Meat+Poultry - November 2018 - 66

BOOK REVIEW

Camas Davis spent three
months in Gascony, France,
living with Kate Hill, an
American cooking instructor
and cookbook author, and
learning the art of butchery
from the Chapolard family.

66

MEAT+ POULTRY | 11.18 | www.meatpoultry.com

toward me in slow motion. He put his left hand up gently,
to stop what I was doing, placed his other hand over the
handle of my knife, and took it away from me as a cop
might cautiously take away the gun of a bank robber
once she'd surrendered...We stood up together and he
moved my right hand toward the pig's back leg. 'Jambon,'
he said. 'Jambon,' I repeated. 'Expensive,' he said... I
realized, finally, what I'd done. I'd mistaken the ham for
the bottom part of the shoulder and transformed one of
their most expensive cuts at the market into cheap skewer
meat for the grill."
While that mistake cost the Chapolards a few Euro in
product resale, it was a lesson Davis never had to repeat. As
her time and education in France continued, her butchery
knowledge grew. However, three months later, as it was time
to return to Oregon, she still wouldn't call herself a butcher.
In fact, years after she formed the Portland Meat Collective
and started teaching others what she learned in France she
still wouldn't feel comfortable assuming that title.

SHARING SKILLS
Deciding what she could do with her new knowledge
and skillset was eye opening to Davis after her return to
Portland. "At first I thought I could come home and do
what my mentors did in France and start a farm and do all
the slaughter and butchery myself," she says. "But I didn't
have three brothers and their wives to get the work done. I
realized that dream wasn't going to happen anytime soon."
So, what was next? Davis took a job at a restaurant

Eugenie Frerichs

The first half of Davis' memoir details her experiences
living and learning alongside Hill and undergoing her
butchery mentorship with the Chapolard family in Gascony.
Her book details her experiences, often in graphic detail,
starting with the first time she witnessed a pig slaughter:
"This felt like a private moment that I shouldn't be
allowed to witness, these last shudders of life, this battle
waged by her [the pig's] nervous system, but I did not
turn away. I was here to learn, after all. I was here to do
something hard and real. I wasn't interested in wasting
any more time pretending that what was unfolding in
front of me wasn't really happening. I'd spent the past 10
years of my life doing that, and I was determined never
to go down that road again. But words like 'hard' and
'easy' didn't seem to apply here. To the people working
in this abattoir, to my French mentors raising pigs and
butchering them back at the farm, this scene - would
they even call it a scene? - was, quite simply, work. Life,
death, work. So, I kept watching."
Further descriptions in the book detail her first
experience wielding a knife - including inadvertently
hacking into an expensive cut of pork and turning it into
chunks of cheap grill meat.
"Eventually, I built up a small mountain of brochette
meat on the table and was just about to show Bruno when
Marc walked in, looked down at my work, and yelled,
'Merde!'...I sensed tension, knew it was aimed at me, but
had no idea what I'd done wrong, so I continued cutting.
Bruno motioned for everyone to be quiet, then moved
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - November 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meat+Poultry - November 2018
