's tasting panel. It's somewhat Spammy in flavor (that's a good thing!) with a heavenly texture of chewy bits suspended in the smooth lard. It pairs very well with flavorful pumpernickel.
One fat that has gone from farmhouse to trendy bistro is rillettes, a French specialty, made from fatty cuts of pork cooked very slowly in more pork fat; the meat is then shredded and sealed with, yes, pork fat. The result, not surprisingly, has a generalized but quite mild porky flavor. Rillettes are denser and less unctuous than the other spreads we tasted, closer to a pate, something like dressed-up deviled ham in texture. Sourdough's edge makes the best rafts for this.
Our plain rendered duck fat was bland, with a very light poultry flavor. Heartier is the fat from confit, which picks up taste from the meat that it envelops. Better yet is duck schmalz with griebenes (save this the next time you roast duck), which falls into the pan during cooking. This is delirious with flavor and stands up to the heartiest whole-grain breads.
Our goose fat was from a friend's holiday bird; during roasting, a goose releases cups of this gold. It had more flavor than the pure rendered duck fat, perhaps because, being homemade, it stayed in contact with the drippings for a good while. Goose fat on bread is commonplace in many European cultures, and no wonder. The fat gently robes the tongue and is both mild and rich in flavor, with, we swear, a floral quality in the mix. We sopped a country white bread in this lovely stuff, and they were perfect companions.
Salo, a salted pork fatback favored by Ukrainians, is decidedly down home. According to the helpful woman behind the register at Babushka Deli in Brighton, the traditional way to eat it is with dark rye and cloves of raw garlic: first a bite of fat and bread, then a bite of garlic. The salo is much more temperate in flavor than you think it's going to be. The garlic tastes like you expect, and counterpunches the lavish fattiness of the pork. We're guessing that even in Ukraine, this is not a first-date dish.
You would have to call lardo an artisanal fatback; the most illustrious may be Italy's lardo di Colonnata, aged for months in marble tubs placed in caves. Lardo was the glamour fat at our tasting - no less than Mario Batali began championing it in this country a few years back. Ours was produced by Niman Ranch (available online and at retailers). We liked it best after it was heated to translucence; it's slightly chewy and has a lovely clear aroma, with spice and nuttiness in the flavor. The salt was too much for some; others got used to it after a bite or two. Eat on a thick (to disperse the salt) slice of toasted mild bread.
As far as we know, the fat from duck breast prosciutto does not really exist as a discrete delicacy. The very idea of it is ridiculous and excessive - to buy already expensive charcuterie and then separate the wisps of fat from the lean. But once we conceived it, we couldn't resist this descent into decadence (we did give the lean to the servants). It is extraordinary: rich in flavor but glimmering in texture - as melting on the tongue as butter. Wonderful with challah or other egg bread.
For dessert, you could go for mincemeat pie with a leaf-lard crust. But maybe better, how about a nice piece of fruit?
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