Wine Pairing Story (6)

We are about to enter the YEAR OF THE PIG of the chinese calendar (next feb. 18th). We'll celebrate it with a culinary delicacy : the "Fromage de tête", or Pork Brawn, or Head Cheese. This typical french charcuterie can be bought in the food stores but it's so fun to do it yoursef...
It's a lot of work but definitely the best way to have your own Fromage de tête, made without preservatives, color additives or any other taste enhancers. Just hoping that the raw material (the head) was not fed with too much junk chemicals for fast growth...
Head Cheese is made with a pig's head (or a half head), trotters, herbs, vegetables, salt...and wine. The hard part is to find the pig's head. It's easier to buy them in the countryside than in the cities, where the graphic piece of meat can be considered provocative, but you still can buy pig heads in France. As a matter of fact, with the tectonic cultural changes underway in France and Europe, our little piggy keeps a low profile these days. Air France for example has banned pork for all its in-flight meals, same for an increasing number of school cafeterias, in a doubtful effort to appease the zealots of certain major religion.
Pork is a very tasty meat with a large world following, though : Speaking of China, where it is a very appreciated dish, I still remember the pork ribs that I bought once on a train from a food cart. The typical lingering flavors on the palate, with the lightly sticky mouth feel is hard to forget...
So here we are in the Loire the other day. I spotted a half head in the local supermarket [upper left pic], and at bargain price that day : 1 Euro a kilo... Makes 2,5 Euro something for the piece. I grabbed trotters, a couple of vegetables and here we go.
After cleaning the head under the tap, we put it in the cast iron pot with carrots, celery, parsley, a leek, pepper, thyme, a bay leaf, cloves (3) and salt. I poured on that one-third of a bottle of Valencay 2004, a white wine, Chardonnay-Sauvignon blend from André Fouassier. I filled the rest with water to fully immerse the head and vegetables and covered with the heavy lid (we also cooked the huge ear but had to cut it to close the lid !). Now, on the stove to boil, and then moved to a lower heat position where it stays for hours. Bye bye piggy...
We had the rest of the Valencay for lunch, nice aromatic wine with the Chardonnay's richness and the Sauvignon's freshness. Valencay whites are little known gems, when I think that we paid 4 Euro for this wine. You must be armed with patience with Head Cheese because it takes something like two days for the whole thing. After it's been cooked several hours (3, 4 or more), this is how it looks like [pic on left]. We took out some of the vegetables to eat them the next evening, and put the pot to rest for the night in a cool place.

After the night, the liquid juice made of wine, water, pork grease and gelatin plus vegetables extracts, has solidified. It looks very different now [pic on the left--click to enlarge]. That's when you must put away your instinctive disgust and plunge your hands in the thing to sort out the white fat at the surface. To have the best Head Cheese, it is important to meticulously put away the white fat, not only at the surface, but in the inside also, when you begin to detach the meat from the bones, and these animals hide fat everywhere, believe me. Not the funniest part of the recipe, but it takes what it takes...
So, the fat goes in the trash, the vegetables are put aside to be eaten separately, and the fat-free meat is put on a plate. See here [pic on right] as B. begins to work on the head (snout facing me). In the pot, the juice has solidified in this beautiful amber-color, translucent jelly. We'll take the vegetables out and leave the jelly in the pot.
When all the meat has been stripped from the visible fat, you just take a good knife to cut it in small pieces. I made good use of a titanium knife I bought in Tokyo : You need to cut everything, included the snout, the ear, the skin, the eyelid (we took the eye away after it was cooked) and it is sometimes cartilaginous and resists, so this good knife helped. Plus, small pieces of meat make the Head Cheese easier to eat, and it helps to avoid having small pieces of bones slipping in.

Pouring the re-fluidified jelly in the cut-into-pieces pork's head
When it's done, just put the meat pieces in as many dishes as needed. As we were quite conservative and took away every suspected piece of fat we spotted, these two dishes were just fine for the half head.
Now, put the jelly alone on the stove a few minutes, to fluidify it again, check if the taste is OK, add salt if necessary, and pour in the dishes to ideally cover the meat. Forget it a few more hours in the cold. The juice will solidify again and the Fromage de Tête is ready to serve, with the pieces of pork's skin and meat clearly visible in the translucid jelly. As no preservatives were added, put part of the Head Cheese to freeze for a later treat.
Now, à table ! As it took us several meals to eat the thing, we tried more than one wine. I had spotted this red Rhone [picture on left] at Le Verre Volé in Paris, a store selling natural and artisan wines. The funny pinky pig on the label of course took my attention. To go with the Head Cheese, I decided to try this "Cuvée des Copains" 2005, Cotes du Rhone AOC made by Les Vignerons d'Estezargues, a small coop in the Rhone which vinifies separately the wines of its 6 growers, from organically farmed vineyards. While I bought the bottle for fun and not looking beyond that, we had a good surprise when, back in Paris, we tried it : it was actually quite a balanced wine, fruity and tasty, with the typical substance found in unfiltered wines. And I paid only 3,8 Euro for this bottle. As for its wine pairing quality, it was not maybe the best fit, but it went reasonably well.The Head Cheese and Jacky preys' Fié Gris
I personally often trust chance and circumstances to pair wines with food while B. is more reflexive in her approach. but this time, circumstances helped us. We had just visited a Valencay vigneron the previous day : Jacky Preys. He has a wide range of nice wines, including wines made from a unique, nearly extinct variety : Fié Gris, which is part of the Sauvignon family and has pink-colored grapes. His Fié Gris vines are close to 120 years old. He offered us that day to taste the 2006 wine, vinified as usual with indigenous yeasts. It is still in vats [picture on the left] and is already a nice aromatic wine with the richness of the millesime. Jacky Preys pointed to the lime-flower aromas that could be felt that day, saying that it would slowly change later into different aromas. We also tasted the Fié Gris 2005 (labelled as Touraine) and bought 6 bottles. At 6,4 Euro (the highest price for his dry wines), this is a steal. Very aromatic, well-balanced wine. Richness in the mouth, with a nearly creamy side (but this wine never saw oak). Went perfectly with the Fromage de Tête, none of the two overwhelming the other...

Comments

[marisa d'vari]

I love the pictures on your site! Your wine pairing notes are great ... Recently I visited Guy Savoy in Las Vegas and have some notes of my own I will post soon.
Marisa D'Vari, http://www.awinestory.com

[hikalu]

It's a nice recipe. 1 Euro a kilo? it's very inexpensive. I don't know where I can get a pig head here. the recipe seems not so difficult. it needs time though. I will try it if I can get a pig head. I've heard of that the pig's gelatin is similar structure to human's protein or something.
and Jacky prays! I like his wines. it's a nice cozy meal, huh? I like that!

[Jack]

Excellent post, Bert. The head cheese looks wonderful!