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Ham and Pigs: A Journey in Search of the Whole Hog
Dust jacket worn. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1995
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April 14, 2023
This book tries to be too many things at once, and as a result doesn't manage to be any of them very successfully. Heiney starts off with a trip around Britain and Romania, looking for the perfect ham. So far so good, and I did find his account of his journey and the various pig products he ate entertaining. If he had stuck to pig-related travels, I think it would have made a good book.
He also tries to make this into a kind of cookbook, but as the recipes are scattered through the text, with no index, it's not very useful. The second half of the book is supposed to tell you how to keep your own pig, but his instructions are too lightweight, boiling down to 'get a bit of land and some kind of shelter and buy a pig you like the look of'. He gives detailed instructions on how to make a trough that the pig won't tip over, but doesn't bother telling you what kind of feed or how much the pig should have. He advises buying an in-pig gilt so that you can get attached to the mother pig while sending the babies off to the butcher, but doesn't tell you anything about the signs a pig is due to farrow, or how to tell when a farrowing is normal and when you need to step in!
And while I'm not very sentimental and have eaten animals I have previously cared for, I did wince when he provided some accounts of pig killing for us to 'enjoy' - slaughtering an animal is many things but it should never, ever be 'enjoyable'. I nearly knocked the book down to 1 star for that.
If you want recipes for pig products, go out and buy a cookbook. If you want to read about pigs generally, I would suggest a title like Lyall Watson's The Whole Hog. If you want to learn about keeping pigs, Starting with Pigs by Andy Case covers all the basics - although nothing beats hands-on knowledge, so if possible, back this up with some voluntary work on a smallholding. I usually like Heiney's writing, but this book just doesn't bring home the bacon.
He also tries to make this into a kind of cookbook, but as the recipes are scattered through the text, with no index, it's not very useful. The second half of the book is supposed to tell you how to keep your own pig, but his instructions are too lightweight, boiling down to 'get a bit of land and some kind of shelter and buy a pig you like the look of'. He gives detailed instructions on how to make a trough that the pig won't tip over, but doesn't bother telling you what kind of feed or how much the pig should have. He advises buying an in-pig gilt so that you can get attached to the mother pig while sending the babies off to the butcher, but doesn't tell you anything about the signs a pig is due to farrow, or how to tell when a farrowing is normal and when you need to step in!
And while I'm not very sentimental and have eaten animals I have previously cared for, I did wince when he provided some accounts of pig killing for us to 'enjoy' - slaughtering an animal is many things but it should never, ever be 'enjoyable'. I nearly knocked the book down to 1 star for that.
If you want recipes for pig products, go out and buy a cookbook. If you want to read about pigs generally, I would suggest a title like Lyall Watson's The Whole Hog. If you want to learn about keeping pigs, Starting with Pigs by Andy Case covers all the basics - although nothing beats hands-on knowledge, so if possible, back this up with some voluntary work on a smallholding. I usually like Heiney's writing, but this book just doesn't bring home the bacon.
Displaying 1 of 1 review