It's apparent that I enjoy eating and preparing offal and other less popular cuts of meat but now that it's summer I've been wanting to include more fish and shellfish in my diet.  The reason I've started this blog is to make sure that I integrate ingredients beyond chop/breast/steak into my diet, and hopefully make those other parts of the animal seem less intimidating to those of you nice enough to read this from time to time.

The big question now is how do I include fish and shellfish into this project, and how do these ingredients fit into my goal of eating nose to tail.

What are the fish and shellfish equivalents of chop/breast/steak?  Fillet's of fish, peeled headless shrimp, things like that?

To counter those products should I cook whole fish, and shrimp (complete with eyes and tails)?  Should I try cooking things like fish collar's?  What about ingredients like squid and octopus?  When I lived in Nova Scotia my parents used to get cod tongues and cheeks as a weekend treat, I wonder if those kinds of ingredients are available in a more urban space?

Things like mussels, lobster's, clams and oysters fit into eating nose to tail because by their nature you eat all of them.  That feels a little like a cop-out, but is it?

I need some guidance, any and all thoughts are more than welcome.

I wish.

Actually I'll be presenting a paper on gender dynamics in professional and domestic kitchens at the Association for the Study of Food and Society Conference at Penn State.  Be back late Sunday.

Due to the distinct lack of kitchen in the hotel room, tripe will have to wait until I get back.  Tripe may actually have to wait a little longer than that, I've really been craving my Mum's pig tail's.  Crunchy and sticky, salty and sweet.  Pig tails seem more in line with the spring season then a big plate of steaming tripe and mashed potatoes.

Both will have to wait.  Back next week.

This recipe is lifted almost exactly from Fergus Henderson's book The Whole Hog.  Not that roasting a marrow bone is all that difficult, but his advice on how to eat the bone and his recipe for the parsley salad make this a truly special dish.  I highly recommend everyone go out and buy his book.  God bless that Englishman.

The trick to bone marrow is to get a good bone, we're talking about beef bones by the way.  When you look at the bone you want to see as much surface area of bone marrow as possible.  You also want a nice round bone, I find that this helps with even roasting, but I could just be superstitious.  Once you have the proper bones the rest of the recipe is as simple as turning on an oven.

Feeling a little homesick for my Omi, and therefore the perfect thing for lunch is chopped liver.  The dish is basically a mash up of chicken livers, onions, bacon and hard boiled eggs made into something like a paste and then eaten on toast.  It's way better than it sounds.

Growing up, Omi made lots of dishes with chicken livers, and this is one of my favorites that my Mum also makes really well.  All  of our recipes are a little different and yet I still think of this as my Omi's recipe.  Funny how recipes can change over generations and yet can still be thought of as the 'authentic' recipe.  Makes me wonder how original the Colonel's fried chicken recipe actually is.

Questions for another time.

You need 5 chicken livers, 4 slices of bacon, half an onion, and two eggs.  And salt and pepper to taste.

Before you do anything else put an egg or two in a pot and cover with cold water, bring to a boil cover and turn off the heat.  Let it sit there until you need your hard boiled eggs.

The next few projects are on their way.  I've got some more chicken livers begging to be cooked, as well as a really awesome roasted bone marrow recipe and something very new to me, tripe!

Now I'm totally confident in the livers and bone marrow, but having never cooked tripe I'm a little nervous.  The first of these will  be up in the next day or so.  Check back soon!

I love chicken livers.  And I don't mean that I love chicken livers like the guy next door loves pizza.  The feelings I have about chicken livers are deep and profound, and reserved for very few other ingredients.  There's something about their mild rich flavor combined with their creamy texture that simultaneously comforts and excites me. 

Recently I ate dinner at Red Bones BBQ and had the smoked beef ribs, which were wonderful, but instead of beans I substituted a side of dirty rice.  Now I'm sure that it was something about the name dirty that drew me to this rice, but what arrived with my ribs exceeded my hopes.  Nothing really to look at, a light brown coloured rice with lumps of meat in it, but the flavor had all the calling cards of my favorite ingredient.  Meaty and rich, and only subtly liver-y. 

After looking at a few recipes online this is what I came up with.  Probably nothing compared to what a Southern Mama makes, but still very flavorful.  Pretty good for a Canadian.

After defrosting my chicken livers (yes, I have an emergency stash of liver in my freezer) I rinsed them and removed some of the ugly bits.  Then I started frying the chicken livers, there are a few chicken hearts thrown in for good measure.

After my previous adventures with Pea and PIg's Ear soup, I was left with a bunch of pork stock.  Stopping at the Asian market on the way home and finding the world's smallest pork roast (costing under $3.00) means I'm now ready to begin my first attempt at a headless headcheese.  I'm using a shoulder  to replace all the meat that gets picked off the head after it's cooked in a traditional headcheese and suspended in the stock.

Salt on the roast and then a quick sear on all sides, followed by a good pour of PBR.  My lovely beer soaked roast  then went in a 325 oven for just under an hour and a half.

The next day after it had cooled overnight in the fridge my roast got shredded, I saved the cooking liquid which had solidified into a nice gelatinous mass as well and put it in with my older stock.  Instead of adding brunoise of carrot, as well as chopped up bits of pig ear I decided to keep it really simple.  Just shredded roast, some finely chopped parsley and some salt and cracked black pepper.

A terrine dish lined with plastic was the perfect thing to set my headcheese.  First a sprinkle of parsley, followed by the shredded seasoned meat and then another sprinkle of parsley.  I then melted my stock and gently poured enough stock in the terrine dish to just cover my meat mixture.

The dish went into the fridge to set again.  The next day I removed my plastic wrap blob to reveal my jiggly headcheese.  In fact my headcheese was a little more jiggly than I wanted it; ideally I wanted something that was more sliceable than spreadable.  What I ended up with was something more spreadable, but it did have a nice pork and parsley flavor.

Even with its shortcomings in texture my headcheese still tasted good, and I learned a few good lessons.  Reduce the stock further to get an even more gelatinous texture, and shred my pork a lot more to help with my texture issue.

My headcheese was served with a splash of vinegar, crusty bread and some dijon mustard.  And not being one to focus on shortcomings I decided to have a celebratory beer along side my headless headcheese.

Having a container of leftover stock from my pig's ear soup leaves me with a world of possibilities.  This stock has the exciting ability to stay gelled at room temperature, which makes the possibilities far more interesting than a simple soup.

As I've said throughout, this stock has been in my freezer since I last made headcheese, so although I have no pork to suspend in it I think I'm going to make something like a headcheese.  A headless headcheese.  Decapitated headcheese.

I only make headcheese when I have a head.  And I usually find myself with a pig's head after I roast a pig.  Which I did when I first moved to Boston.  I managed to roast a seventeen pound pig in the tiny domestic kitchen.  My Mum was very proud.

There's the pig.  Many thanks to my dear friend Naomi who took this photo and then left it on facebook for me to find two years later.  Unphased by not having a pan big enough to fit my pig I simply placed my porcine lovely directly on the oven rack, lined my oven with foil and prayed.  The smoke detector went off multiple times, and I managed to set an oven mitt on fire.  No one was hurt.  The oven also managed to stay remarkably clean throughout the entire process.

The plan for this stock today is to get a small piece of pork shoulder if I can find it, or some other fatty piece otherwise . Then braise it, shred it, season it and suspend it in my  gelatinous stock.  Making something close to a headcheese.

I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate my leftover fried ears into this as well.  And possibly use some leftover soup, provided it can stay gelled.  Ideally making a multi-layered, multi-coloured terrine/headcheese type thing.

With a good viscous stock the options seem endless.

Raining again today, the weather is begging for soup.  After a day in the fridge I brought out my pot of pea soup, put it on the stove and lifted the lid.  Looking up at me was a pot of totally congealed green goo.  So thick that a heavy ladle stood straight up in it, and I was able to slice it like cake.  Which I did.

It's really rather pretty, just not exactly soup-like.  Note to self: when making soup with headcheese stock, make sure to water it down.  My soups solid nature was easily fixed by being placed back on the stove over a low flame.  While my soup was slowly returning to a liquid state I got busy slicing my cooked pig's ear.  The ears were sticky, with a mildly gelatinous exterior over a hard cartilage that gives the ear its structure.  I had four ears but only sliced two in case I needed to adjust the width of my slicing.

With my soup melting and my ears sliced I needed to heat my oil and fry my ears.  Now, my recipe warned me that ears tend to spatter when they fry even when they're dry.  This is very, very true.  I'm fairly sure that there is oil on my ceiling, and I have several little burn marks from badly chosen moments of stirring.  Frying pig's ears is not a dull experience.

When they were all fried I had a beautiful pile of crunchy and chewy pigs ears to top my soup with.

I seasoned my soup with salt, fresh black pepper and a little cider vinegar.  With a few more tastes I determined that a little hot sauce was needed so some of that went in the pot, and then it was ready.  With bowl and spoon in hand it was time to taste.

The soup was very thick and viscous, and the crispy pig's ear topping was a little chewy and had a lovely salty falvour.  All in all an exceptionally filling bowl of soup full of hearty flavors and a lots of texture.  An excellent beginning to my nose to tail eating experience courtesy of Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast.

Today it was a little rainy in MA, so it seemed to be the perfect day to start making my soup.  I did not have a ham stock like the recipe asked for, but I did have some pork stock left over from when I made head cheese last.  Also, I had four pig's ears and not two like the recipe asked for, so all four went in the pot.  I used almost double the liquid the recipe called for so I'm guessing it's going to be alright.  It's really a simple recipe; pig's ears, onions, stock and split peas go into a pot for three hours.  Then the pig's ears are removed, sliced thinly and deep fried to what I'm hoping will be a delightful crisp and placed on top as a garnish.

I'll just be making the soup tonight, and taking the pigs ears out to cool and slice tomorrow.  Hopefully this will be my lunch at work all week.  I have very high hopes for this recipe, although the pig's ears have turned a mildly disturbing dark colour while they simmer away with the peas and onions.  I thought about putting a picture up, but I'm having some technical difficulties.  The pig's ears are no longer the pleasant pink colour they were in the photo above, enough said.  Anyway, high hopes.