Welcome to the eleventh guest post!  I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures.  Want to show everyone that tails can be terrific?  Are you cheeky for beef cheeks?  Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here.  This guest post comes from Patrick Ganey, and it originally showed up on his website Duck Fat and Politics.

I was drawn to this recipe by its extraordinary creativity.  Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast has a handful of recipes that cry out to be made and eaten. In all my cooking I had never seen a dried, salted pig’s liver, and I had to try it.

The drying and curing process wasn’t very different than that of making pancetta or another cured meat, but its deep red color was a vivid reminder of liver’s organ status.  The liver has been hanging in my basement for around a month, and with my brother-in-law visiting from Toronto and tender young arugula in the garden, tonight was a perfect time to make the salad.  Some of my unpicked beets from last fall overwintered well, and their new leaves were also gathered.  I hard boiled eggs from the backyard and sliced the radishes, coating the whole salad with a mild vinaigrette.

The liver, when cut through on the diagonal, was a deep, ruby red, dense, firm, and glossy.  I never expected the texture to be so beautiful.  I sauteed the liver slices in a bit of olive oil and splashed the pan with balsamic vinegar, and as soon as it was reduced  I scooped the slices onto each salad, drizzling the remaining reduction on the greens.

Chewy but with give, meltingly rich, the liver was fantastic; my kids gobbled up slices and asked for more.  Against the snap of radishes, the spare bite of vibrant arugula, and the creaminess of backyard eggs, the liver had such deep flavor that I could barely compare its taste to other dishes.  Unlike a liver pate, the dried liver concentrated its flavor with a wonderfully clean profile; the flavor didn’t expand across my palate; rather, it sunk into my taste buds, penetrating the greens of the salad with a shocking earthiness – the meat equivalent of my beloved, earthborn beets.

The cross-cut profile of the liver glistened like chocolate, and I’m wondering how to eat the rest of it.  Fergus Henderson’s salad is wonderful, and I’m sure to make it again.  I also think thin shavings of liver could be used to add flavor and body to many dishes.

Thanks Patrick!

Welcome to the tenth guest post!  I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures.  Want to show everyone that snouts are superb?  Are you in mad for milt?  Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here.  This guest post comes from Alex Rushmer, and it originally showed up on his website Just Cook It.  He’s also got an inspiring post about beef cheek ragu you should check out too!

As far as titles go, the above is probably about as enticing as ‘How to Par-tay the Mormon Way’ but bear with me on this one. Please.

Granted, taken in turn neither of the two words is particularly exciting and together they create some sort of force field that for many will result in the gag reflex kicking in with gusto. Admittedly even I approached this one with a small amount of trepidation.

Like a badly executed kiss, it started with a tongue. A great big flapping, fresh, wet, grey, spikey tongue. Curled up on the chopping board it resembled some sort of Mephistophelean re-imagining of an evil pet, like a prop from an early David Cronenberg film.

Its size, its weight, its appearance, its texture – everything conspired against it becoming a foodstuff were it not for the good reports I’d had regarding its utter brilliance when cooked.

Although technically offal, there is no reason why tongue should provoke such revulsion. It is muscle in the same way topside or fillet steak is muscle. However, due to the amount of work it does – daily tearing kilos of fresh grass from the earth – it needs some serious cooking. To stop it from drying out it also needs brining. I gave it 5 days but if you’re tempted to try this at home (please do) I’d let it spend at least a week in the brine bucket, possibly even ten days.

To stop it being overly salty it went into fresh water for 24 hours before being slung into the stock pot along with the usual suspects – carrot, celery, onion, garlic, peppercorns and a couple of bay leafs.

Four hours at the merest quivering simmer was enough to cook it through. I’d been reliably informed (thank you once again Fergus Henderson) that tongue is easier to peel (!) when still warm. Even so, a sharp knife was necessary and the process was more of a paring than a peeling. Although not a pleasant process by the time the tough barbed outer skin was removed what sat in front of me was recognisably meat that looked at least as good as a slab of tasty salt beef.

Which is exactly what it was.

Assuming that it would be best fresh from the cooking pot and still warm, it was thinly sliced and crammed into a bagel along with a generous slick of mayonnaise, a handful of rocket and some sliced pickles. The whole lot was topped, inevitably, with the lurid yellow mustard so reminiscent of New York’s finest culinary offerings.

By now any feelings of trepidation had long since evaporated and the first bite was an adventurously large one. It was delicious. It’s as simple as that. Perhaps made even more so by the timidity with which it approached. ‘Under promise and over deliver’ seems to be the mantra of marketing. If so, tongue is the marketer’s dream. Don’t be surprised if it joins cheeks, shanks and trotters in the ‘forgotten cuts’ section of supermarket. Now that will set tongues wagging.

Thanks Alex!

Welcome to the ninth guest post!  I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures.  Want to show everyone that you’re nuts for the naughty bits?  Are you in awe of offal?  Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here!  This guest post comes from Phil Nigash, and the post originally showed up on his website My life as a Foodie.  He’s also got an excellent radio show that you should check out!

A cold slice of crispy, fresh garden lettuce, a chilled chalet of grassy, spicy IPA, a few miniature pickles thrown on the plate — all an accompaniment to the main event: meat and skin from pigs feet set in its own jelly.

It has many names – Brawn, Head Cheese, Farmhouse Brawn, or Fromage de Tête. I prefer the latter.

There are a number of reasons why I titled this post the way I did. For one thing, Fromage de Tête sounds – I don’t know . . . much classier than “Head Cheese.” Everything sounds nicer in French to begin with. Add to that, the words “Head” and “Cheese” seem downright loutish when put together.

The real reason, however, is that I failed a little in collecting all of my ingredients. The one key ingredient to the dish, the one thing that gives the dish its name (that would be the head) never made it home.

When I decided to make this dish, the first thing that I knew would present a challenge was acquiring the head of a pig. This isn’t something you just walk into a grocery store and buy. You have to go to the right place, and they’re rarely that easy to find. Add to that my preference to sourcing ingredients like this from someone I know, and it gets a little harder. I didn’t really know too many butchers who did the whole hog. That problem was solved by a simple phone call. My wife called her friend, whose uncle René owned a Carnicaria (Spanish for ‘meat market’), who had fresh pigs delivered each day that he butchers in the morning.

Problem solved, right? Yeah, not so much.

A call to her uncle René presented one unexpected problem – the heads on the pigs he’d received the previous day were (as he put it) humongous. Now, this guy butchers pigs on a daily basis. If he says the heads are humongous, they must be pretty big. But, having read a few recipes for Brawn, including the one that gave me this idea in the first place – Fergus Henderson’s “The Whole Beast” I noticed most called for the addition of pig’s feet. Why not try making this with the feet, and nothing but the feet?

When I arrived at René’s Carnicaria, I was swept into the butcher room in the back of the restaurant where he and his staff were butchering whole hogs. Nice operation, lots of split open whole pigs on stainless steel tables — these guys were butchering pigs back here. And yes those heads were massive. It was a good idea skipping on something I literally had no cooking vessel to prepare it in. René had cleaned and prepped four really nicely sized feet for me that I knew would be perfect.

So to start — 4 whole pigs feet. René was so thorough at what he does, he even split them for me. This would make it easier for the disassembly that came later.

Place the feet in a large pot, then cover with the following:

4 Shallots
1 large Leek, chunked
couple sprigs of fresh parsley
sprig of fresh rosemary
sprig of fresh thyme
10 Black peppercorns
2 Cloves fresh garlic
4 whole Cloves
1 tablespoon Salt
1 large Onion, chunked
2 Bay leaves
2 Carrots, chunked

Well, that was difficult. Here’s where it got tricky. I had to fill the pot with water, just to cover everything.

OK, maybe that wasn’t that hard after all. I turned on the heat, brought the whole thing to a boil, then reduced the heat to low and simmered for close to three hours until the skin and meat were literally falling off the bones. Every 15 minutes, I’d lift the cover off the pot and skim the protein scum off the top with a hand strainer. This step is important as it helps keep the stock as clear as possible.

I turned off the heat and allowed the pot to cool for a bit. This one lone pig’s foot floated to the surface. I took it as a sign that he was ready to leave the hot tub.

Now it was time to do some surgery. I removed the feet from the broth, being careful to leave any peppercorns and herbs behind.

Delicious. Am I right?

I removed the meat, skin and fat from the bones, separating as I went. I minced the meat and skin into very small pieces and placed them in a large bowl.

The bones ended up in another pile. They say a human foot has anywhere from 26 to 28 bones. I was hoping the pig’s foot wouldn’t be anywhere near this, but I wasn’t so lucky.

Now that’s a pile of bones.

Next, I strained the vegetables and herbs from the broth with a strainer.

Here’s a critical step. Taste your broth. Seriously, taste it. It should still be warm, so grab a spoon and give it a taste. How is it? It had better be seasoned well enough, because this is how the “head cheese” is going to taste. If you feel you need more salt at this point, it’s best to add it now.

Next, I lined the pan I was using for the mold with plastic wrap. I made sure to be liberal with the wrap, so there was plenty hanging over the edges. I wanted to ensure that the finished mold would be easy to remove from the pan after it had set.

Then, in went some of the broth, followed by a couple scoopfuls of the meat and skin, followed by more broth, followed by more meat and skin.

When the mold was full, I covered it with the over-lapping plastic wrap, slammed it against the counter a few times to knock loose any air bubbles, and slid it into the refrigerator.

I allowed it to set for a full 24 hours before pulling it out and slicing it. I was amazed at how gelatinized this was. These ingredients made their own aspic, their own gelatin. And it set up as firm as a meat loaf, making slicing it a breeze.

I served it on a lettuce leaf with a few cornichons on the side. Cornichons are mini French pickles, and they go well with sandwiches or on their own.

The “foot cheese” was just what I’d hoped it would be. The texture – fun, firm, easy to bite into. The flavor was that of pork, rich with the aromatics from the broth, and a slight hint of the cloves. In fact, had I not added them myself, I would have had to guess what that flavor was. It had a great balance of flavors, and I was really happy this turned out as well as it did. Very filling, however. So take note.

How much better would this taste had I actually picked up a pig’s head I could fit into a pot? Probably a lot porkier, richer in flavor, and perhaps even more gelatinized than it was. Some day, I’ll do it again and let you know how it turns out. For now, I’m content having made something this cool, this easy, and this fun.

I continue to be inspired by the magic and science behind cooking, and I’m happy to close another chapter in my life as a foodie.

Thank you Phil!

Welcome to the eighth guest post!  I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures.  Want to show the world that tripe can be tremendous?  Are you enamored with ears?  Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here!  This guest post comes from Russell Everett, and the post originally showed up on his website Everett Cellars.

I say only half a head, as it is a perfect romantic supper for two. Imagine gazing into the eyes of your loved one over a golden pig’s cheek, ear and snout.

Yeah, Fergus Henderson is a strange guy. But apart from the recipes it is his little comments and mannerisms that make Nose to Tail and Beyond Nose to Tail so entertaining to read. So here is Part One of a two part Pig-head Project: his recipe for Pot-Roast Half Pig’s Head from Beyond Nose to Tail.

This isn’t my first time taking a crack at one of his more “heady” recipes, har har. A year ago I used his recipes for Brawn and Trotter Gear, which were my first introductions to both pig heads and trotters. I ended up putting the trotter gear in just about everything over the next few months. So I figured it was time to do some more projects with heads and feet.

It begins with a pig head. As typical for these sorts of projects I ordered one from Seabreeze Farm out on Vashon Island. A week later I showed up at the market and waiting for me was 16 pounds of pig head and trotters. Most pig heads you find come split, so I technically had two half-heads, and I’d ordered four trotters. Hefting it over my shoulder in a mighty sack I carried it about the market, like Santa Claus with presents for some very naughty children.

Once home it was time to get cooking. Step one is cleaning the head. This is by far the worst part. See, the pig gets scalded to help remove the hair and clean it up a bit for butchering. This does a pretty good job. But not a perfect job. So step one is shave your pig. A disposable razor works great for this.

Or you could do what I did and use your wife’s razor. A word of caution: only do this if you know your wife/girlfriend/sister/mother/etc. really well. When she got home she was not upset, and was actually quite happy to swap out the blade for a clean one. But pig got deep into the workings and despite my best attempts I couldn’t quite clean it out satisfactorily, so I had to get her a whole new one.

Anyhow, it’s totally gross, but piggy had some whiskers and eyelashes that had to go. This was probably the only point in the project where I was a little freaked out by the pig head. Shaving is a bit personal isn’t it, and it made this meal far more visceral than most. Once done I gave it nice wash in the sink. Time to cook it.

Here’s Henderson’s Recipe:

• a dollop of duck fat. I was fresh out of both lard and duck fat, but I did have some chicken fat and a bit of olive oil.
• 8 shallots, peeled and left whole
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
• 1/2 pig’s head
• a glass of brandy
• 1 bundle of joy – thyme, parsley, and a little rosemary
• 1/2 bottle of white wine
• chicken stock
• a healthy spoonful of Dijon mustard
• 1 bunch of watercress, trimmed, or other greens – a case of Liberty Hall. Since I was free to spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard I used some kale, as it was in season and is one of the few greens at the farmer’s market in January. Cut the stalks out, roll up the leaves, and slice.
• sea salt and black pepper

I had trouble finding the right size roasting pan for this. My 9×13 was too skinny. My pots and dutch oven were too round. I settled finally on my large roasting pan. Set it on the stove, melted the fat and oil and added the shallots and garlic until they had some color. Covered the pig’s ear in foil so it wouldn’t “frazzle”, then nestled it into the pan. Poured a glass of VSOP over it “to welcome it to its new environment”, then nestled the bundle of joy in, and poured a half bottle of WA Chardonnay in.

Here Henderson has you add chicken stock according to what he calls his “alligator-in-the-swamp theory”, in which the head is supposed to lurk in the swamp like an alligator. Well I just spent the last five years living in Miami, so I think my idea of what alligators lurking in swamps looks like is maybe a bit different than his, and in this roasting pan it would take a lot of stock to get there… But I get what he’s hinting at. So I just added chicken stock (made from an awesome truffle-roasted chicken I’d cooked the week before) until I was out of stock. The size of the pan will dictate the amount needed, but use good stock.

Season with salt and pepper. Henderson says cover the pan with grease-proof paper, but I used aluminum foil as it wrapped around the pan’s handles more easily. Then into a Medium oven for 3 hours. I set mine to 350. With about a half hour to go I took the aluminum off the top to give the skin some color. In retrospect I might have cranked up the oven too, it could have been a bit browner.

Once it was out of the oven, I moved the head to the serving platter. Then whisked in the dijon and added the kale to wilt in the hot stock. Dished the kale, shallots, and garlic around on the plate and ladled a fair amount of stock around it. Served up with something red and delicious, a King’s Estate Oregon Pinot.

Moon, January, Spoon.

It was pretty darn excellent looking. But Henderson doesn’t mention one very important part of this dish: how the hell do you carve it? We sort of stared at it for a bit, trying to plan our next move. Fortunately I’m fairly familiar with pig heads from last year and my guanciale experiments, so here’s the top three places to go on the pig head.

First, the cheek. There’s a lovely bit of meat in there and a whole lot of fat. Second, the tongue. Peel the skin off and it’s excellent. Third, the back of the neck has some great pockets of meat.

Otherwise, there’s the brain. It’s a texture thing, you’ll love it or hate it. Here some crusty bread goes well. I might be a little wary if it were a commercial hog. “Mad Pig Disease” isn’t rampant (or even an actual disease), but there are some concerned scientists out there and I’m always distrustful of commercial pork industry practices. But I know where this pig came from, how it was treated, fed and cared for. Which, of course is why I bought it from them. So the brains are fair game, though personally I’m not a huge fan anyway. There’s also the ear and snout, that depending on how well you roasted them (and how clean they were before!) you may want to go for. Eventually we had it flipped over and my wife was happily excavating away. Biologists… I married a very special lady.

It looks like a really big amount of meat, but really there’s a lot of bone and a head this size would probably feed 3-4. We finished picking over the head, then saved all the leftover meat, kale, shallots and stock. This became lunch for the next few days and it was outstanding. Really, the head was great but the pot-roast soup made with it was the real winner. What’s not to like? Wine, brandy, garlic, herbs, shallots, excellent chicken stock, unctuous pig goo.

So it was fun, and visually stunning, but I think that’s my head for the year. It’s quite impressive but in terms of economy I’d rather use the cheeks for guanciale and the rest of the head for headcheese.

Or soup dumplings, as we did with the other half of the head…

Thanks Russell!

Welcome to the seventh guest post!  I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures.  Want to show the world that noming on noses is okay?  Are you gun-ho for guts?  Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here!  This guest post comes from Jason Moore, and the post originally showed up on his website the power and the glory.

Thoroughly inspired by Chris Cosentino’s video and Ryan Farr’s writeup, I decided to attempt my own completely outlandish meat stunt by procuring a whole hog’s head. Aided by a couple of adventurous friends we set about to create what we hope is a delicious log of glorified lunch meat. A few things worth noting: I am not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, and the most complex assembly i’ve “butchered” is a whole chicken. Everything I know about removing the meat from the head of a pig i gleaned from Cosentino’s video. Hilarity, necessarily, ensued.

The head, fresh from the bag.

Once the skin was mostly clean of dirt and bristles I started cutting. I don’t think i did a terrible job but there were some really choice bits of meat left behind that Mikeal, in a fit bloodthirsty determination, hacked off after i got the jaw apart. All of the bits of meat and face were then rubbed with a dry cure (kosher salt, sugar, and sodium nitrate), 10-12 chopped cloves of garlic, thyme, and rosemary, and then placed in a bag in the fridge. There they will sit until Saturday-ish, when they will be slow-cooked under partial-vacuum (sous vide? not really.) in a giant roll.

All the meaty bits accounted for we turned our attention to the now-jaw-less skull. Cosentino recommends making stock, and I am fortunate enough to own a stockpot large enough to accommodate a whole hog’s head, so into a hot oven (~500 degrees F) went the skull, and into the pot went the celery, onions, garlic, and carrots. I don’t own a bone saw so we did not get to enjoy the brains, but there was a question as to whether the brains were even present in the skull. Once the skull was sufficiently roasted, i dumped it into the pot along with the drippings in the pan, and brought the whole assembly to a quick boil. Eight hours later, the mostly-meatless skull emerged.

Lessons learned: 

1. I need more workspace for these sorts of shenanigans. A tiny plastic cutting board and my kitchen table aren’t sufficient space or equipment to take apart a hog’s head, much less a whole hog (coming soon, hopefully).
2. I need better lighting in my kitchen.
3. Butchery is messy, artful business.

Following the mostly-successful meat removal and subsequent stock-making, the meat was left to cure in the fridge for about 3 days. and it was a lot of meat – about 8.5 pounds, all told (from a 20 pound head). Finally, on Sunday, i decided it was ready to cook, and bounced out of bed around 7 AM to begin the preparations.

Chris Cosentino and Ryan Farr both cook their porchetta sous-vide, so why argue with success? Unfortunately, I lack both a chamber sealer and an immersion circulator. However, I have read that FoodSaver sealers stand in fine for the vacuum side of things, and since the cooking itself is done at a rather-warm (for sous vide) 190 degrees, I decided that a pot of water in the oven and my FoodSaver sealer would make an excellent poor-man’s sous-vide-rig.

 Porchetta, in jeans.

Wrestling the rolled head into the FoodSaver bag was no easy task – in fact, the entire head wouldn’t fit on the first go, so i made the decision to lop off one of the jowls and hang it to dry in the basement. Even with the removal of the second jowl, the head barely squeezed into the bag. Farr wraps his in cheesecloth, but i think cheesecloth is, more or less, shenanigans, and it turns out that the leg from an old pair of jeans was a perfect size to give some form and support to the porchetta while it cooked. So into the jeans it went, and into the pot and into the oven and then I waited. For 14 hours,  I monitored the temperature using a probe thermometer and it turns out that my oven, on it’s lowest setting, will maintain a pot full of water and vac-sealed porchetta at 190 degrees. Perfect!

Now, more waiting. Cosentino claims that the meat needs two days before it is unwrapped “to develop flavor”. I dutifully strung the meat up in the fridge and waited. Finally, the big day. I rush home from work, visions of lumpy, gelatnous meat spilling forth from the unsealed bag, reeking of botulism and fail – the meat is still vac-sealed and wrapped in jeans at this point, and i have NO idea what has happened since I sealed it.

The porchetta, sliced.

I cut the jeans off of the outside, and slice the vac bag open and…..glorious, porky aroma spills forth. The meat slides out in one coherent loaf, covered in a gleaming, beautiful layer of pork fat and gelatin. Slicing into the meat reveals an unctuous spiral of meat and fat punctuated by squiggles of cartilage and pockets of gelatin. I nervously shave a thin slice to sample. Amazing – subtle pork flavor, assertive but not aggressive. The fat, almost liquid at room temperture, melts in my mouth. The spice hovers in some twilight zone between salt and sweet, hot and soft.

Per Ruhlman, this really is “the power and the glory” – animal fat, salt, and the Pig – although he was referring to sausage; close enough I say.I have a meat slicer arriving Friday to serve this properly. Did i mention I have about 6 pounds of this (four of which are frozen at this point)? Please, invite yourselves over, bring some beer, and let’s grub on this. Porchetta sandwiches, porchetta-wrapped asparagus…the possibilities here are endless.

Thank you Jason!