Trotters and Peas, Snout to Tail

Many years ago I heard a blood-curdling scream from the kitchen, after my wife peered into a pot of black eyed peas I had cooked – she had never seen trotters and peas. Trotters: Pig’s feet. I had to explain that the market was out of smoked ham hocks which I usually used, and was excited to find smoked trotters.

It depends on what you’re used to and what you’re squeamish about. She grew up eating kosher beef tongue – some might find that equally disturbing.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about being sustainable. The snout-to-tail movement is hard to avoid, it’s on the radio and television, in cook books, magazines, and newspapers, and being put into practice by many well known restaurant chefs. It makes sense to me that if you eat meat, use as much of the animal as possible. In America, many people seem to be a little squeamish about anything outside of a cleaned boneless chicken breast or a supermarket steak or chop that comes shrink-wrapped. I prefer to buy my meat from a butcher and even better when I can watch them grind my meat or hand cut my steaks.

 In my neighborhood there is a Halal butcher where I occasionally shop, especially if I need a large amount of lamb. On a good day, Mel the owner and butcher of Quality Meats may hang a whole lamb on a hook behind the counter and ask me what piece I want. I’m usually ordering a shoulder, chopped with the bones for stew meat. He cuts off the shoulder and cuts it up before my eyes. All done in a few short minutes.

I do understand having a problem seeing the whole animal hanging on a hook. But for me, it hits home that
 I‘m about to cook and eat something that is real and helps me give the deserved respect to the animal.  Also, I love to know what I’m about to take home or to a client’s house to cook.

Back to snout to tail. This movement has brought back America’s interest in charcuterie – the preparation of items such as bacon, sausage, pate’s, confit, hams, and terrines. Originally a way to preserve meats, today we enjoy the flavors from the processes of preserving such as smoking, brining, curing, pickling, fermenting and others. Many charcuterie items make use of some of the extra parts of the animal. I think of headcheese.

For part of my youth, we lived on a farm. We grew vegetables and raised animals for our own food.  My dad made head cheese a couple times, he was not much of a cook at all and his headcheese was not very good. His tasted more like a low grade spicy spam, but he tried and I respect his eagerness to use as much of the animal as possible. I also remember homemade pickled trotters floating in a bucket, nothing like you would get from a seasoned charcuterie chef. 

   I’m making some of dad’s culinary dreams come true. I’ve been  working with basic charcuterie type of items, smoking meats and fish. I’ve also been making sausage and they’re really good, curing meats and fish: my lox gravlax is great and the home cured bacon – especially after it’s smoked – is decadent. Next on my agenda is terrines and pates. My wife has sort of gotten used to trotters or maybe I’m just imagining that. For now, I’m not going to push my luck around here by picking meat from a pigs head sitting on the kitchen island for hog Head Cheese.