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Hog's Head Stew
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September 15, 2003
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"I bought half a pig yesterday from a friend," Roy
said to us. "He even gave me half the hog's head.
Now tell me, what am I going to do with half a
hog's head?"
"Hog's head stew!" both Rebecca and I erupted in unison. Afterward we gave each other puzzled looks, because neither of us had ever eaten, or even heard of to the best of our recollection, anything like hog's head stew, and we both were wondering where in the hell the other had come up with such a thing.
"Oh!" Roy exclaimed. "Is that an American dish?"
"Oh, yes!" I nodded vigorously, even though in truth I had no idea if any culture -- especially one so culinarily challenged as America -- included something so bizarre as hog's head stew. But I had my reasons.
In my little Wwoofing fantasy world, my hosts hated to cook. They would welcome me with open arms as their personal chef. They would let me work three hours a day instead of five so that I could make them lunch and take time to make extravagant dinner plans. They'd go far and wide in search of fresh, unique local ingredients in order to inspire my culinary creativity. They would revere me and gladly do the dishes as I retired with the dregs of the bottle that we'd drank with dinner.
Reality, of course, was somewhat different. The nearest
grocery store was thirty minutes away and wasn't
known for its selection of gourmet ingredients.
Roy and his family enjoyed cooking and preferred
to do it themselves. And one thing they liked
about having Wwoofers is that they could tell them
to do the dishes afterward while they retired in
front of the television. (Who wouldn't?)
But the one time they cheerfully gave the reins to their wwoofers in the kitchen was when they promised to make authentic recipes from their home country. They told us about having had amazing korean cuisine, and about a German guest they'd had who could cook like the devil himself. So occasionally, when I requested to cook, Roy would say to me, "If you're going to cook, cook something American."
I found this notion problematic. What of value,
after all, has America contributed to the tongues,
stomachs, and large intestines of the peoples of
the world? It's not that there's no good food in the U.S. There's great food! It's just hard in such a young country that's such a melting pot to single out what's truly American. Most obviously American food is profoundly
uninteresting, and much of what isn't has been appropriated from other cultures, or a refinement on existing techniques. Southern food is perhaps original,
but mostly is not to my taste. Cajun cuisine and
its compromise between Southern and French (and other) cooking
styles is a bright star in an otherwise tedious
landscape, but I have no experience with it. My own cooking is largely Continental, as they used to say, with a few techniques from other food-savvy civilizations thrown in for good measure.
But here was my big chance. I could claim that hog's head stew was an American invention, and thereby gain the right to cook. The next day, while Roy was out in the vineyards, I beseeched Google for assistance. I found out that there were indeed American stew recipes that traditionally used hog's heads; the primary example is Brunswick stew. Most contemporary versions of the recipe don't use the head, of course, or the squirrels that were part of the original recipes, but I was lucky enough to run across some more venerable versions that used these items.
The trouble is, Brunswick stew is a Southern dish that didn't sound like anything I would want to make or eat. In addition to a hog's head, the typical Brunswick stew recipe includes such refined items as: 4 cups of ketchup, 1/2 cup of mustard, 2 cans of creamed corn, canned lima beans, and okra. So I decided to ad lib, make something that sounded more appetizing to me, and *tell* them it was Brunswick stew. After all, what would it matter? I, an American, had never heard of Brunswick Stew, and I doubted some Aussie would be able to correct me if I changed the recipe.
Brunswick Stew...Sort Of
Frankly, I didn't know what to do with the main attraction. A hog's head is disgusting enough. The snout is wrinkled and discolored, like every pig you've ever seen, and still has fine hairs all over it. But what's worse is a half of a hog's head. The other side looks like those cross-sectional diagrams you see at the dentist's office, with the nasal and oral cavities clearly distinguishable and half of the teeth still in place.
It seemed to offer meager opportunities in terms of meat. It was mostly skin -- which, on a hog, is very thick -- and fat. There were couple meaty places, including the cheek/jowl region, so I cut these off and set them aside. Then I put the head in a pot with some chicken stock and set it to a slow boil.
I got out another pot and heated up some olive oil. In this pot I browned the pig's feet, shanks, and the meaty parts of the head I'd cut off, along with eight chicken drumsticks. After deglazing with brandy, I added carrots, celery, and a judicious amount of the "Italian Seasoning" I found in the pantry. I then poured in what was left of the shiraz-merlot we were using to top off the barrels -- about a bottle and a half's worth of wine.
I figured that the skin and meat on the head would soften but wouldn't be particularly pleasurable to eat, so the best way to use the head for the stew would be to try and extract flavor from it. My plan was to make a strong stock out of the head that I could use to balance the strong wine-based braising liquid in the other pot.
I have no whether this is how real Brunswick stew recipes used the head. I suspect not. Perhaps they just left it floating in the middle of the pot? Truth be told, though some recipes include it, hog's head isn't a defining ingredient of Brunswick Stew, anyway. Truly authentic Brunswick Stew must have squirrel. But then, I wasn't really going for authenticity. Beyond what I've already mentioned, none of the other recipes used wine in the base liquid -- much less 1.5 liters of dark Australian Shiraz/Merlot. If anything would have been appropriate for the recipe, it probably would have been a white wine, but that would have meant asking Roy to part with two bottles of his Chardonnay when the wine we were using for topping would have just gone to waste. But probably this was the most quintessentially American thing about the dish: you grab whatever's handy, throw it in the pot, shrug, and say "what the hell!"
I let the two pots simmer for about an hour. After this, I transferred about a quart of the hog's head stock into the pot with the pig's feet and red wine, and I put another quart into a saucepan. I then supplemented the hog's head pot with water.
We hadn't had time to get to the grocery store, so I had to make do with what I could scavenge from the fridge and pantry. Fortunately, I found a small bag of dried lima beans. I poured them into the saucepan
and started it boiling. Thirty minutes later, I cut up
12 waxy potatoes and added them to the hog's head
side of things, and I added the lima beans along with the
cooking liquid to the pig's feet side. As soon as the
potatoes were cooked, I added the hog's head stock and
the potatoes to the other side. Then I stripped off whatever seemed edible from the cooked hog's head and threw away the rest.
I added a few random vegetables and let the whole mix simmer for another thirty minutes or so, shredded the meat from the feet and shanks, and there it was: Hog's Head Stew.
You know what? It wasn't bad.
Caught Out
A few nights later, Roy, Rebecca and I were all invited to a big dinner by one of Roy's friends, a woman who holds a high government office -- Minister of Education for New South Wales or some such. They have a beautiful home not too far from Roy's, where they are just beginning to cultivate grapes. There were about fifteen people present, and we ate at a long table (with place settings for at least thirty). We had a fantastic meal of roast chicken, vegetables, and (of course) good wine. During dinner, I heard Roy bragging that we'd made him a very special American dish, Brunswick Stew, with the hog's head that he'd purchased. He described the dish and said that it was unusual, but that he'd enjoyed it.
I was feeling pretty proud until I heard her make some inquiries, and then proclaim: "No corn? No okra? Made with red wine? That doesn't sound like Brunswick Stew at all! I should know -- it was my favorite dish from the years that I lived in America!"
Around the blogosphere:
Here are some other bloggers that have tackled Brunswick Stew, though most of them are streamlined, contemporary versions that use neither squirrels or hog's heads. Their loss.
September 15, 2003 in vacationing | Permalink
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Comments
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Posted by: kiran patil at Jan 6, 2007 1:51:51 AM
I've never had homemade but I'm looking through a lot or recipes on line to see which ones look the best to me.I first tasted brunswick stew from the grocery store.The brand was STAR BRUNSWICK STEW and I loved it.Yesterday someone was giving out samples of some kind (not STAR) and I desided I would make some myself.I LOVE cooking and I know I can make some I'd like better than the commercial kind.I know one thing, I WON'T be using squirrel! I think I'll use chicken and pork. I enjoy reading the history of foods and how the dish got started ,no matter who's right.
Posted by: Doris Vause at Apr 25, 2007 12:08:58 AM
