Flashback: Echine du porc

I mentioned echine du porc (pork loin chops) in a post earlier this week. This cut is one of my fondest memories of Paris.

When I was renovating a loft in Paris -- a project that took years -- I was able to go to the wholesale butcher across the way from me. The loft was in what the French call a "passage" and what we call an alley. The butcher did not actually butcher but broke down sides for restaurants.

We had a lot of black market labor working on the loft, including some Americans. One of them, whose avocation was metal sculpture, made us a grill by cutting open an oil drum and fashioning an ironwork stand to support a half-drum.

So all of us working on the loft would break for lunch, buy a ton of echine from the butcher and grill it in the courtyard formed by the U-shaped industrial building our loft was located in. We would grill the chops and accompany them with chunks of onion, baguette and quantities of cheap red wine. Heaven.