Roasted Pig's Head Tacos

'Pig's head' isn't a euphemism for anything, folks, so if you're squeamish - look away, close the browser, etc. etc.

  

But first, here's a shot of the tasty result.  Yummy, moist pork tacos made with homemade corn tortillas and topped with some homemade tomatillo salsa and curtido.  Actually, just the one on the right is pork - the one on the left was some chicken tossed with a homemade chipotle salsa.  (But the porky pork pork was the highlight, believe you me.)

I've worked with pig's head before, and it was a slightly traumatic experience.  That time it had come skinned, and the big old eyeballs staring at me as I tried to work with it were almost more than I could handle.  That was a very strange year....  nothing came to me like I ordered and all the cuts of meat were skinned, which is pretty useless if you want to cure hams.  Anyway, I doublechecked all this stuff with my farmer this year (Cochrane Family Farms in Upper Stewiacke) and he assured me that all meat would come skin-on.  Because... skinning pigs is dumb.

I should perhaps pause to explain just why I ask for the head when I get a side of pork from my farmer, lest I give the impression of being some kind of extreme meat aficionado.  See, most folks don't want these 'gross bits' like the head and the offal with the rest of their meat and so they generally get thrown out.  A head does take up a lot of space - ours was around 16 pounds - so it's pretty understandable that they can't all be stored, and small producers have a hard time selling these to anybody.  So they're discarded.  But in the past decade or so that I've been more involved with my food and where it comes from, it's become important to me to recognize that animals I eat were once living, breathing animals - and nothing does this quite like a head.  To throw this last reminder away seems like a physical and moral waste. 

Anyway - this was the first summer where I actually got my pork cut exactly the way I had requested. (Thanks, Frank!)  I had also wanted all the meat unfrozen so I could deal with it immediately, and it was - aside from the head.  At the time I had been planning to make guanciale from the jowls, but was actually quite glad that I couldn't really deal with it since I had enough work to do, and I focused on making bacon, ham, paté, and cutting the the rest of the pig up into manageable cuts.

So into the freezer went the head, and there it stayed until last week.  I ordered 50 lbs of grassfed beef from Ironwood Farm, (the same place we've bought our CSA share for the past two years) and we had to pick it up this weekend.  The pig head taking up valuable space at the bottom of the freezer had to get dealt with in order to make room for all the beef.

Look at that rakish grin!

I'm still in school these days, and November isn't a great time to start time-intensive food projects, so fancy pants jowl-curing or making head cheese was not going to happen.  I decided to just roast up the damn thing and see what happened.  Once it was thawed out, I took a good look at it for the first time.

First things first.  Pig needed a shave.

No more goatee!

It looked like he'd (she?) been scalded to remove most of the hair,  but his little goatee was missed.  I read on the interwebs that you could also use a blow torch for this part, and had actually arranged to borrow one from a friend, but I forgot to pick it up.  I first tried shaving him with a crappy disposable razor, but it wasn't up to the job, and I ended up doing most of it with a sharp boning knife.  

 

When he was all shaved up, I stuck him in the roaster, covered his nose and ears, and roasted him at around 290 degrees for the next 7 or 8 hours.  When it finally came out of the oven, the internal temp was around 190 - so I knew it would be coming out pretty much like pulled pork.  But.... how was I going to get through that impenetrable hide to get to the meat?

Um, this is how.  After letting it rest for 20 minutes or so, I cracked open its mouth to get at the meat at the back of the jaw.  Kind of gross, but quite effective.  There really is not very much meat on a head - most of it is jaw muscles or tongue, and this allowed us to get at it without wading through all the fat. 
  

We were pretty thorough with the picking out all the good chunks of meat off the bones, and this plate was all there was - probably 2 pounds of cooked meat from a 16 pound head.  We also peeled the tongue and  cut it up as well.  I'm not the hugest tongue fan, but this was actually pretty nice.

The meat was RICH but with a nice clean, pork roast flavour - my super-tart lime tomatillo salsa was a perfect balance for the rich meat, and the heavy corn tortillas provided a good, solid base to the whole production.  I'd definitely do this again.
(Oh - and the leathery ears and the rest of the skin went to a friend's dog where he'll be happily chewing for the next year!)

Hasenpfeffer Anyone?

Please enjoy a guest post, provided for your reading pleasure by Jenny Harms. 
 ~~

Rabbit stewed in Hard Cider

At the request of Ms Planet Borscht, I intended to share my first experience in cooking rabbit six months ago. But to be honest, the resulting bland chicken soup-esque stew à la Mother England left everything to be desired. I will admit, I am not the best at recipe selection. Somehow, I thought a nice traditional English Hare Stew would be spicy and bright. That was so not the result.  Notice the over-boiled celery and carrots, swimming in a greasy broth seething with onions, and anemic, somewhat over-cooked legs of rabbit. Pan frying the left-overs in chilis was the only way to save it. Even though jointing the rabbit was a thrilling squeamish adventure, I had no urge to commit the tale to the interweb. The up side: I am now an ardent fan of Magners Irish Cider.

  But, time has passed, the memories have faded, and I am expecting an alarming amount of pork to fill my freezer in the next couple of weeks. The second rabbit's time had come. I assembled my tools, reviewed Jamie Oliver's excellent how-to on jointing a rabbit, and queued up some à propos butchering music.

 I was not feeling as squeamish with the jointing this time, and in the end I think it went rather well. I even found the tiny hip joints and separated them neatly.

And then my favourite part - chopping the saddle into neat sections with my handy specialized banging stick.

Jointing my varmint only took half the time as the first one - likely because the carcass was completely thawed. These are my tidy cuts back to front: two belly flaps, saddle chopped in four, two haunches and two shoulders.

 
 After rubbing the pieces with cognac-infused dijon mustard, it was time to take advantage of the sunny, 8 degree day. I went for a brisk, snowy and sunny bike ride at Bird's Hill. Hard to believe this time last week it was 24 degrees, and I was getting a sunburn on the river in my kayak.

Right, back to business.  Cooking the rabbit. After a momentary panic trying to locate the corkscrew for the deglazing wine, I had the butter melted, and tossed the parts in the pot.

Wine used: Château des Charmes - an unoaked chardonnay. I think I understand now why they are usually oaked.

rabbit browning in butter

My bouquet garni - French tarragon and thyme fresh from my yard despite the recent snowstorm

This recipe - Lapin à la moutard - plays to my strengths with directions like ''sear until very crispy''. Check out the bunny bacon front and centre. 

 

The result - juicy, flavourful rabbit with a robust colour. The tureen of  sauce is the odd part for me. I stirred in crème fraiche as directed, but I may have had too much liquid left in the pot because there was all this extra sauce I wasn't sure about. The recipe ends with a mysterious ''stir in crème fraiche and parsley''. Full stop. No ''pour reserved sauce over rabbit and serve''. I sort of got the impression that  it would coat the fabulous rabbit with none to spare. It doesn't really matter though, because I am a convert!  Rabbit is a new favourite. Maybe I should learn how to make it confit!

 

Look, I don't eat meat ALL the time....

So, I'm a student now. And I still don't like spending money on crappy restaurant food (good restaurant food is another thing completely, although it is non-existent on campus).

My week-day schedule has been pretty crazy this term and it's taken a lot of planning to make sure I pack meals to eat between classes at school. I've scoped out all the public microwaves on campus, but sometimes it's nice to be able to nibble on your lunch while doing your studying in the library, (in one of the food approved areas, of course!)
I've been making this whole grain salad a lot this winter - it's yummy, it's filling, and I don't have to worry about keeping it refrigerated.

Plus - with this lunch, the campus vegans don't give me the stink-eye.

This is one of those salads where you don't really need a recipe, and I make it a little differently each time. Here's the basic idea, though:

1/2 cup wheat berries
1/2 cup of barley
1/2 cup of quinoa
1/2 cup of bulgar wheat
...or whatever grains, legumes or beans you have on hand.
I like wheat berries because they have a great chewy texture, but you need to soak them overnight before you cook them, and the cook time can be a good 40 minutes or so. Quinoa, barley and bulgar wheat take the same time to cook, so I mix them together in a pot with 3 cups of water, and cook for about 20 minutes.
Once your cooked grains have cooled, add some shredded carrots, minced onion, finely chopped kale or brussels sprouts. When I have some pickled peppers or capers, they taste pretty good in here too. I like my salad pretty heavy on the grains, so I usually use 1/2 a red onion, one carrot, and a few big leaves of kale.
I make a really strongly flavoured vinaigrette for this salad, and let the salad kind of marinate in it for a day or two. The salad keeps tasting better every day!

Mustardy Vinaigrette
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sumac
1/2 tsp cayenne
Salt and pepper to taste.

This is a general idea only - like I said, it's more of a basic idea than a recipe.

Reason #387: Why preserving food is so awesome…

Reason #387: …Because you will fall down on your knees, weeping with pleasure, from the taste of last season’s tomatoes when early spring finally arrives. Your canned salsa will give you hope that summer will appear once again.

Ok, this is a little melodramatic… but homemade salsa does help when it comes time to eating leftovers. This afternoon I was looking at a pretty empty fridge – some leftover baked beans, eggs, sprouts, and the usual condiments – and inspiration hit!

I took the leftover beans and added some garlic-chili paste, and mashed them up a bit. I spread this on some warm corn tortilla, and topped it with some scrambled eggs, salsa, and sprouts.

Delicious!