Aug 02 2010
Novel Ingredients: II
This time in the form of some pigs cheeks, sold by Waitrose as ‘forgotten cuts’. Also known as Bath Chaps, the fashion seems to be for braising them. These had sat in the freezer for A LONG TIME. I bought them on impulse (they were very cheap) not long after the end of the challenge, but it turned out that we had a busy schedule that week, so they went in the freezer. Once or twice I looked online for recipes (having been surprised to discover they didn’t get a significant mention in Meat) but didn’t really feel inspired.
However, Dougal insisted recently that it was high time we tackle them. Suddenly there seemed to be a myriad recipes online. The Waitrose website even had one, which I suppose makes sense if they are going to sell them, but they do rather spoil the point of a lovely cheap cut of meat by then suggesting you serve them with scallops on top!
In the end we followed this recipe, braising our cheeks in cider. When it came to unwrapping them they were much larger than I’d remembered!
We loaded all this into the pan; browning the meat first before giving it a fizzy bubble bath in cider and whacking it in a lowish oven for an hour and a half.
The house filled with wonderful smells- very French. We shared out the remaining cider and prepared to tuck in to our meat with some buttered tagliatelle on the side. It looked a bit watery but we’d followed the instructions exactly (well, okay, apart from using onions instead of shallots and chestnut mushrooms rather than button) so we decided to give it a go.
The wateriness meant this really wasn’t a very beautiful dish. But Oh My! did it ever taste good. The meat was meltingly soft like a slow cooked stew, and the combo of flavours took me back to chalets and snow and French bread.
However we both agreed that it was generally too wet for our tastes. The following night we ate the leftovers with rice having first added more mushrooms (the other half of the original packet we’d bought) and then vigorously boiled it down to reduce the juice. Not very green but exceptionally tasty and a great improvement. I shall be looking out for pig cheeks again!
Maybe half the volume of cider, and reduce it (ie boil it down) before putting in the oven… or maybe drain off the juices after it’s been in the oven and boil down a bit. A bit of a faff, but might concentrate the flavours nicely.
Sounds excellent, but sadly I’d need to make a trip to Embra to source the pig’s cheeks. As you know, allEast Lothian pigs are cheekless…. or maybe I should ask the Ballencrieff man. Mmmmmm!
half the volume of cider would go down well with the troops as then there’d be more to drink- sharing half of a bottle made for pretty mean glasses! And yes, some sort of reducing. I’m SURE there will be someone out there willing to sell cheeks to you. Try Mr Ballencrief, as you say. Or Elvingston Farm who do ‘pig/half-pig in a box’.