Day 11: And then he rested; well…sort of

I awoke at an ungodly hour still full from last night’s dinner and partially reeling from the last couple of shots of blueberry grappa.  Flavoured grappas of all sorts are another of my house-made specialties, and one of my guests is partial to the blue elixir.  My morning workout was out of the question; I didn’t feel like getting on the bike.  It was probably a wise decision to skip breakfast.

My theme of laziness continued when I didn’t bother to make lunch, I still had no desire to eat…this was turning out to be a lazy cooking day.  But knowing that this lack of hunger wouldn’t last, I pulled some pork hocks out of the freezer for dinner. 

I ended up at my parent’s house in the late afternoon.  By then, I was fairly hungry and started rooting (pig reference, my genetic code may be slowly changing) around in the fridge looking for pork.  It didn’t take long for me to find some leftover meatballs from yesterday and I ate just enough to hold me over until dinner.  Dad walked into the kitchen and saw me digging in like some crazed pork fuelled lunatic; he couldn’t help but smile.  My sister in law suggested that I should just eat head cheese and be done with it since head cheese contains every part of the pig; a cousin told me that I should just make a whole pig and take a bite out of each part…but they were missing the point.  This was never intended to be a one shot deal.

When I arrived home I prepared a marinade similar to the one that I used last night for the trotters, but lacking soy sauce, it didn’t have much saltiness to it.  Hocks are essentially the knee of the rear leg, a part that sits just above the pig’s feet; aka trotters (last night’s dinner).  Although they appear to be meaty, they have a lot of connective tissue and do not lend themselves to grilling.  You have to cook them slowly to render the tendons and cartilage into a soft tasty jelly.  The hocks were placed in the oven to braise gently for a couple of hours, turning them over half way through.

Uncut hock...say that 5 times fast!

Tobasco in chimichurri... almost looks like a pig!

What emerged at the end of the process was a sticky delicious mess.  I deglazed the pan with beer (which was also part of the marinade), but I wasn’t happy with the bitter result, so I didn’t pour it over top and just left it to the side.  I enjoyed two of them and could have probably eaten all four, but flashbacks of me as an obese child held my appetite in check.

Mmmm...brown bits

Finished product