There's no end in sight to the pig posturing around here, but so far it's been done primarily by men. Primarily chef-men. It continues on with the endless whole pig dinners, Ryan Farr's butchering demos and general pork-product madness. (I love this Details article.)
But this week, a group of women have not only taken on the pig, they've signficantly upped the ante. Jardiniere chef Traci Des Jardins and Loretta Keller of Coco500 won't be cooking this week, they'll be hunting. Along with their posse of close chef-women friends, they're off hunting wild boars … in Mongolia. (I mean, really. California boars are so 2006.)
I don't know a whole lot about Mongolia or the boars that live there, but they sound scarier than pigs from Northern California. I'm envisioning that the scene going down in Mongolia right now is somewhere between thePig Hunt—the comedic horror film by SF local Robert Mailer Anderson that came out in April, featuring "throat-slitting cult-girls who grow pot by day and worship a giant killer pig by night" (a 3,000 pound pig named The Ripper)—and the Ominvore's Dilemma, wherein Michael Pollan comes to terms with the meat he eats by shooting a boar.
We'll wait for Traci to get back around the 26th to get her report. Don't expect a Mongolian Monday prix-fixe dinner. The boars aren't allowed to be brought back to the U.S.