Pig Porn
I’m guessing that the Brooklyn Kitchen is frequented by a number of staunch vegetarians, because they prefaced a recent mass email about a new meat-oriented cooking/prep class they’re offering with a “Not Safe For Vegetarians” warning, as though opening a message with a diagram of a pig and its various parts was akin to viewing internet porn.
The class is “Pig Butchering” and it’s a step-by-step demonstration by Marlow & Sons butcher Tom Mylan on how to cut up half of a pig, using a farm-raised pig from New York locavores’ fave upstate butcher, Fleisher’s.
The Brooklyn Kitchen, clearly fearful of hate mail, added this disclaimer: “If you were grossed out…Please accept our sincere apologies if you received this email and it was counter to your life choices.” Sure, that’s nice of them to be so concerned, but is the quasi-religious tone all that necessary? Particularly considering that the whole point of learning how to butcher a whole pig is so that people who might want to buy and eat every part of a humanely-raised pig - “nose-to-tail” eating - can learn how to do it.
At any rate, the class on March 25th is sold out, but it looks like they’ve added a second one on April 1st. (Unless that’s an April Fool’s joke by a vegan employee at Brooklyn Kitchen. Way to ruin it for pork fiends, guys!)
While we’re talking about Brooklyn Kitchen, though - who I might add is one of my favorite spots for high quality kitchen equipment in a pinch - check out their other classes, including this one for culturing your own kombucha. I’m all for turning the kitchen into one big bio-chemistry laboratory.
—Renata