With Lydia, half Mangalitza, half Schwäbisch-Hall, only internal values count. With butchered cuts, the 26-month-old cut gradually loses its lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, brain and diaphragm. He explains each part before it ends up steaming in the cauldron. “He’ll be gone eventually,” he explained in parts. No kidneys, chef Max Stiegl roasts finely chopped fillets in a large pan with onions. It doesn’t even get that far with Lydia’s 275-pound heart. This is super thin, the thin chambers and the interior walls are fascinating. The raw parts of the fine muscle tissue have a slightly sweet taste. “Try it!”
The 2020 Chef of the Year has revived a rural tradition before winter at Gut Purbach in Burgenland. His “Sautanz”, where a pig is cooked outside, has become an event. In the maintenance of “nose to tail” and old kitchen techniques, often unpopular scraps have come back into fashion. Its reputation as a poor man’s food is being corrected by the variety of preparation methods revealed by old cookbooks, as well as by chefs returning to the cooking of scraps. Blood drums, for example, a cauldron with fresh blood, and thrust meat (around the puncture site during the killing) can be found there, as well as scabs and sour kidneys.
In the Mühlviertel, Leberschedl is a classic. There is no talk of removing him from the map, as Lukas Haudum emphasizes. He took over the lodge from his father Peter a few years ago. Although in some places the plate is written “-skull”, it has nothing to do with the head. The flat form was called a schedl, and there are vegetarian recipes (Erdäpfelschedl) as well as sweet ones. Leberschedl is something like a minced roast, which is especially tasty because of the liver content. And thanks to the pig’s tail, wrapped in it before roasting, it is particularly crispy.