May-June 2016_nobleed

Lard

Grease is the word by Sara Roahen

“I t’s the one who holds the skillet that knows the cost of the lard.” — from “Gombo Zhebes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs,” by Lafcadio Hearn, 1885. In 2005, The New York Times ran an op-ed piece called “High on the Hog,” in which the writer Corby Kummer calls for the comeback of “the great misunderstood fat”: lard. In the span of just a fewparagraphs,Kummer covers the rise of solid vegetable shortenings like Crisco (“developed by industry to mimic the virtues of lard but relieve housewives of the burden of rendering their own fat”); how America’s war against saturated fats around the 1970s demonized lard and other animal products like butter and cream; how it turns out that vegetable shortening’s trans fats are worse for our health that just about anything else; and how lard’s nutritional profile beats butter’s. And that’s not to mention how lard can make pastry crusts flakier, fried chicken lighter and crisper, and biscuits more savory. In the article, Kummer takes heart in a visit to the more-than-century-old LeJeune’s Bakery in the Cajun town of Abbeville, Louisiana, where the bakers work lard sourced from a local cracklin’maker into the dough of their airy French bread loaves and sweet hand pies.

“Stop making such a big deal out of lard. It is no less healthy than other fats, and it is much more delicious. Nothing makes as flaky or as delicious biscuits or piecrusts as ones made with part lard. And there is simply nothing better for frying.” —Chef John Currence, Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey

When I visited LeJeune’s in 2005, I watched as fifth-generation baker Matt LeJeune used a tin can to measure some of the opaque liquid fat and then added it to a mixture that would later become fig pies. Pie dough is tricky, he told me. “If I would take four ounces of lard out of a hundred-pound recipe, it would be like night and day.” Southerners don’t hold the patent on lard, but its use and usefulness are engrained enough in southern cooking culture that the lard- shaming of the latter part of the last century didn’t entirely harm its reputation here. At the New Orleans seafood house Casamento’s, proprietor C. J. Gerdes fries everything — oysters, shrimp, hand- cut potatoes — in lard. Across the Mississippi River in Algiers, the crisp, chestnut-colored fried chicken at Chubbie’s is cooked in a mixture of animal and vegetable fats. In his cookbook “Real Cajun,” Donald Link advises frying catfish in bacon fat. “This preparation

works best in a cast-iron skillet,” he adds, animal fats being to the cast-iron skillet what butter is to the omelet pan. “If you don’t have one, I suggest that you go out immediately and buy one.” April McGreger, the author of “Sweet Potatoes: A Savor the South Cookbook” and the ebullient owner-operator of Farmers Daughter Brand Pickles & Preserves in North Carolina, has always been a lard devotee. “When you use lard, biscuit-making is much less intimidating,” she says. “The wrong brand of flour or a slightly too- rough hand, and a butter biscuit is tough and unappealing. Because it has less water, and because it is less temperature-sensitive, lard makes more tender biscuits. It also makes crispier bottoms, which I love.” McGreger notes that she makes an exception when baking for vegetarian, Muslim, and Jewish eaters.

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