Eating a Pig's Foot

As I packed my freezer full of basil cubes, I found two pig's feet.  Being rather large, they took up a fair amount of space and I decided that it was time to pull them out of the deep freeze.  But what on earth was I to do with two piggy feet?  Looking at the leg end of the limb, they looked quite meaty, and somehow the blogosphere took me to an asian pork hock recipe.  Pork hock, pig foot, close enough.  Braising?  Always a good thing.  Asian flavours?  Ditto.

I was set.

My day started early with work in the morning.  Once I got home, around 10:30am, I set off to my local Asian market to gather a few ingredients not in my pantry.  I had everything but the coriander root, the black cardamom, the white peppercorns, the cane sugar and the young coconut.  That tells you how many spices this recipe calls for.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any coriander root.

The black cardamom is very different from green cardamom, a spice I am familiar with.  At first, I thought to just use the green, but once I smelled the black, I realized it was necessary.  The two are not at all alike.  Black cardamom has a strong medicinal smell, with hints of eucalyptus and spice.  It's intense.  The white peppercorn is brighter than its black counterpart, with hints of citrus.  And the young coconut water is just beautiful, fresh and juicy smelling, far subtler than coconut milk.  It's also quite fun hacking into the coconut to release the water!

Directions

1) This is not a recipe to rush or skip steps.  Pork feet need time and moisture and heat to bring out their beauty.  If any food item is an ugly duckling, it is a pig's foot.  Start by boiling your feet in water and salt for three minutes.  This gets rid of impurities or another way of looking at it, washes your feet very well. As they boil, skim off any foamy material that might rise to the top of your pot.

2) After three minutes in the boiling foot bath, dump the contents into a colander and let your feet drain.  You are about to fry them in hot oil and want the skin as dry as possible to avoid splattering.  As the feet are drying, heat up the oil in a heavy bottomed pot or wok.  Take one of the feet and delicately dip a toe into the oil, if it doesn't make a loud frying noise then your oil isn't hot enough.  Let it heat up more.  Once your oil is nice and hot, fry all sides of your pig feet so that they are a crisp golden brown.  A side benefit to the deep frying is whatever remaining hair might be on the pig is fried to bits!  Please see exhibit b to your left.

3) Once your pig bits are fried, pull them out and drain all but a tablespoon of oil out of your pot.  Be careful, hot oil is hot!  Now add your ginger and garlic and fry until fragrant - this shouldn't take long.  Then add in all your spices with the exception of the white peppercorns and fry for another minute or so.  I would only use one black cardamom pod because they are quite intense.  The smell as you are add the spices is unbelievably delicious!  Star anise is one of my favorites and the black cardamom is darkly fascinating.  I'm not quite ready to say that I love it but perhaps with time.

Finally add the rest of the ingredients with the exception of the coriander leaves (cilantro), bring to a boil and add the pork feet back in.  Whoo!  You are almost done.

4) Turn the whole thing down to low, put the lid on and let it brew for as long as possible.  Pork feet are full of tendons and collagen so need low and slow heat to break this all down.  If you rush them you will have a rubbery gross mess.  The recipe calls for four hours of cooking.  I had a nice long bike ride that night ending at 8:30pm so my feet had about seven hours of cooking.

I arrived home starving and tired and a big pot of pork feet sounded quite delicious.  The meat was so soft that it actually fell off the bones (there are many) as I tried to pull the feet out of the pot.  Once I finished fishing all the bits and pieces out I let them cool a little and then took all the bones out.  I only have one thing to say - pig feet are jelly-like and fatty and full of collagen.  While I'm not quite at a point where I can slurp on a whole foot, once it is pulled apart and sitting like a luscious pile of fat on beautiful steamed rice I am pretty happy to eat it all down.

The verdict: I am excited to try pig feet again in the future.  This recipe didn't sell me 100% just because of the black cardamom.  It had such a strong menthol, medicinal flavour that it really overwhelmed the other spices.  If I was going to try this recipe again, I might try it with just one bulb of cardamom or with none.

As a side note - my thrifty Scot self also really likes this recipe because my butcher only charged two bucks a foot.  How can you argue with that?

As well, I fried the pig skin before eating it.  Flabby skin just doesn't sound or feel or taste appealing to me whereas fried pig skin is one of my favourite things.  It could be my favorite thing, besides sweet potato.  So yeah.  I recommend doing that.  I would love to hear about other pig feet experiences.  Do you have a favorite way of cooking with them?  Is braised the best choice?  Do they just seem totally disgusting to you?  Tell me all!

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Late Summer at the Market - On the Cheap!

The summer is moving into fall, slowly, as each day gets a little cooler.  In Vancouver we tend to stay hot through September so it is not quite time to mourn.  It is time to start snapping up late summer deals at the market.

There are two main deals at the market right now: seconds and large crops.

It is the height of the stone fruit growing season and stone fruits ripen fast and don't transport well.  If you want to make jam or pie or any sort of baked good with stone fruits, ask the vendor if they sell stone fruit "seconds".  This is code for damaged fruit that is perhaps not a consumer's first choice, however, it tends to be ripe and sweet meaning it is perfect for canning and baking and saucing.

The best way to score deals on seconds is to, again, get to know your farmer.  Let them know you are wanting to make jam or preserves or what have you and that you are looking for seconds.  Of course be polite and wait until they aren't super busy with other customers.

The heat wave also leads to large amounts of some produce ripening at the same time, this is what I mean by large crops.  Cucumbers, for example, were plentiful last weekend at Klipper's and were on sale for a buck a cucumber, any size!  That is a great deal for a certified organic, locally-grown cucumber.

As with the seconds, just keep your eye out for possibilities and ask your local farmers.  Because we don't really live in a bargaining culture we can think that it's rude to ask for discounts, it's not.  Just let them know that you are trying to feed yourself and your family healthy food on a limited budget and ask if they are expecting any large crops.  Maybe they have bulk discounts and you can pair up with a few friends?  It never hurts to ask.

Good luck and happy hunting!  I would love to hear about success stories!

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Dinner for Dad: Pasta Carbonara

For those that follow my blog, you will remember the start of my love affair with cured pig cheek or guanciale.  A traditional use for this lovely fatty pinch of pig is in carbonara, a traditional Roman pasta dish full of egg and cheese and guanciale.  Sounds pretty good right?

So I decided to "treat" (not this time unfortunately) my Dad to a dinner while my Mom was away.  This seemed to be a win-win situation in many ways.

First, I get to hang out with my Dad, which I always enjoy.  Second, he doesn't have to eat take-out for at least one night (my Mom is the cook, he is the dishwasher).  Third, he is very accepting of food and so is the perfect target for new and/or untested recipes.  Fourth, he eats gluten and my Mom doesn't, and finally, it is the opening ceremony of the London Olympics and he has a giant TV and I have none.  What a perfect situation!? 

What a perfect foil for an untested recipe...  Please allow the story to unfold.

Ingredients

• Batch of homemade pasta
• Fresh peas from Bob's fruit stand
• Large chunk of guanciale
• Two eggs
• 1/2 cup of parmesan
• Sprigs of thyme

Directions

1) Everything started out well.  I was a bit nervous about making pasta for the first time, especially without a pasta machine but being experienced with handling dough I thought should hold me in good stead.  It did.  The kneading went well.  I chose to use whole wheat flour from the Flour Peddler so I reduced the flour in the recipe just a little bit to account for this.  It came together nicely and was popped into the fridge to relax.

2) While the dough was relaxing I cubed the guanciale and allowed it to slowly render with the sprigs of thyme.  It smelled beautiful.  I also shelled my peas in anticipation of the grand cooking finale.

3) It came time to roll out the dough.  I had bought a book on pasta making earlier in the day and my instructions were to roll it out to the thickness of a piece of brown paper.  A piece of brown paper!!!  My goodness that seemed thin at the time.

I started to roll, and roll, and roll.  Every once in a while I picked the dough up and flipped it over, gently slapping it against the granite counter top.  Roughing it up a bit is good for the gluten development, think of it as giving your pasta character.  It was getting quite thin but wasn't as thin as my book said and here is where the first mistake occurred.  I started to panic.  My Dad was sitting at the dining room table doing some work and I became sure that he wanted to eat and was getting impatient (he wasn't, I was just getting anxious).  Mistake 1: I rushed the process...  Never rush the process. 

4) My too-thick pasta was dumped into the boiling water and promptly thickened up until it resembled flattened earth worms.  I guess I never realized how much pasta thickened up as it cooked until I made it myself.

5) As the pasta cooked (it only takes about 3 minutes) I had to work on the carbonara.  The peas had been added to the guanciale before the pasta went in so they would have time to soften (dump out some of the guanciale fat before adding the peas and make sure you give the peas a good amount of time to cook).

6) The parmesan was mixed with the eggs and whisked together.  Then about half a cup of pasta cooking water was slowly whisked into this mixture until it became smooth.  As I was doing this I anxiously watched the pasta cook and stirred it so it didn't all stick together.  Then the moment of truth and the secret to amazing carbonara (besides fantastic ingredients).

The pasta is whisked out of the boiling water and thrown in with the guanciale and peas.  The egg/cheese mixture is poured on top and the whole mess is gently tossed for only about a minute until it is shiny and beautiful!

Mistake 2: Never, never, never return a carbonara sauce to the heat once it is done because you fear the pasta is underdone.  It cooks the egg too much and becomes a lumpy mess.  Again, I panicked.  Honestly go for an undercooked pasta rather than an overcooked carbonara sauce, not to mention that an extra 30 seconds on the heat is not going to do much to your pasta anyways.

Panic is not a good ingredient in food.

The verdict: It tasted good.  The whole wheat flour lent a stronger taste to the pasta than regular white pasta but personally I don't mind when my food tastes like what it is.  It was definitely toothsome.  The carbonara was a bit lumpy because of my panicked overcooking but delicious nonetheless.  In the words of my father:  "Well, it's not a very pretty looking dish dear but it tastes good."

Thanks Dad.

End note: You are probably wondering why there are only two photos.  Carbonara, even the mess I made of it, doesn't leave much time for snapping photos.  It all happens in the blink of an eye and I am just not willing to sacrifice my end product for a photo.  Not to mention that by the time I was done I just wanted to sit down and eat, as did my father.

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment