Najac, Aveyron, France

I'm not a professional butcher. That's exactly why I can teach you.

I taught myself, in a cellar that was too warm, with failures nobody talks about.

A few years ago, I didn’t know how to make anything. I just wanted my family to eat something other than what the supermarket decides. I started with a duck breast, following a recipe I found online. It was too salty. The second one went moldy. The third one was good, and I never knew why.

Selling at the Najac farmers’ market in southwest France, every Sunday for four years, is what forced me to understand. When someone pays for your dry-cured meat, you can’t go by feel anymore. I weighed, took notes and started again. That rigor is what I try to pass on to you: not a butcher’s knowledge, but the knowledge of a father who eventually got there.

Pleine Terre (it means “open ground” in French) is mostly written in French. This English section shares the methods that travel well: hams, pâtés, rillettes and safe ways to keep food at home.