Takeaway Pig

Before we start, I want to make it clear I didn't shoot anything....I am not like that idiot American dentist who killed Cecil the lion. I was minding my own business, sipping a cold beer in a restaurant at 9.30pm when my pal Levent's phone went off. It was our friend the marangoz (joiner). He had been out hunting and had shot a pig (wild boar). Did we want it?

Of course, for many people in Turkey eating pig meat is forbidden on religious grounds.

Many Turks in fact do eat pork.  We have often brought bacon to Turkey for friends. But there is still an element of the forbidden about it. When Turks talk about pork they often lower their voices.

Anyhow, yes was the answer. But how to get the 50 kilo beast home? And then how to cut it up and where to store it with no deep freeze?

Eight or nine phone calls later a plan like a military operation was hatched and put into place.

The marangoz would borrow his friend's truck to bring the carcass to our house.

Meanwhile, a pal who knew a bit about butchery skills would borrow a set of knives and a chopper from his workplace, where we were to pick him up at 10pm.

The idea of asking a real butcher friend was abandoned because if the local community was to learn a pig had been chopped up in a butcher's shop that business would be toast.

Finally, another friend from whom we had bought a fridge three months earlier agreed to loan us another one for 24 hours.

We rolled out a length of clear plastic on the garden patio and our apprentice butcher mate sharpened his knives.

On the lorry

in the garden

 Surprisingly there was not much blood but the smell was not good.

Around 40 minutes later it was all over.

Four legs were in separate plastic bags, the torso was chopped into four pieces and placed in another quartet of freezer bags and the head and entrails were in a bin liner to be discarded at a local tip.

I felt a bit like Warren Oates in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia as I walked to the landfill site.

What does boar taste like? Roast lamb if I am honest.

And how much did the marangoz want for the animal?

About £12 to buy some more bullets.

As David Dickinson might say "seems like the real deal."