Cost, taste, trend … what inspires someone to eat a trotter?
After all, it’s not every day that an American decides to order and eat the pink foot of a pig (or cow, lamb, or goat; whichever type of trotter you please) … or is it? As eating becomes more adventurous and a back-to-the land vibe resurges in the form of vegetable gardening, canning, and using all parts of everything, curious cuts of meat are appearing (or really, reappearing) on restaurant menus. For those accustomed to haute cuisine, bone marrow, kidneys, and trotters aren’t anything new. But for those who cling to the notion that sirloin, chicken breast, and pork chops are all the only things our fair farm friends have to offer, there’s a whole new meat on the table.
Playing Footsy
From highbrow to low, offal, also called organ meats, variety meats, or “nasty bits,” are making a comeback, as are seemingly unsavory parts like intestines, skins, and other parts once considered to be rubbish. Now, these cheaper meat cuts compete with sirloins and fish filets, testing just how far a foodie will go.
For example, at Incanto in San Francisco, you can find standard items like pork shoulder and risotto on the menu, but you can also order the “pea brain”—calf’s brain, peas, and tarragon. At Feast, a Houston-based restaurant, the three owners all have pig tattoos, and the British chefs focus on organ meats, cooking in a “rustic European tradition” that offers such delights as pig’s-ear hash and a duck egg, pork cheek and dandelion salad, and a beef tongue entree. At Mario Batali’s famed Babbo restaurant in NYC, appetizers include warm tripe (that’s stomach lining); pig-foot Milanese with rice, beans, and arugula; and testa (that’s head) with a thyme vinaigrette.
I’m All Ears
For most of the world, using and savoring all parts of the animal in this way isn’t anything new. Traditional-style cooking, especially in places like England, Italy, and France, as well as most of Asia and Latin America, uses parts of the animal that most Americans wouldn’t touch. Stemming from cultural practices, a recognition of what tastes good, or a catch-as-catch-can practical attitude, tasty foods parts are used, regardless of their origin. Beef heart is something I’ve ordered from a Bolivian street vendor, the long strands of pig intestines are a regular item in Latin America meat markets, and chicken feet can be found in almost any Chinatown, USA.
Why are most Americans so squeamish, then, when it comes to offal? Maybe we don’t like to recognize our animal parts (although many of them end up in less identifiable, yet widely consumed goods such as hot dogs) or maybe it’s because eating them is associated, as it once was in Britain and the US, with poverty. It’s somewhat ironic that these parts would find their way to some of the most renowned restaurants in the world. Organ meats were once considered fare for the American and British lower class, as without refrigeration, only those living close enough to slaughterhouses (poor people) could eat the highly perishable parts that “fall off” (where the word offal comes from) the butcher’s table.
My Heart Goes Out to You
So it seemed to take a perfect storm to reintroduce the American palate to alternative types of meat. There is the growing interest in sustainably-raised farm fresh goods, including meat, as well an eschewing of mass-produced, packaged food. Then there’s the rise of the celebrity-chef, bringing high-end or exotic eating straight to the masses (if only on TV), and also perhaps a bit of a rebellion against the well trodden health messages of chicken breast and lean cuts of meat so propagated in the eighties and nineties. And from vegetables to vodka, people are simply getting more adventurous with their cooking and eating.
