Principled Pork

Not long ago I found myself in a New York City hotel room reaching for slice after slice of leftover roast pork. I had brought it with me on the plane after a dinner at Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, held in part to honor Laughing Stock Farm, where the meat had been produced. I had thought at the dinner that this was an exceptionally nice roast, but I'd been distracted by the sight of the turning spit in the kitchen and the many other dishes.

Alone in my room, I concentrated fully on what seemed to be a new kind of meat. Its creamy texture and deep flavor were distantly familiar. I wondered which meat it tasted like as I kept eating, enjoying the fat as much as the lean. As the last piece disappeared, I remembered: pork—the kind I had first tasted in Italy, dispensed from roadside trailers in ...