Traditional Sülze
I promised a few summertime cook-out recipes, but as I see, my old blog entry from way back already describes the procedure.
A bit of background:
Head-to-tail eating has become trendy lately, but I’ve grown up with it.
I mean that literally—both parts of said anatomy made regular appearances on my dinner plate.
Back in the Sixties and early Seventies, people were not as removed from their food as they are now. (Disgracefully, this is even true of some chefs, such as Leslie Waters who gushes in the current issue of the Good Food Magazine (June 2007): : ‘Offal—I hate it, too much information for me. I’m not into all that, nor stuff like pig’s trotters.’. Mmmh…)
Back then, it was quite common to raise pigs on smallholdings (even the nuns at my boarding school did this). My elder sister’s best friend came from a farm, and her parents raised their own pigs and cured and smoked their own bacon. One year, we decided to share a pig with them (we acquired a big chest freezer, taking up almost an entire wall of the cellar entrance, for the occasion).
I remember watching black pudding and sausages being made. And while my sister’s friend’s parents went on to brine the legs and belly for ham and speck, my mother surprised me by making her own Sülze, or headcheese (unlike brawn—which is set with only a tiny amount of stock, much like a low-fat version of rillette—Sülze is jelly-like, with cubes of meat and garnish set in a clear stock).
I’ve just send this to various Flickr food groups, including Mosaic Cooking (which I would have founded if it didn’t exist already). Let the backlash begin…
Along with other off-cuts and innards (the term ‘offal’ reminds me too much of the German word ‘Abfall’—yuck), pig’s heads and trotters are still for sale at some traditional butchers (they may have to be ordered in advance) and at the Greenfield Pork stall at Basingstoke Farmers’ Market, where I saw it for the first time two years ago. And remembering my mother’s cooking during my childhood, I took up the challenge yet again.
Tags: 'Round the World Recipes, Cooking, Recipes, Tadley Times, World Food, Tag Index
Denni