Chef's call it 'nose to tail eating' - scoffing EVERY part of an animal so nothing's wasted. But can you do it at home? Our man in a pinny tried not not to make a pig's ear of it...
The pig’s head on the plate is staring up at me in silent rebuke as I debate how best to set forth on the task in hand. I’m trying hard not to be squeamish.
After all, I love meat and am a moderately competent cook. But nowhere in Nigella or Jamie or Delia can I find the answer to the culinary conundrum I’m now confronting: how do you clean out a pig’s earhole before you eat it?
A cotton-bud? Too dainty for the digging that’s required. A toothbrush? Maybe — but please God, not mine.
The challenge: Start at this end and finish at the other, armed only with a knife, fork and a strong stomach
Then there’s the small matter of how best to remove the hairs on my pig’s chinny-chin-chin before I turn it into dinny-din-dins. Should shaving foam be applied? Or will a smear of butter and a scrape with a razor suffice?
Perhaps I’d better explain. Foodies have long despaired of the quality (and variety) of meat available on supermarket shelves. Although welfare standards have risen considerably in British farms, it’s still very hard to know exactly what sort of life your Sunday roast enjoyed.
Then there is the issue of wastage: because consumers today like their meat packaged up in easy-to-cook cuts like chops, ribs and roasting joints, much of the carcass is thrown away — even though, with a little time and attention, much of it is not only edible but delicious.
Now a few celebrity chefs are trying hard to promote the concept of nose-to-tail eating.
Put simply, that means serving up parts of the beast that normal cooks leave behind.
Trouble is, stuffed pig’s trotters and fried ears are all very well if you run a professional restaurant kitchen. But is it really practical at home?
How would a normal family cope with cooking — and eating — a whole pig from one end to the other? That’s what I was challenged to find out. It was time to go the whole hog . . .
Sunday, January 9
First find your pig
I travel to the village of Meopham in Kent, home to the Roundwood Orchard Pig Company. They supply my local farm shop with free-range, home-reared pork. If I’m going to eat a pig’s unmentionables I want to know their provenance.
Chris and Bev Brown have some 280 pigs in total, which they breed on their 70 acre farm. The mud is ankle-deep and I’m shown to a field where a dozen eight-month-old pigs squelch around.
They are the product of a rare breed known as an Oxford Sandy And Black crossed with a Large White boar — the sort of giant pink pig we’re all familiar with. I choose a gilt, a young female. She nibbles at my knee. Very soon the roles will be reversed.
Tuesday, January 11
For the chop(s)
My pig was butchered yesterday at a small abattoir near the Browns’ farm. For health and safety reasons, I am not able to attend.
It returns to the Browns cleaved down the middle and with the offal in a large plastic bag.
The carcass will produce roughly 60kg of meat, for which I will pay £350. Chris tells me that, if I wanted, I could buy a carcass elsewhere from a more intensively-reared animal for half that price.
But it’s not about the money — either for me or for him. It’s about respecting the animals we eat.
My pig is now butchered into its individual parts in a purpose-built shed behind the farmhouse.
Brian Moffatt is the man wielding the knife, the cleaver and the saw. He can break down a pig carcass in an hour and a half.
It’s fascinating watching him in action as he describes the joints and cuts that he is fashioning: shoulders, knuckles, hocks, loins, ribs, belly strips, trotters and chops.
I take it all, enough to fill a chest freezer. In a separate bag I place half the pig’s head, an ear, the tail, trotters, the heart, the kidneys, the liver and sheets of skin.
I had planned to use the blood to make black pudding but the abattoir didn’t have the kit needed to extract it.
I am secretly relieved.
Pigging out: Tom Rawstorne with cooked pigs head
Wednesday, January 12
An offally big adventure
Time and offal wait for no man, so I start work straight after breakfast. I’m going to turn the liver into pate which first requires the removal of the membrane and ventricles (chewy tubes that can leave you retching).
I then mince the liver by hand, using a table-top mincer purchased for £30 from a local kitchen shop.
The kilo of liver is quickly transformed into dark red mush. But when I try mincing half a kilo of pork belly to bulk it out, the workings repeatedly jam up. It’s a pain as it means the mincer has to be dismantled and the fatty sinew removed.
An hour on, and I add some onion, garlic, sage, breadcrumbs and a glass of brandy and pour the gloop into two baking tins lined with streaky bacon.
These go into a bain-marie (a baking tray filled with water) and cook for an hour and a quarter.
While that’s in the oven I move on to the kidneys and a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe.
First I cut them in half and remove the white, tough, inner core.
They are then quickly fried in a pan with some garlic, chilli and green lentils to which is added double cream and a glass of red wine.
My wife, somewhat reluctantly, joins me for lunch. The kidneys taste good — big, hearty flavours.
The pate, meanwhile, also looks promising. I will leave it a day or so to cool and set before turning it out.
Thursday, January 13
Use your head
I wake up feeling nauseous. My wife does too. I hope it’s nothing to do with the kidneys.
The thought of the pig’s head sitting in the fridge doesn’t help matters. Rather than using it to make brawn, I’m going to follow a Fergus Henderson recipe.
He is the pioneer of the ‘head to tail’ movement and runs St John, the Michelin-starred London restaurant famous for its meaty offcuts (anyone for ox heart and chips, lambs’ tongues and turnips, roast bone marrow and parsley salad?).
Using the whole carcass, says Henderson, is all about being ‘polite’ to the animal.
But as I rinse the head in the sink, I can’t help but think there’s a macho element to it, too.
Trust me, eating something’s face isn’t an appetising prospect, unless you’re Hannibal Lecter. And before that, I’ve got to start on the brains.
Hugh F-W describes them as the ‘chef’s treat’ and advises frying them up with a bit of sage.
I gently lift them out of the head and cook as advised. But as I lift my first forkful, I just can’t go through with it, the texture of the first bite making me gag. Sorry, pig.
I take the head and place it in a baking tray with shallots, garlic, a glass of brandy, half a bottle of white wine and some chicken stock. In the oven it goes, its ear protected from the heat by a sheath of silver foil.
When it emerges, three hours later, it has turned a gorgeous, golden-brown colour.
Henderson describes the head as the ‘perfect romantic supper’. He writes: ‘Imagine gazing into the eyes of your loved one over a golden pig’s cheek, ear and snout.’
Which all sounds very cosy, except that my wife will barely enter the kitchen, let alone linger over my snouty snack, so I dine alone.
Using a very sharp knife I chisel my way through the crisp skin into the cheek. It is a dark colour, like turkey leg meat, but very moist — and truly delicious.
Friday, January 14
An earie tail
I turn out the pate and am delighted with the result. It is chunky, firm-textured and full of flavour. I freeze half and will eat the rest over the coming week.
Buoyed by this triumph, I turn to the remaining ear and the tail.
The inside of the ear, where it joined the head, is hairy and covered in, er, matter. After pondering for several minutes how best to remove this, I scrub it with a toothbrush and then chuck it in a pot with the foot-long tail.
Bit of water and an onion and I’ll see you again in a couple of hours.
Unfortunately, the odd couple don’t look any better when we are re-acquainted.
They have gone horribly rubbery and acquired a sick-looking beige pallor.
I coat them both liberally in English mustard and then dredge through some breadcrumbs and bake. The tail is sort of ok — crunchy skin really — but the ear is foul.
Biting into the cartilage is bad enough but then I hit some weird pig-musk-flavoured liquid. No thanks. Not for me.
Deflated, I decide to restore my faith in pork with some sausages. Out comes the mincer again and in goes some more pork belly.
With this is mixed herbs, salt and pepper and a little bit of rusk (Hugh F-W recommends a multigrain organic baby cereal).
Through an attachment on the mincer I then fill the natural casings that Bev has given me, helped by two of my daughters.
It all works seamlessly and we dine on sausages. For the first time in my life I actually know what meat my bangers contain. The children pronounce them ‘yummy’.
Saturday, January 15
Tongue-tied
I’m now reaching the end of the shelf-life for much of the freshly butchered items, but there’s one last hurdle before we can move on to the prime cuts. I’ve got a tongue to demolish. And I’m not looking forward to it. It’s brown and solid and similar in size to a human tongue.
I follow a recipe from Mrs Beeton’s cookery book. In goes the tongue into a pan for a two-hour simmer. On removal I hack off the white outer-skin and, at the base, the gristly bits referred to as ‘the roots’.
I then make a sauce using the stock to which I add the tongue and a splash of sherry.
The recipe suggests that I serve it ‘within a circle of spaghetti’. I do so but there’s no disguising the result. A tongue is a tongue is a tongue. But my Labrador is chuffed.
Taking shape: Tom Rawstorne's daughters Amelia, eight, and Bea five find out how sausages are made
Monday, January 17
A good scratching
When the pig was being butchered I asked for a couple of A4-size sheets of skin with a layer of fat attached.
In keeping with another of Henderson’s recipes, I have already salted these on a tray and then placed in the fridge for five days, before rinsing, drying, coating in goose fat and cooking in the oven for two-and-a-half hours. Once cool, I dry them on a rack and return to the oven for a further blast to crisp them up.
I have created my very own pork scratchings. They are sensationally good — though probably best avoided by those with weak teeth or high cholesterol.
Tuesday, January 18
Del Boy trotters
Last but not least of the extremities are the trotters. I froze these a week ago and decide to cook them based on another Mrs Beeton recipe. So I wash them, place in a saucepan, add stock and cook for a couple of hours with an onion, some lemon rind, salt and pepper.
Such is the farmyard odour given off during this process that I am forced to relegate them to the oven.
I decide to serve in their natural form on a bed of spinach, with a sauce made from the stock poured over the top.
The recipe talks of lumps of meat falling from the bone but I can locate very little to actually get my teeth into. Taste-wise it’s deeply un-exciting. I wish I had followed one of Hugh F-W’s recipes for Chinese-style trotters. They badly need a bit of added va-va-voom. Now, where’s the dog . . .
Wednesday, January 19
Bringing home the bacon
Good news. The streaky bacon, which comes from the belly, is now ready to eat. With a little help from Bev, I cured it on the night the pig was butchered.
This simply involved stabbing the meat with a long-pronged fork and rubbing with salt. It was then vacuum-wrapped and placed in the fridge and turned every other day.
A week later I rinsed the meat in cold water and then returned it to the fridge for 24 hours.
After a couple of hours more in the freezer to firm up the meat, I slice it as thinly as I can with a very sharp knife. It tastes as good as only good bacon can taste.
Dishy: The finished product waits for the chef
And into the future...
In a week’s time two hams and some back bacon that are curing in a similar way to the streaky bacon will be ready to use. The hams I will cook and then eat or freeze.
Then, for the next six months, I will work my way through the various (and more familiar) joints and chops that remain in the freezer.
To my surprise, it’s been a worthwhile experience and has added a bit of excitement to meal times.
Too often we eat the same joints, the same cuts and follow the same recipes time and time again. A bit of a challenge, in terms of both cooking and eating, is a good thing.
Pig cheek I shall eat again. Liver pate I will make again. Likewise with sausages. I will also experiment with trotters, but as an element rather the focus of a dish.
