Nose To Tail At Home

To serve four.

I was hoping that this update would be about the process of making salted cod, but I’m going to need a little more time to let the fillets completely dry out.  Maybe next week.

At first glance this recipe looked very similar to Coq Au Vin minus the mushrooms, but with a very important addition: trotters!

Oh, trotters.  Forget “Ode to a Grecian Urn“, why the heck hasn’t anyone written a poem about pig’s feet?  Mr. Henderson thinks rather highly of them, and here’s why:

These are one of the most gastronomically useful extremities.  If your butcher has pork, there must be a trotter lurking somewhere.  They bring to a dish an unctuous, lip-sticking quality unlike anything else.  The joy of finding a giving nodule of trotter in a dish!

These pre-split trotters were picked up at my local megamarket for about three dollars.  That’s right, three bucks!  You can’t beat that price with a stick.

In a big pot I placed the trotters, a few stock vegetables, a bouquet garni and some chicken stock and red wine.  The pot went into a medium hot oven for a few hours to braise the trotters, causing them to release their fat and collagen into the wine and broth.

When they were sufficiently cooked I removed the trotters from the pot, setting them aside to cool off.  Removing the skin from trotters isn’t like removing the skin on a tongue; letting the trotters cool off is actually okay.  Next I strained the wine/broth liquor and returned it to the heat to reduce and intensify.  When the trotters were no longer unbearably hot, I picked all of the flesh from them and added it to the reducing liquid which was left to simmer for another hour.

Finally a chance to show of my home made bacon!  Using the method Mr. Ruhlman describes in his book, “Charcuterie” I recently cured and smoked my very own pork belly.  Consider me a convert: home made bacon beats the store bought stuff hands down.  It’s just not a contest on any level – except perhaps convenience.

After lopping off a pound of cured belly I removed the rind (AKA the skin) and cut the bacon into chunks.  You just can’t do this with the bacon you find in your local supermarkets.  Consider this a plea from me to you:  If you haven’t tried making your own bacon, now is the time to try!  It’s so darn easy, I’m a little ashamed of myself for not making some sooner.

A little bit of duck fat was added to a hot pan, then pearl onions and the bacon rind went in as well to brown.  I was supposed to add shallots but when I made this dish it was Easter weekend and all of the nearby markets were closed down.  Those are Wal-Mart pearl onions.  I’m sorry.  When the pearl onions were properly browned I added them and the rind into the same pot the trotter flesh went into.  Have you ever heard someone exclaim they wished there was such a thing as smell-o-vision? Consider this another declaration if you’re keeping track.  The kitchen smelled AMAZING!

A quick chicken breakdown and I was ready for the next step…

… getting the pieces properly browned.  This was a nice change of pace.  No gray chicken here folks.

I placed the chicken into an ovenproof container and poured the long simmering, ultra flavorful wine/stock liquor over it.  On top of that the bacon lardons were sprinkled much the same way you would jimmies over ice cream.  The whole thing was then covered with foil and placed into a hot oven for another hour to completely cook the chicken.

Here’s a quick recap of what’s on the plate for you:

Chicken
Trotter Flesh
Pearl Onions
Bacon Hunks
Wine/Stock Reduction

Be still my beating heart! (Take that however you want.)

Served with mashed potatoes, the dish was complete.  The first bite brought back a flood of memories from my childhood.  My father–who is quite a good cook if I say so myself–had come up with a very similar dish all on his own through trial and error.  It was one of my favorite dinners he would make, though he used beer in the place of wine.  The flavors were very close regardless.  The chicken ended up being nice and moist, and acted as the perfect pairing with all of the porky goodness.

If you’ve ever eaten Coq Au Vin then you might be thinking you have a good idea of what this dish was like.  WRONG.  This is Coq Au Vin on pork steroids.  To paraphrase Emeril, Mr. Henderson, “took it up a notch!”

One down, seventy eight to go.