Fine Swine

In

a world where prewashed, precooked and preprocessed foods are usurping ever more supermarket shelf space, it's easy to forget the origins of what we eat. For those who enjoy sausage but would rather not dwell on its provenance, this ignorance is bliss. For those with more curiosity, there's a book: Pork & Sons, a collection of ruminations and 150 rustic recipes in which the star isn't bacon, black pudding, salami or Speck, but the creature that is the source of these culinary treats.

Already a best seller in France, Pork & Sons won the Grand Prix de la Gastronomie Française and is being published in English in time for the newly dawned Year of the Pig. Part cookbook, part personal narrative, it reflects the allegiances of its author, Stéphane Reynaud, a self-taught chef who was born into the meat business. "I love the pig and like the pork," he writes. While his musings about pigs are affectionate, Reynaud, 40, avoids sentimentality by refusing to gloss over the animal's journey from pen to plate. Instead he makes a feature of it, opening the book with a chapter titled "Pig-Killing Time at Saint-Agrève" (his mountain hometown in the Ardèche region of France) that is a frank, celebratory portrayal of the "taking apart and devouring" of one of the locally raised swine.

Readers who want less "taking apart" and more "devouring" will be glad to move on to Reynaud's abundance of recipes based on dishes from his Parisian restaurant, Villa9Trois. They range from simple and straightforward (ham-and-gherkin sandwiches, croque-monsieur snacks) to elaborate and exotic (jugged wild boar with spelt-and-saffron risotto, pot-roast confit with lemon-flavored coriander salad). All are enticingly photographed by Marie-Pierre Morel, though some of the dishes are not for the squeamish. For example, a hearty stew introduced early in the book lists pig's liver, pig's kidneys and pig's heart among its ingredients, while an entrée named "Pig's Head and Parsley Pâté" was conceived to use up the meat leftover from a slaughter.

More than a catalog of meals, Pork & Sons tells the story of a community bound together by its passion for pork. It can be navigated with the help of an index, but unlike most standard cookbooks, it can also be appreciated as a narrative by reading front-to-back, letting the flavors and insights unfold over the course of 13 chapters. The pages are peppered with dozens of photographs of the region and its people, and with playful cartoons drawn by Reynaud's close friend, José Reis de Matos. The visuals complement the chatty, engaging voice of the author as he introduces some of his accomplices: Aimé, the "prince of the art of cutting up the carcass"; Bibi, the bistro owner with a "paunch as welcoming as a soft pillow to a tired head at night"; and Pompon, the Armagnac supplier who doubles as a "learned professor of pâté."

Of course, Reynaud makes sure to acquaint readers with the average Ardèche swine, whose life may be prematurely curtailed but is nothing short of blissful while it lasts. On a spread devoted to Eric, a pig rearer, the author proclaims that "Eric's pigs are happy pigs." And why wouldn't they be? From the age of three weeks they are pampered with a banquet of whey, potatoes and cabbage; their lifestyle is "No stress, plenty of space and lots and lots to eat." The emphasis in Reynaud's world is on quality, both of life and of meat. He cannot help but lament the methods employed by modern livestock operations and their bland product, and worry about the preservation of traditional ways of farming and living. Nonetheless, he remains optimistic. Tradition "mount[s] a good defense against the standardization of flavor in today's food industry," he says. While the battle is far from won, he predicts that the old ways will prevail.

Like the 1995 movie Babe, which has also explored the relationship between man and swine, Pork & Sons is a reminder of what goes into our mouths and stomachs. But while the film's anthropomorphic rendering of a pig's life may have converted some viewers to vegetarianism, the book version is more likely to foster a readership of confirmed carnivores—a fitting tribute to an animal that brings so much to the table.