The Sum of Its Parts

Story by Donna Hecker and photography by Talitha Schroeder

When a dish only has a few ingredients, you want them to be the best you can find. Especially when you’re not doing much to them in the process of making it. Our Greased Pig Salad is the perfect example of a dish that’s even greater than the sum of its parts — because each of those parts is so darn good.

Long before his namesake foundation became a beacon (and occasional flashpoint) for the culinary industry, James Beard was a big-hearted champion of American food and cooking. But he also loved to travel, and sought out interesting flavors and ingredients wherever he went, and often experimented with them once back home.

While in Paris one year, Beard tasted a fresh tomato salad at a soul food restaurant in Montmartre owned by two Black Americans. He wrote about the Greased Pig Salad in his 1970s-era syndicated newspaper column titled “Beard on Food.” We’ve made variations of it for years, always in the full swing of summer, and always respectful of Beard’s admonition that “in a tomato, ripeness is all.”

The three constants are fully ripened tomatoes grown as close by as possible, funky crumbled blue cheese and crispy bacon. We shower our salad with basil chiffonade and a drizzle of red wine vinaigrette. You might add a sprinkling of snipped chives, or thinly sliced scallions or red onion.

James Beard wrote that the Paris couple served it on lettuce leaves, garnished with mayonnaise, sort of a proto-Keto presentation. It’s another good way to savor summer’s goodness.

Heirloom Tomatoes from the Garden at Holly Hill Inn

Holly Hill Inn DirtWorks gardener Ian Feeback (who also cooks in the kitchen) is a passionate heirloom seed saver. Earlier this year, Ian planted several varieties of heirloom tomato seeds and we’re now picking the fruits of his labor.

We used Kentucky-bred Zeke Dishman and Barnes Mountain Orange tomatoes in our Greased Pig Salad along with Green Zebra and Potager de Vilvorde varieties, for a riot of color and texture.

The Green Zebra is a bright green tomato with yellow streaks that keeps its neon color even when ripe, and has an equally bright flavor. The Potager de Vilvorde tomato is a Belgian heirloom and was named in honor of the first gardener to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in Belgium. A friend of Ian’s says the Potager de Vilvorde is her favorite tomato to eat with cottage cheese because of its firm texture and sweet fruity flavor.

Stone Cross Farm Bacon

For nearly two decades, our Holly Hill restaurants have been buying pork from Patrick and Leeta Kennedy’s Stone Cross Farm in Taylorsville, Ky., including the whole hog for our annual Epiphany Dinner at Midway Christian Church. We also griddle thousands of Stone Cross Farm hamburgers every year at our casual places, where they show up on menus as Mabel’s Nut Burger, the Big Brown Burger and the West 6th Taproom Burger.

So they can meet both restaurant and consumer demand for locally raised beef, pork and chicken, Patrick and Leeta work with other family farmers to source meat that is all natural, sustainably produced, and ASH-free. Patrick and Leeta also sell farm fresh eggs and operate the Cloverdale Creamery, which produces aged raw-milk cheeses with milk from a small dairy herd.

We like Stone Cross bacon for its Goldilocks-level smokiness and thickness. It’s widely available in Central Kentucky and priced reasonably. And if you’re the sort who keeps a jar of bacon fat in the fridge, you’ll love its clear drippings.

Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheeses - Kentucky Bleu

Kenny and Beverly Mattingly have been in the cheese making business for 25 years and we’ve been buying their cheeses for almost that long to serve in our Holly Hill restaurants. They began making cheese to sustain their own small dairy farm in Southwestern Kentucky; Kenny comes from a family that’s been in the dairy business for nearly half a century.

We grate Kenny’s aged white Cheddar into our cheese grits, pimento cheese and cheese salad. And enjoy the Kentucky Bleu crumbled over salads. Beverly says Kentucky Bleu originated as part of a Kentucky Derby collaboration with Chef Gil Logan at Churchill Downs. Its deep blue wax coating is an homage to the Bluegrass; we like the way it looks on a charcuterie board and love the cheese’s funky flavor and creamy texture.

Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheeses can be found throughout Kentucky or ordered through their website. Enjoy these cheeses sliced for sandwiches, wedged onto charcuterie boards, and melted into casseroles and sauces.

MadHouse Vinegar Co.

Chef Ouita recently discovered MadHouse Vinegar and has already ordered a couple of cases for the retail shelves of our Holly Hill Cooking Studio. MadHouse owners Justin Dean and Richard Stewart have teamed up to work alchemy magic, transforming remnants from greater Cincinnati-area breweries, distillers, cideries and vineyards into artisanal vinegars.

We used their red wine vinegar in the vinaigrette for our Greased Pig. We like it for its smooth and lightly fruity flavor, which complements the fruitiness of our tomatoes and doesn’t compete with their natural acidity. And we really like their business model – turning wasted wine and other culinary by-catch into treasured and tasty distillations that you’ll find a million uses for.

Basil

We grow several varieties of basil in our gardens at Holly Hill Inn, but these tender leaves came from the garden of Talitha Schroeder, our photographer non pareil.