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Braised Pig's Ears
Thoroughly clean the required quantity of pig's ears, singe off all the hair, and scrape them. Put a layer of slices of fat bacon at the bottom of a braising pan, place the ears on it, sprinkle over with salt and pepper, add a few slices of carrots and onions and a bunch of sweet herbs. Pour in sufficient stock to moisten, set the pan on the fire with hot ashes on the lid, and let them cook till they are done. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve, skim off the fat, arrange the ears on a dish, pour the liquor over, and serve very hot.
Pig's Ears, Lyonese Singe off all the hair from some pig's ears, scrape, wash them well, and cut lengthwise into strips. Put them into a saucepan with a little stock, add a small quantity of flour, a few slices of onions fried, and salt and pepper to taste. Place the pan over a slow fire, and simmer the liquor until the ears are thoroughly cooked. Arrange them on a dish, add a little lemon juice to the liquor, pour it with the onions over the ears, and serve with a garnish of slices of fried bread.
Two versions of the same cut: a straight braise and a Lyonnaise treatment with onions and lemon. The controlling variable in both is time — ears are almost entirely skin, cartilage and collagen, and they are unpleasant until that collagen has fully softened.
- Cooking time, stated plainly"Till they are done" is likely to mean something in the region of two to three hours at a bare simmer. The test is a skewer passing through the thick base of the ear with no resistance and the cartilage yielding; undercooked ears are rubbery in a way no sauce disguises.
- Hot ashes on the lidThis is the old braising pan, or braisière, heated from below and above at once. A heavy Dutch oven with the lid on in a 300F oven does the same job.
- Buying and preppingEars come from an ethnic butcher, a Latin or Asian market, or a whole-hog farm order. They arrive largely dehaired already; pass any remaining bristles over a gas flame, then scrape with the back of a knife and wash. Check inside the ear canal, which is often overlooked.
- A preliminary blanch helpsNeither version calls for it, but ten minutes at a boil in fresh water, then a rinse, removes scurf and off-smells and gives a cleaner braising liquor. Many modern recipes include such a step.
- Fat baconThe lining layer is for fat and flavour, not for eating; salt pork or unsmoked fatback is nearer the original than modern sweet-cured smoked bacon, which will dominate.
- Bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet garni — parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, tied. Nothing exotic is meant.
- "A small quantity of flour" in the LyonnaiseRoughly a tablespoon per cup of stock, enough to lightly bind. Whisk it into a little cold stock first, or cook it briefly with the fried onions, or you will get lumps over a long simmer.
- FinishingBraised ears set to a gelatinous stickiness as they cool, so serve genuinely hot as instructed. Many cooks now go further and crisp the cooked strips in a hot pan or under a broiler for contrast, which suits the Lyonnaise version and its fried bread.
- YieldFigure one to two ears per person as a first course, or one ear per person if served as part of a larger plate. The recipe fixes no quantities: it calls for "the required quantity" of ears and only enough stock to moisten.
Pig's ears belong to the frugal butchery that European kitchens practised as a matter of course, and this book includes them alongside terrapin and canvasback. The second recipe's name points at Lyon, a city whose bouchons built a reputation on exactly this kind of offal cookery, and "Lyonnaise" in nineteenth-century menu French is shorthand for onions, generally with a sharp note — here lemon juice — to cut the richness. Ears were also boiled, breaded and grilled, or set into head cheese, since their high collagen content makes them a natural gelling agent in a brawn. That the dish reads as adventurous now says as much about twentieth-century American retail butchery, which largely removed heads, ears and feet from the counter, as about anything in the recipe itself.