Every day during the summer, at 6:56 am and 8:43 am, Marion Sauveur gives you an idea of a recipe to brighten up your taste buds. On Thursday, she cooks Bigorre black pork in a pan.
Marion Sauveur, you are taking us this morning to the South West to discover a rare meat.
It is the Bigorre black pork. Exceptional, tender, very tasty meat with a fat / lean balance. As its name suggests, it is an all black pig, of pure Gascon race. It would have existed since Antiquity. All the Pyrenean peasants owned black pigs: they cost practically nothing and above all they allowed them to eat. They cooked with their fat, consumed fresh meat and made the rest of the cured meats. Without loss: because everything is eaten in the pig!
The animal almost disappeared in the 20th century with the arrival of more productive and less fatty breeds. But that was without counting on a handful of breeders who, in the early 1980s, relaunched their production with only 34 sows and two males on farms in the region. It is raised in its natural environment, in freedom, in the meadows and undergrowth of the Hautes-Pyrénées, of a small part of the Gers and the Haute-Garonne. It roams a lot and feeds on what it finds in its environment, especially herbs. He tastes as much as a cow! He also loves chestnuts and acorns that he finds in the fall and that gives good taste to a parsley meat with good fat.
A good fat that we buy in the form of a belly and that we finely cut to cover pieces of meat or vegetables, it perfectly aromatizes. It is tasted in cold meats, and in particular ham, which melts in the mouth. And it gives flavor to meats while cooking.
And how do we cook this Bigorre black pork?
No frills. It is self-sufficient meat. This morning, I suggest you cook a filet of black pork from Bigorre. We sear this fillet in a pan over medium heat, in which we put neither butter nor oil. It is not worth it, with the fat of the meat that will melt. Of course we put the fat on the bottom of the pan and we sprinkle this meat with this fat as and when. It is left to cook for a good ten minutes before turning it over and leaving it for five minutes. The meat must be pink. This is how it is eaten. It's quite surprising for pork, but Bigorre black pork is not really white meat. We reserve the meat when it is cooked.
We deglaze the juice with a little red wine, some aromatic herbs such as thyme, rosemary and bay leaf. Leave to thicken and grill the meat at the last minute. All you have to do is serve with a few vegetables such as well-baked, gourmet tomatoes and a few sautéed potatoes.
Do you have an address to taste a Bigorre black pork fillet?
At J'go in Toulouse. The chef cooks a simply grilled filet with a sauté pan. And it is accompanied by green beans in bundles covered with a thin slice of belly which will melt and season the beans. Happiness ! The J'go makes its own cured meats and in particular its sausage with honey to replace the bad sugars which are generally present in meats. Cured meats to discover also in their Parisian address.
And if you are on the Lyon side, go to the Bistrot du Potager. Chef Floriant Rémont also works Bigorre black pork in his kitchen, particularly bacon. This summer, he is making a rock octopus with Bigorre's black bacon. It goes with a mashed potato. A particularly gourmet dish!