Monroe Farmers Market
This is the latest in a monthly series profiling vendors at the Monroe Farmers' Market, which continues through October on the Courthouse Square, 3 to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. The market will held as usual this weekend during Cheese Days: It will move to near Monroe Middle School for Saturday, Sept. 10 and will have special hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Oven-roasted pork sandwiches
1 3-5 lb. pork roast, preferably a shoulder cut
4 cups shredded red cabbage
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons Penzey's Bouquet Garni herb seasoning
2 tablespoons salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon black pepper, crushed
1⁄2 tablespoon vinegar
8 slices crusty farmer's bread or baguette
Mustard sauce:
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons sour cream or Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon horseradish
Preheat oven to 375. Combine herb seasoning, salt, pepper and crushed garlic. Wash and pat roast dry, then rub all sides with mustard. Sprinkle with seasoning mix. Place in a shallow roasting pan. Add one inch of water. Check every 30 minutes to replace water. Roast the shoulder for two hours or until juices run clear.
Let the roast sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. In the meantime, brown the bread slices on both sides and then keep warm. In a small pan, add the red cabbage to one cup of pork drippings. Salt and pepper to taste; add vinegar. Bring to a quick boil to soften the cabbage.
To assemble the sandwiches, slice the shoulder roast as thinly as possible. Use 4 ounces of sliced pork per sandwich. Top with cabbage, drizzle with mustard sauce and cover with the second slice of grilled bread.
Serve with a refreshing green salad, tomato salad or spicy pickled green beans.
- Recipe from Stef Culberson
Last year, a tree fell on the farmhouse near Blanchardville where she, her then-husband and their two boys lived. Amid the destruction wrought by the tree, she left her husband but took with her the pigs, geese and other animals associated with the business she started, Goose Chaser Farm.
Culberson has plenty of other talents besides farming to sustain a career. A German native, she came to the U.S. to study art at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 1998. She's an accomplished food stylist, chef and photographer. But she wasn't about to give up on all the work she'd sunk into Goose Chaser - or her customers, who rave about the quality of her meats. In 2011, she was named the Green County Young Professional of the Year.
Until she finds a farm of her own, Culberson is staying in an apartment in Monticello with the boys, ages 8 and 3. She works part-time at a gas station to make ends meet.
The animals are spread out. She rents space for her pigs, horse and ponies from Mike and Angela Wirth on County J in rural Monticello. Her geese are temporarily living on a farm between Mineral Point and Belmont.
Some nights this past year when she was deep in the stress of sorting out her family life, Culberson remembers just sitting in the pig pen and watching them eat. She listened to their grunts and was fascinated by the dynamics of their social pecking order - for example that they have an "aunty system" in place that allows a mama pig to take a break while the other females look after her piglets.
Being with the pigs helped her cope.
"They're my family," she said. But she doesn't get too sentimental come butchering time. "At some point, you have to decide if you want a zoo or a farm."
Culberson considers the meat she gets from the pigs a "fair trade." She gives them room to run around and quality food, including buckets of expired Whole Foods produce and day-old bread from the Subway in New Glarus. In return, they give her quality meat.
She has the animals slaughtered at Avon Locker Plant in Darlington. She tries to make the experience as calm as possible for the pigs.
Mass-produced meat often comes from animals killed in stressful conditions. The adrenaline surge in terrified pigs stays in their meat and is unhealthy to eat, she says. Avon is different, she added. The butchers at Avon "treat my animals really fair."
Avon also lets her freeze the meat so she can make brats fresh every week. The brats she sells at the Monroe Farmers' Market are never more than a day or two old. Unlike typical grocery store brats, hers have no fillers or preservatives, just meat and spices. Plus, because she works in such small batches, she knows exactly which pig is in each brat.
She also makes chicken brats, and just before Christmas, sells fresh hams and geese. This Saturday she'll also be selling hot chipotle pulled pork, quiche Lorraine and meat pies.
Culberson raises heritage-breed hogs, Mulefoot and European. They're smaller, impervious to Wisconsin winters and hairy with coarse bristles. The alpha male of her current pack is Drago, a gentle 450-pound boar. The alpha female is a tough-looking European hog named Big Mama.
Their meat is flavorful, denser and tastes similar to wild boar, "which is why chefs like them," she said. They also provide pure white leaf lard that's "just beautiful."
On a recent weekday morning, the pigs came running as she dumped buckets of vegetables and bread into their pen, and ripped into it. Tomato juice squirted everywhere, like in a gory scene out of low-budget horror movie. Loaves of Subway bread disappeared in seconds.
When another pig got in her way, Big Mama let out an annoyed squeal that Culberson translates to "Get out of my face."
"With a diet like this, of course they don't put on weight really fast," she said. Slow weight gain with a diet heavy in produce and grazing grass, plus well-exercised muscles, make the pigs' meat extra tender, she added.
She scratched a couple of the pigs behind the ear. "Happy pigs make a happier product," she said.
That view extends to her life philosophy, summed up in the bumper sticker on her car: "Love people. Cook them tasty food."