Pork and Ham

Charcuterie is not one of the great American arts, but even so, we do manage to use every scrap of our porkers. And we have such magnificent pigs. Although increasingly leaner, more succulent breeds have been developed here, the domestic pig isn’t a native American. The ancestors of those fierce “razorbacks” that roam the Southern forests were all Chinese. Pigs vary more than people from country to country, depending on how they’re bred and what they’re fed. (Last summer I tangled with a roast from an Irish hog who must have been fattened on ground tires.)