THE CHEEK OF IT

 

I asked my local butcher (with whom I like to think I’ve ‘made friends’) if he could order pig cheeks for me.  He could but, he said, he didn’t have to: he had a couple in the freezer.  They looked like this when defrosted:

 

All photos - Gannon-Nicholson Studios

Now, I had never cooked pig cheeks before, though I had cooked ox cheeks – low and slow is obviously the way to go with both/either.

 

I hunted around for pig cheek recipes, even though I’m constitutionally incapable of following the whole of a recipe, and they all said much the same – sear the outside, then cook low and slow in some kind of liquid. I chose red wine and stock, though I thought about using cider.

 

Come the bewitching hour I heated up oil in a frying pan, did the searing, 

 

Then I placed the cheeks in a casserole with the liquid, chopped onion and carrot.  

 

And it was only then it occurred to me that a good half the mass of the pig cheeks was fat and skin.  Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with pig fat or pig skin in their place but I thought eating a large casseroled chunk of it might be going a bit far.  None of the recipes I’d consulted had said anything about this, because maybe they expected me to know, so out they came, the skin was sliced off and the meaty part returned for more lowness and slowness.  It was a good decision.  

 

Just a few hours later they were ready to serve, and if I say so myself, they were pretty darn good.

 

As I set the plates on the table, I was thinking how very nose to tail, very Fergus Henderson, very St. John, all this was, but I realized I’d used a garnish of parsley.  I had in fact been following at least that of a recipe, and I suddenly recalled the St John mantra: no garnishes, no art on the walls, no music.  But I do have art on my walls and I at the time I was playing some music – Cometary Orbital Drive by Acid Mother’s Temple, in honour of their forthcoming UK tour.

It’s true.  I can’t live up to Fergus Henderson’s standards, but then few can.

This is how the meal looked after the Acid Mothers Temple kicked in: