Pig's Feet
To prepare pigs' feet for any kind of cooking: scrape and wash them thoroughly and tie each separately in a piece of cheesecloth. Put them into a kettle or stewpan, cover with boiling water and add two tablespoons of salt for every eight feet. Let the water boil up once, then set back on the fire, simmer for six hours, then set off to cool. When cold, drain, but do not take off the cloth, and place the feet on a platter. The next day they will be ready for broiling, frying, or pickling. To Broil Them: Split each foot, dredge with salt, pepper and flour and broil over clear coals for ten minutes. Serve on a warm platter, seasoning them with butter, salt and pepper. To Fry Them: Split and season well with salt, pepper and lemon juice; dip in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs and fry five minutes in boiling fat. Drain and serve immediately.
HEAD-CHEESE-Head-cheese (pork) is usually made of the head, ears and tongue. Clean the meat with the utmost care, and boil both the meat and bones in salted water until the former is very tender. Take out the head, place it in a colander to drain, and remove all the bones with a knife. Cut the ears in very thin slices and place them with the head meat. Season the whole to taste with salt, pepper, sage, sweet marjoram and any other herbs that may be available, also a little powdered cloves. Mix the mass well together, and pack it tightly in a bowl, interspersing layers of the mixture with slices of the boiled tongue. Press the whole into a compact shape, and cover it with a plate on which is placed a sufficiently heavy weight. The head-cheese will be ready to use in two or three days. It may be cut in thin slices and served with vinegar, and mustard, if liked; or it may be cut in slices, dipped in egg and cracker crumbs and fried.
A two-part page: a long simmer that turns pigs' feet into something you can then broil, fry or pickle, followed by head-cheese made from the same butchering. Both are straightforward, but the cooling and holding steps assume a cold larder that most kitchens no longer have.
- Cool in the refrigerator, not on the counterThe instruction to "set off to cool" and leave the feet until the next day dates from a period when a cold pantry did the work. Chill them promptly and hold them at refrigerator temperature; the same goes for the pressed head-cheese, which should spend its two or three days of setting in the cold, not at room temperature.
- SourcingPigs' feet are still sold at most butchers, often already split and usually scalded and scraped clean, which removes the worst of the preparation. A whole pig's head is a special order almost everywhere; jowl, ears, tongue and hocks bought separately give the same mix of meat, skin and gelatine.
- The cheesecloth is structuralSix hours of simmering dissolves the connective tissue and the feet will fall apart in the pot. The cloth holds each one in shape so it can be split and broiled later, which is why the recipe insists you leave it on through the chilling.
- Simmer, never boilThe single hinge here. "Let the water boil up once, then set back on the fire" means bring to a boil and then drop to a bare tremble, around 180-190F. A rolling boil for six hours shreds the skin and clouds the liquid.
- Six hours is not an exaggerationTrotters need long, low heat to convert collagen to gelatine. Three to four hours in a covered pot will do it if the simmer is steady, but undercooked feet are rubbery and unpleasant, so err long.
- Save the cooking liquidThe strained broth sets to a firm jelly when cold and can be used to moisten head-cheese that looks dry. It is also the base for a good pea or bean soup.
- "Boiling fat" for fryingFat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the food, roughly 350-375F. Five minutes at that heat is enough to crisp the crumbs, since the meat is already fully cooked.
- Broiling over coalsA hot broiler element or a grill at high heat substitutes directly. Ten minutes total, turned once, is aimed at browning and rendering the skin rather than cooking through.
- YieldEight feet serve four to six as a main course.
Both dishes belong to the winter hog-killing that structured rural American and European households well into the twentieth century: a pig butchered in cold weather had to be used down to the last bone, and the extremities, head and offal were eaten first because they would not keep. Head-cheese is not a cheese at all; the name is usually explained by the older sense of the word, a shaped and pressed mass, and its relatives run across Europe under names like fromage de t u00eate, s u00fclze and brawn. The gelatine that sets it comes from the same skin and connective tissue that makes trotters worth six hours on the stove. The pairing is a reminder that even urban cooks were expected to handle primal cuts, and that a butcher who sold you a loin would send the head along cheap.