Oklahoma Agriculture Blog

On Saturday five selected chefs will be in Stillwater showing off their culinary skills at the COCHON 555 event. Cochon, incidentally, is French for swine, and an apt title for this event. The COCHON 555 is a national contest with events being held in Napa, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco—and Stillwater, Oklahoma. The national championship will be decided at Grand Cochon during the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, CO June 18-20.

The event promotes heritage breed pigs and breed diversity. Each chef will be supplied with a professionally butchered heritage pig—I hear each will weigh about 125 lbs.—to prepare in any manner they wish.

Two Oklahoma chefs will be in the competition: Curt Herrmann of the White Owl in Tulsa and Kurt Fleischfresser of the Coach House in Oklahoma City. Other chefs include Chris Shepher of the Catalan in Houston, Matthew Harris, J&G Grill in Park City, UT and Scott Romano, Charlie Palmer at The Joule in Dallas.

Okay, so we’ve got five chefs and five pigs, the next group of five are five family owned wineries. Sadly, none of the five chosen are from Oklahoma but we’re assured they are great wines. One winery owner selected for a special VIP wine tasting is from Oklahoma, however his winery, Johndrow Vineyards, is located in Napa.

The five wineries are Domaine Serene, Revana Family Vineyard, Raptor Ridge, Miner Family Vineyards, and K Vintners.
This is going to be an interesting and entertaining event as the chefs are being challenged to use the whole pig.

Tickets are available online at www.COCHON555.com and must be purchased in advance. The main event will take place Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at the Conoco Phillips OSU Alumni Center on the OSU campus. Tickets are $100 each for regular attendance and $150 for the earlier VIP event.