Oink Oink

I don’t know if you have noticed but with the onset of the recession it seems more and more things have been going back to their roots this Christmas. Kirsty Allsop has been telling us how to blow her Christmas ball balls and every chef on TV has been telling us how to knock up the most traditional of Christmas meals. For me, going back to basics cookery wise is using cheap cuts of meat, cuts that are now ignored despite their flavour and great value. So last Wednesday at Altenburg Kitchen it was out with the fillet and in with head… pig’s head terrine was on the menu.

Pig’s head terrine is probably conjuring up some rather dodgy visuals.  I won’t lie, the beginning process is not for the feint hearted (and if you don’t want to see piggy bits then it is best not to look much further). Our fantastic butcher http://www.hennessybutchers.co.uk  provided us with some top notch ingredients.

Ears, snouts, cheeks, tongues and trotters

Trotters et al were then cleaned and boiled with carrots, celeriac, leeks and onions until the meat was tender.  The meat was then stripped from the assorted pieces and left to cool and then chopped and diced along with a selection of herbs and shallots.

Piggy boiler

Sliced and diced

Taking shape

 The meat was then placed in a terrine dish along with the reduced juices from its stock in order to make it set.  We decided to make onion marmalade to go with it but made it with slightly tarter than usual in order to balance the richness of the terrine and just to top it off we baked some bread to take it right back to basics.

Pigs head terrine with onion marmalade and cornichons

And so there it is our pig’s head terrine in all it’s splendour.   It left us with a great sense of achievement, we had managed to use parts of the pig which otherwise would normally have been discarded and gone to waste and with a few tweaks here and there it even managed to taste rather good!

We’re off now to enjoy the delights of other people’s kitchens over Christmas which will hopefully give us some well earned culinary rest. In the mean time we hope you have some fantastic festive feasting and look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

x

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