NAPLES, SIENA and YUCATAN

Heirloom Pigs and Tomatoes

I am astonished at how far the supplies of raw materials for the feeding of America have come in the last 25 years. But there is still one area that America has failed.

Pigs. Heirloom on a scale that is available to all.

Not so with the pigs outside my Italian window a while ago who didn’t seem to mind looking thin. And they don’t taste as if they are. Perhaps because they are very chic. Gucci or Armani could not have designed them better. They are the “Cinta Senese” or “Queen of the Italian pigs.” A domesticated breed of wilder ancestors, midnight brown bordering on black, with a strawberry pink bordering on red stripe on their front haunches down to their legs and hooves. 

Almost a handbag.

Photo Courtesy of Fine Dining Lovers

I guess the best part of the breed is that it has not been tampered with since the Middle Ages. Except when in the 1950’s when breeders tried to get them to be more fertile. Coming to their senses recently, the people who put fences around these pigs have let them …