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Boiled Pig's Feet
Wash some pig's feet well, put them over the fire in a stewpan, with just water enough to cover, and as soon as the water boils remove the pan from the fire, strain off the water, and plunge them in a bowl of cold water. Clean the pan and put the feet into it again, with two quarts of water, one tablespoon each of salt and vinegar, and one ounce of flour blended smoothly in a little cold water. Put the pan over the fire and stir the contents till they boil, then place over a slow fire and simmer for four hours. Place the feet on a hot dish, pour over some good white sauce, and serve hot.
A plain restaurant preparation that hinges on one old technique most modern cooks have never met: the feet are cooked in a floured, acidulated liquid to keep them pale. Everything else is patience.
- The flour and vinegar are a blancFlour clouds the liquid so the surface of the feet is shielded from air and stays white, while the vinegar helps keep the skin from greying and softens the connective tissue. Blend the ounce of flour (about 3 tablespoons) into cold water first and strain it in, or it will lump and scorch on the bottom.
- Do not skip the first blanchingBringing the feet to a boil and shocking them in cold water pulls out scum and blood, and it firms the skin so it holds together over four hours. Without it the second liquid turns grey and the finished feet look muddy.
- Buying themFresh feet, split lengthwise, are easiest to handle; front feet are often preferred as the meatier ones, though this is butcher's lore rather than a fixed rule. They usually come cleaned and scalded, but check between the toes and singe off any bristle with a flame before washing.
- "Slow fire" and the four hoursA bare simmer, never a rolling boil, which shreds the skin. Split feet may come tender sooner than whole ones, so start testing before the four hours are up. They are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the thickest part and the skin is translucent and yielding.
- QuantitiesTwo quarts of water will cover only a small quantity of feet, and then only in a narrow pan, so choose the pan to suit the number you have. One tablespoon of salt in two quarts is mild seasoning, so taste the sauce separately rather than relying on the cooking liquid for seasoning.
- The white sauceProbably a becamel or similar flour-thickened white sauce; the recipe leaves it unspecified. A few spoonfuls of the strained cooking liquid, rich in gelatin, will give the sauce body and gloss.
- Yield and servingTwo split feet per person as a main course, one as a first course. They are gelatinous and sticky by nature; mustard, cornichons, or a sharp mustard-spiked sauce cuts the richness if you find the plain white sauce of the recipe too bland.
- Cold, if you preferLeft in their liquid overnight the feet set into a jelly on their own, though the floured cooking liquid gives a cloudy set rather than a clear aspic. Chilled and sliced, this is the basis of jellied pig's feet.
Pig's feet occupied an odd double position in Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf: cheap offal by butcher's reckoning, yet a fixture on grand menus because French kitchens had long treated pieds de porc as a serious preparation, most famously the crumbed and grilled pieds de cochon Sainte-Menehould, generally traced to the Champagne town of that name. The gelatin-rich foot was useful as well as edible, and stockpots throughout the nineteenth century relied on feet and trotters for the body that later cooks got from commercial gelatin. Cooking pale meats in a blanc, a thickened acidulated bath, was standard practice for feet, calves' heads, sweetbreads and cardoons in professional kitchens of the period, when whiteness on the plate signalled skill; the technique survives now mostly in the treatment of artichokes and salsify. In America the same cut had a robust life outside the hotels, pickled in jars on saloon counters and sold by weight in butcher shops, which is part of why a book like this bothers to show the refined version.