The last porky tales - part 6: Dem bones

Sorry poochies, I'm not wasting these bones on you! Roasted in the oven until brown, then into the stock pot they went. I made about 6-7 litres of good quality stock to use in soups and casseroles, and then "canned" it in the pressure canner. It will be happy on the shelf for a year at least. Not that it will last that long.

I've already used some for lunchtime pork and noodle Asian style soups - delicious.

The last porky tales - part 5: Liver for beginners

And that includes me, as I was a liver novice. However when confronted with 4kg of fresh liver you just have to dig in - or rather dig out your Hugh F-W Meat book or Pig in  Day DVD and get creative.

First I should point out that I got the liver and other offal on processing day (the day the piggies were "dispatched"), so the liver was super super fresh. One liver I vacuum-sealed and put in the freezer for later. The other I used to make pate and liver, bacon and onion.

Pate-in-pictures below, more or less following Hugh's recipe here. I used prosciutto rather than bacon as there was no decent streaky bacon to be had nearby.

And this is the liver, bacon and onion I made for Jerry. I can't say it will ever be my favourite dish, but it was quite tasty, and Jerry said it was the best liver "ever".

Thanks piggies!

The last porky tales - part 4: Use your head

Or in this case, their heads. Now don't go all "eeeewwwwwwwwww" on me. OK so it wasn't the nicest preparation job in the world, but if Hugh F-W can do it, so can I !

I soaked the heads (halved by the butcher) and assorted bits in a light brine solution for a few hours as per Hugh's method, then followed the recipe on his pig in a day DVD. I used the heads (minus most of the cheek meat which I saved for other things), tongues and the tails and a few assorted bones.  When the heads had cooled I then set about picking off all the meaty scraps, which was quite time consuming. Some meat I saved to use in Asian soups, and the rest went to make a few pits of brawn,

Because I didn't use the hocks or trotters  (saving them for baked beans) I did cheat a bit and add some leaf gelatin to the stock. Turned out pretty well I think,and it was rather tasty with some cucumber pickles on white bread.

There was a good few kilos of meat from the heads so well worth saving and using.

Now that's what I call a pork chop

Forequarter to be precise