The National Culinary Review

“We are becoming known for what we do, but we always have to think about what we are doing in terms of pleasing the guests,” Deihl says. “The last thing you want is that one complaint.”

Locally sourced

Up north, in what was once the halfway stop between the busy harbors of Boston and Portland, Maine, and Montreal, is the Rabbit Hill Inn in Lower Waterford, Vt. Named as one of Travel + Leisure’s 2009 best 100 hotels in the world, its visitors go as much for the food that comes from chef Matthew Secich’s kitchen as for the many outdoor pursuits the area offers.

Lowry McKee Photography

Black Guinea hog liver mousse on brioche with pickled red onion is one of the dishes Craig Deihl creates from the rare heritage Guinea hog.

Secich’s culinary pedigree includes stints
in England with Raymond Blanc at Le
Manoir aux Quat’Sasions and in Virginia
with Patrick O’Connell at The Inn at Little
Washington. Before coming to Vermont, the
Ohio-born Secich worked in Chicago with
Charlie Trotter, leaving, he says, because, “I
like to be as close to the farmer as possible.”
The pigs that provide pork for the menu
at Rabbit Hill are raised at a farm in
Waterford, where they feast on the excess
cottage cheese, whey and cream cheese
produced at nearby Cabot Creamery in
Montpelier. Secich slaughters many of the
pigs himself on the farm, taking them to
a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility
for inspection. “That way I can keep
everything,” he says, “brains, guts.”
meat, tongue, ears and skin separate, and
adding a mirepoix and seasonings. The
tongue may be pickled, the cheeks served
braised or in a stew, and the ears and skin
will become cracklings.

Christopher Maharry

Although it is not pork, one of his most
popular pre-dinner amuse-bouche is what
he calls “nuggets of knowledge”—fried veal
brains. The dish says something about the
inn’s clientele, who, says Secich, tend to be
open-minded eaters. “Hardly anything ever
comes back,“ he says. “It’s very rare that we
make something we can’t sell.”

Secich braises the heart with cloves and red wine, and fries the spleen in bacon fat with a coating of flour, breadcrumbs and lard. The kidneys may be braised in brown butter, and the testicles deep-fried and served as little discs with a molasses bread, as an amuse.

There is pig-head soup made from the
head, which has simmered for a day or two
and is then disassembled, keeping the jowl
From head to tail, Secich uses the whole
pig, although the snout gets dried off,
hung and taken home for his dog. “I can’t
eat the snout,” he says. “And I don’t find
the eyeballs all that appealing, either.”