Pied de Cochon

Yes, you read that right. Pig foot, otherwise known as a trotter. It appears that I have a "nasty bits" obsession lately. After the ears, Michael over at A Dash of Stash persuaded me to try my hands at feet (heh).

I wanted to make something that my family would at least try, so I knew I couldn't go whole hog (ok, ok, I'll stop now) - I'd have to disguise the feet, alter their appearance completely. So I went with Thomas Keller's Au Pied de Cochon aux Sauce Gribiche, which I believe is in Ad Hoc at Home, but since I don't own the book, I'm not 100% sure. (Hint to anyone looking to get me a present!)

Using a Serious Eats post, this post by In Praise of Sardines, and this one by Slurp & Burp, I set out to make something delicious out of something slightly scary. Since those three posts give a pretty good step-by-step, I'm not going to repeat it. My only deviation from the recipe was in the sauce - I didn't have all the fresh herbs required, so I used parsley and shallots. I love this sauce. I want to put it on chicken, fish, asparagus...

Anyway, back to the feet. Unfortunately, my feet came without the shank attached, so I had very little meat - mostly tendon and skin. I tried to find a market that carried shanks, planning on boiling one separately, and adding its meat to my feety bits, but, alas, I could only find smoked shanks. And while I love smoked shanks for things like split pea soup, I didn't want smoked here.

[Gratuitous foot shot]

I used 3 different-sized biscuit cutters as molds, weighing them down with appropriately sized jars. The refrigerated disks solidified nicely, but fell apart once sauteed and baked. Maybe I should've added more broth? More fat? Maybe that extra meat would've helped. Not that I'm complaining too much, because regardless of the fall-apart-ness, this was delicious.

 [End result]

Final tally was 2-0 with one abstaining (Youngest wouldn't touch it). Would I make this again? Definitely. In about 3 years, when my arteries finally open up again.