La boucherieLa boucherie rivaled Christmas itself for the position of main event of the winter. We were allowed to stay home from school when the boucherie took place at our house, and, depending of the amount of work to be done by my older brothers, we were allowed to skip school when my Uncle Rushian or another relative had their boucherie. La boucherie was an agricultural, sociological, economic, educational, and religious occasion. The fattened pigs represented the stored up feed and household scraps which had nourished the pigs into their corpulent state. It was a time for true charity to be practiced: when neighbors who had neither large families or pigs to slaughter were given substantial pieces of fresh meat. And it was a time for neighbors and relatives to gather and share their lives, retell their stories, and gather new knowledge about their associates and themselves. The produce of la boucherie, the salted and smoked pork, the sausage, the cracklins, the lard--all gave us the food and hope which made it possible to live through the wet and dreary winter.
The coldest February day was the best boucherie day. The colder the better. If rain was falling or if rain were threatened, the great event was postponed. Sad was the day when the hard decision was made to proceed, only to have cold rain come down after the slaughter had begun its irrevocable career. Then there was true chaos: mud everywhere mixed with pig hair and dried pig blood. Tempers were frayed by an early hour, and, of course, since so much depended on the quality of the hot water for the shaving of the pig, it was often necessary to put off the actual shaving and cutting of the animals until the rain abated and a true fire could be built up. In short, it was difficult, if not impossible, to do the work with any degree of grace.
But if the February weather were cold and crisp, and if the sun rose to make bright red streaks upon the eastern sky behind my Uncle Rushian's place, then the fire would crackle and the water in the black pot would hiss and steam, and the rifle shots marking the killing of the pigs would be applauded by those warming themselves around the fire. If it were a truly big boucherie, featuring three or four really large pigs, then there might be two fires and two pots, and double work.
By the time of boucherie day the pigs were often too obese to move, and lay there in their stalls, their knuckled legs too weak to support their huge bodies, their snouts extended over their trough of slop--living tableaux of gluttony and excess. Once they had been felled by the single rifle bullet in their brain, they were unceremoniously dragged by stout men and boys pulling at the stout rope which had been tied below the knuckled legs or behind the featureless neck. And now the obtaining of the blood: the artful cutting of the artery immediately after death, so that the death spasms themselves would propel the blood into the waiting receptacle. The blood was crucial to the making of the red boudin, the delicacy of late afternoon.
Now the pig was ready for the main event. A really heavy animal could not be lifted upon the trestle made of boards deployed over sawhorses and in such cases had to be cleaned on the ground, with gunny sacks placed on the ground next to it so that once shaven on one side its cleaned side could be turned onto the clean gunny sacks so that the other side could be rid of its hair. The shaving was done in this way: hot water was poured on the hair and then a sharp knife used as razor to remove the hair. Once the shaving was started in earnest, little pads of hair were used as staging areas for more shaving once they had been saturated with more hot water. The shaved pig was a fine spectacle, lying there on its sack or sawhorse with its flawless skin exposed and inviting caress.
What a wonder to behold the opening of the pig's body and the revelation of the incredibly beautiful organs which had empowered this animal with life! The liver was the first organ removed and, if it was judged to be sound, it was immediately turned over to the women for them to begin to fry pieces of the liver for the men's breakfast of hot biscuits and fried liver. Then the intestines were removed and also turned over to the women, who were waiting with their water and vinegar and peach switches (to empty and clean the intestines to be used as casings for boudin and sausage). The larger of the intestine were destined to become the main ingredient of andouille. The pace of activity increased. the ranchi or backbone was removed and the women received this precious portion to begin preparing the fricassee de ranchi, which, served over hot white rice, and accompanied by sweet potatoes and a green vegetable, would be the mainstay of the boucherie lunch.
Soon the black pot would be emptied of its hot water, washed, and readied for the making of cracklins. Into the pot would go the fat of the pig's skin with a small strip of lean meat attached to it. The cracklins would cook down until they had yielded all the grease of which they were considered capable. Then they would be scooped out of the hot grease, salted down, and allowed to cool. The grease itself would be allowed to cool and, when cool, would be poured into large metal cans where it would harden and whiten into marvelous lard. Into this lard much of the links and pieces of smoked sausage made later in the day would be deposited, to be retrieved and eaten throughout late winter and early spring. The lard itself would be used for frying everything from choupique (freshwater bowfin--a "trash fish" but still a delicay) to langue a boulée, fried bread dough.
And meanwhile the women will have been chopping and grinding select pieces of lean meat to be seasoned with onions, green and chopped, and bell peppers, and put in the boudin and sausage casings which by now have been flushed and re-flushed and left to stand in vinegar-water and turned inside out again and again with the help of the peach switches. Funnels made of small gourds will be used to help the thumb introduce the meat into the casing.
The slaughtering of several pigs yielded a large quantity of meat. Some of this meat was given to those whose work had made the boucherie possible, some distributed to neighbors and friends as morceaux de voisin, neighbors' portions. But the bulk of the meat was either salted down in large ceramic jars which rested majestically in the pantry or smoked for several days in an outbuilding. The building which was most often pressed into service for this function was the chicken coop, a development which, as can be imagined, caused a great upheaval among the poultry population. But how sweet the chore of picking the eggs while the smoking was going on--sneaking in with muffled face to see if the hens had been brave enough to lay their eggs despite the gross intrusion upon their domain.
The varieties of delicacies to come forth from a pig are truly amazing. There are, in addition to the roasts and chops and steaks of various denominations: chitterlings; hogshead cheese; gogue (pig's stomach); and pans de toilette (patties of pork sausage meat cooked in the pig's peritoneal membrane). And then the white and the red boudin and the pure pork sausage.
Then, once the boucherie was done, the meat salted down, the smokehouse fire started, the neighbors' portions distributed, there was time to bask in the fading February sun. Seated on a cleaned table which just a few hours ago had held tubs of sausage and boudin, propped against the weather boarded house in the receding angle of the weakening winter sun, one felt completed and satisfied.
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