The pig is then hoisted up, opened down the belly (details on demand), and the liver, lights, guts, etc, slid into a large basket. At this point a sacred dance is held while a shaman reads the auspices, which he refuses to communicate. The basket goes away to be sorted. The liver is set aside for paté. Other choice morsels will go into black pudding or brawn.

This is what the brawn, or head cheese, looks like when finished

The guts are then cleaned and prepared (mostly by the tribeswomen, who do communicate, along gender war lines). The small intestine needs keeping in metre-or-more lengths, turned inside out and filled with water several times, then scraped with the side of a spoon till transparent. The large intestine, similarly washed and scraped, will be cut into shorter lengths. When the guts are ready, they are placed in water with salt and vinegar or hooch.

Yes, you can avoid doing this by having Asian ladies do it for you. But bought sausage casings are expensive, the ones from the pig are fresh and more likely to be elastic and unholed.

Meanwhile, the head of the hog is sliced off with the neck. The only part of the head to throw away is the mouth with the teeth, after having set the tongue aside. The ears are cut off. The head is cut down to several pieces using a saw. All the parts are carefully cleaned. They will then be put to simmer in a cauldron with carrots, leeks, a clove-spiced onion, a branch of bay - along with the tongue, heart, spleen, and lights.

The tubes going over the edge on the far side are the tracheae which serve to evacuate the goo the lungs secrete while cooking. Without them, don't use the lights, make the cats happy.

Here's a second cauldron with smaller pieces and lemons:

It's hard to settle on a cooking time: the big pieces on the bone take, say, two and a half hours, while the smaller bits need only an hour or less. The point is to avoid everything just turning to mush.

Once cooked, the flesh, fat, and rind are cut up small (this is a knife job) and sorted into what goes into black pudding (blood sausage) and what into brawn. Don't ask me, everyone has their own idea. The lemons (if you want them) go into black pudding. Some of the carrots, on the other hand, will be chopped into the brawn. If I can get my way, the ears go into the black pudding, they make crunchy bits. And, of course, the blood that was kept earlier goes into the black pudding mix.

They don't call it black for nothing

This mixture is stuffed into small-intestine casings using a hand-powered machine, and here's some of the result:

Meanwhile, in the cauldron, the stock that was made with vegetables and the head pieces has been kept on the boil. The heat is now turned off and the blood sausages lowered gently into the hot liquid.

Then left to poach slowly in the stock.

Black pudding/blood sausage/boudin noir isn't a preserve, it's usually eaten fresh, handed out to friends and neighbours as a treat to mark the fact that you've "fait le cochon". You can deep-freeze it, but I've always found it loses flavour. A better way is to use preserve jars, so some of the mixture is canned in that way. At the same time the brawn (or head cheese) is also put into jars with some of the stock. The jars of boudin and brawn are put into a boiler and the gas lit.

Two or three hours later, the stock in the cauldron has gone lukewarm. By that time the boudin noir is cooked. Lift out and coil flat on a table, leave to cool during the night.

Turn off the gas under the boiler. Go to bed. Tomorrow will be a long, hard day.

END OF DAY ONE