So, there's this story about a pig. And a house.
Both were owned by a farmer and his family. Since this was early days for the whole farming thing, the farmer kept the pig in the house. In fact nobody had even learned how to cook (don't ask me why they had a pig if they didn't know about bacon).
One day the farmer and his family left the pig in the house as they always did. They left a candle burning so the pig wouldn't freak out over being shut up alone in the dark. So the family went out to work the fields.
After a while, the pig got into some mischief and knocked over the candle. This, predictably started a fire.
The farmer and his family, alerted by the smoke, arrived in time to see the last timber fall. They wept.
But they were practical people, so they wiped their eyes and tried to salvage what they could of their possessions. As they poked around the ruins, they noticed a distinctly pleasant smell along with the smoke. The farmer followed his nose to a little pile of scorched wood that he gingerly moved aside.
There was the pig.
It was a deep, glistening brown and it smelled better than anything the farmer had ever smelled.
The farmer reached out to move the poor beast and quickly learned one of the first laws of cooking (things that just came out of the oven are hot). He yelped in pain and swiftly stuck his burned finger into his mouth.
It was unbelievable. It tasted better than anything the farmer had ever tasted. He quickly dug in with his hands and started to share with his whole family. They thought he was crazy at first, but changed their minds when they tasted the freshly roasted pork.
Then the neighbors arrived.
They worried about the farmer and his family as they stood in the smoking ruins of their house with expressions of pure joy on their faces. Then the farmer turned to them and shared some of the precious discovery. They were hooked.
After they feasted with the farmer and his family, they offered them shelter in their home. The farmer had a few things to say about the advisability of keeping pigs in the house to his hosts. So the farmer and his neighbor worked on a little hut for the pig late into the night while their families "made-do" in the small house.
They used some of the extra wood for firelight and finished after everyone had fallen asleep. The neighbor grabbed some vegetables from the larder for a little refreshment after the hard work. Just before they took the first bite, they locked eyes. Then they both looked at the fire and the first late-night kitchen experiment was born.
After that? Well, the rest is history.
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This is one of my favorite stories about cooking. So I thought, why not name my blog after it?
Yes, I cribbed it from Richard Wrangham's book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, but I did take some liberties and tried to make it my own. I highly recommend his book...
