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Pig's Feet, Tomato Sauce
Split in two lengthwise three cooked fat pig's feet. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn feet in seasoning, then roll in bread crumbs, arrange on a double broiler and slowly broil for eight minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish with six quarters lemon and send to table with one gill hot tomato sauce separately.
A short finishing recipe rather than a whole one: it assumes you already have pig's feet simmered until tender, and only tells you how to crumb and broil them. Almost everything that matters happens before the first line.
- The cooking you have to do first"Cooked" pig's feet means feet simmered in salted water with aromatics for 3 to 4 hours, until the skin and connective tissue are fully soft and the bones move freely. Broiling for eight minutes a side will not tenderize anything; it only crisps and browns.
- Cool them before splittingLet the feet cool in their liquid until firm, ideally overnight in the refrigerator. Hot from the pot they collapse into gelatin and cannot be split cleanly lengthwise or crumbed.
- A gillHalf a cup of tomato sauce, served separately in a warmed sauceboat.
- "Double broiler"A hinged wire broiling basket that clamps the food between two grids so it can be turned in one motion. A rack set over a sheet pan works, though the crumbed side needs a careful lift with a spatula rather than tongs.
- Heat and position"Slowly broil" means moderate radiant heat, not a blast — keep the feet 5 to 6 inches from the element so the crumbs color in eight minutes rather than scorching in three. The interior is already cooked; you are only heating through and crisping.
- Crumbs will need helpOil, salt, pepper and dry crumbs give a thin coating that tends to fall off gelatinous skin. Pressing the crumbs on firmly and chilling the crumbed feet for 20 minutes before broiling holds them together far better.
- YieldThree feet split lengthwise gives six pieces — two or three servings, with the six lemon quarters accounting for one apiece.
Pig's feet are a thrift dish that survived into restaurant cooking because of gelatin: the long simmer that softens them also produces a liquid that sets solid, which is why the same feet turn up as brawn, head cheese and the body of an aspic. This treatment — boil, split, crumb, grill, serve with lemon and a separate sauce — closely follows the French handling usually labeled pieds de porc panés or à la Sainte-Menehould, the latter traditionally associated with the town of Sainte-Menehould in the Champagne region, where the feet are said to be cooked so long that the bones become edible. The International Cook Book by Alexander Filippini belongs to a generation of American professional cookbooks that catalogued such dishes in brief, assuming a kitchen where stockpots ran all day and the reader would already have cooked feet on hand. Tomato sauce served apart, rather than the mustard usual with the French versions, may reflect American taste.