In A Pig's Ear
by Dorty Nowak
There are 72 recipes for animal body parts I have never eaten in Le Meilleur Cuisine de France. I purchased the cookbook, a staple in French kitchens, when I first moved to Paris, and over the past five years it has become a trusted guide for my culinary adventures. However, the section titled “Les Cochonailles et Les Abats” (Pork Products and Offal) remains untried territory.
;)
It’s not that I’m a vegetarian. In fact, I’m a regular customer at my neighborhood butcher shop, La Boucherie Daguerre. The front half of a cow, with black paint chipping off its metal hide, hangs above the door and inside a small army of butchers in stained white smocks moves swiftly across the sawdust floor filling customers’ orders. Even though the cuts of meat are different, I have no trouble finding the beef, and I’m particularly fond of the marvelous roast chickens. Here too is a vast array of food I’ve never tried. Each visit, my glance would skim with practiced ease over the motley-feathered chickens, heads and feet attached, the trays of rognon (kidneys) cervelle (brains) and tripe (intestines), to settle on something safe. Indeed, I felt confident about my ability to navigate the perils of the butcher shop until the day I went to buy a roast for dinner and found myself eye to eye with a dead boar, grinning at me through his enormous tusks. He was draped over the counter above the roasts. I fled, and we had pasta for dinner.
Avoiding abats is easy enough when cooking at home, but much more difficult when dining out. The French have a fondness for them, and it is rare not to find at least one dish on a menu. As I am averse to spending a small fortune for a meal and then not being able to eat it, I purchased a pocket menu master, a handy French-English dictionary including most common menu items. Unfortunately, the menu master didn’t save me from the andouillette. Andouillette, a prized delicacy, is a sausage made from, pigs’ intestines, and it smells just like you would imagine pigs’ intestines to smell. I know because one time I ordered it by mistake, thinking it was andouille, the delicious, spicy Spanish sausage. Fortunately, the fries were good.
Dinner invitations present another set of problems. While most of my French friends kindly defer to my “picky American appetite,” I am not always so fortunate.
Refusing to eat what my hosts have prepared is not an option, and neither is the menu master. The only recourse is to shepherd any offending morsels around the plate and try to hide them under something else, a trick I learned as a child.
Even this subterfuge failed me when I encountered Aunt Adrienne’s tête de veau.
Adrienne had decided to prepare a special meal for me, her niece’s American friend. She had obviously gone to a great deal of effort. The table was set with crystal, china, and the usual challenging array of silverware. Delicious smells wafted from the kitchen, promising a wonderful meal. Even so, I was anxious. “What’s for dinner?” I whispered to my friend. “Veal’s head, it’s a specialty,” she whispered back. Wishing I hadn’t asked, I stared apprehensively at the lovely Limoges china dish Adrienne set on the table. As she lifted the cover with a flourish, I fully expected to see a calf staring at me with mournful eyes. Fortunately, tête de veau looks like greasy pot roast. As Adrienne was watching me, I had to eat some. I downed several morsels of meat, but I can’t say what the gelatinous grey stuff that surrounded the meat tastes like.
I might have continued indefinitely avoiding a significant portion of French cuisine
had it not been for my downstairs neighbor, Nicole. I spent hours in the kitchen with Nicole, watching her prepare dishes, never with a recipe. Notebook and pencil in hand, I’d ask how much of this or that ingredient to use. Her answer was always the same, “I don’t know. This is how my Mother did it.” Under Nicole’s tutelage I learned how to make a soufflé that didn’t look like a pancake, and to always serve a plain green salad with the cheese course.
Nicole taught me how to cook the French way, but one day she taught me a far more valuable lesson. We had gone to lunch in a small neighborhood café, and Nicole was delighted to see oreilles de cochon (pig’s ears) on the menu. “A real delicacy,” she exclaimed. I ordered quiche. The oreilles de cochon were small, black and hairy. They were disgusting. “Try one,” Nicole urged. “No thanks,” I said, hastily taking a bite of quiche. Nicole looked at me for a moment, then began to speak in her quiet way. “I remember one winter during the war when we did not have enough to eat.” Surprised, I looked up from a forkful of quiche. I knew Nicole and her family, like so many people in Europe, had suffered greatly during WW II, but she never spoke about the hardships of that time. She continued, “My father was able to find work with a farmer and he traded his labor for a pig. We were so happy. My mother made wonderful meals out of that pig, and we ate every bit of it.”
I sat, staring at my plate, digesting Nicole’s words. “I think I’d like to try one of those oreilles de cochon.” I did, and it was delicious.
Dorty Nowak is a writer and artist living in Paris, France, and Berkeley, California, who writes frequently about the challenges and delights of multi-cultural living. A former educator and insurance executive, she helped found the Oakland School for the Arts. She is currently developing a collaborative project, ”Where Do I Belong,” involving artists and poets from Europe, Australia and the U.S.
16 Comments
Reader Comments (16)
I am SO "with you" about the andouilette--I remember ordering it (special of the day) in a small restaurant on the French Chemin de St Jacque, somewhere in the Massif Central, and everyone at the neighboring tables waited with great expectation (and subsequent amusement) to see my response. Piggy it was. Offal it was.
But beneath the humor of the situation was the poignancy you also describe: eating all there was to eat, except the squeal, because that's all there was to eat. Thanks!
Dorty, Thanks for this peek into French culture and for sharing the lessons learned during your adventures. Perspective is key and you tell a touching story. Jeannie
dorty you are much braver than i- and you are a GEM! wonderful article, rich with your curious spirit, and quest for experiencing life through the heart core of our global family! ...and through the taste buds and stomach as well...good point of enrty!
;)
see last comment! it was mine!
Dorty, I love the way your story gives me permission to be squeamish and adventurous at the same time. You remind me of a story that goes back to my earliest days learning the wonderful surprises of 'Old Country' Italian cooking passed down in my family. I remember one holiday when my Aunt Kitty had us over for a big meal. She liked to show off in front her big brother — my Dad — and she did that in the kitchen. Kitty had prepared a multi-course feast of sausages, venison, shrimp salad, and ravioli with a thick red sauce. While she was carrying heaping platters of her wonderful food to the table, my Dad told me a story, similar to that of your friend's Aunt Adrienne, about growing up on a farm. My Dad's father was a sharecropper in the Santa Clara Valley during the 1920s. He told me that a cow was a valuable thing and they never wasted any part of it. As my Aunt Kitty put the platter of ravioli on the table in front of me, my dad whispered in my left ear, "In our family, we cooked the cow's brains in the ravioli. But don't worry, with all of that rich sauce and garlic, you won't taste a thing." Pretending not to hear him, Kitty finished placing the food on the table and sat down next to me. As she spooned a large helping of ravioli onto my plate she whispered in my right ear, "Don't worry, your Dad has one thing in common with my ravioli — no brains! Mangia!"
Dorty, Thanks for your stories, well told. I will be looking forward to more. — Dan
Dorty -- this is charming. brings back memories of a particular culinary adventure of my own:
I was in a summer program at Dijon university and a French friend decided we should spend Bastille day in the village of Fixin, where there was a multi-starred restaurant. Off we went, by foot and bus, to the charming French countryside, grape vines everywhere. Our destination was a small farm house; the restaurant was staffed by the family who lived there.
My friend ordered for me and when the main course came, I was astonished to see glutinous little balls rolling around on my plate (at least that is how I remember it -- this was 1976). Always a squeamish diner, at best, I poked and prodded the morsels, but couldn't muster the courage to taste them. We traded plates; he had recognizable chicken. Later, he told me my dish had been calves' brains or something equally as foreign to an American innocent. (Another memorable thing about that restaurant--the unisex toilet was an outhouse.)
At the time, I lived in Washington, DC, where French restaurants had found fame during the Kennedy era; they were pricey and snooty and menu items were translated -- no surprises, and very elegant rest rooms.
Thanks for the wonderful article Dorty! I especially appreciated the last part, that puts all in perspective. However it did remind me of the tripe crepe that I ordered, and did not eat, in Avignon. And I think that the famous Julia liked tripe, how could she?
I will look forward to your future contributions!
Mais c'est formidable! Try everything, at least once, and even if you dont like it, there is always dessert. And in a restaurant or home, always trust your hosts, if they have eaten it, rave about it and order it again, might as well try it.
and order enough wine to wash it down just in case.
Lovely story; I felt like I was there with you.
Betty
Living in Asia has exposed me to all types of cuisine. People say that the Chinese willl eat everything in the sea except a submarine and everything in the sky except an airplane. While the majority of people in Java are nominal Muslims and have strict dietary laws similar to those used in Kosher kitchens and delicatessens, other areas of Indonesia have different customs and appetites. In the two years I lived in Bali, I saw people catching dragonflies, eels, snakes and rice field rats. Those items never appeared on a menu for the foreign tourists.
Roast suckling pig is the favorite food in Hindu-Bali, and for the religious holiday of Galungan, the highest holy day, if people have enough money, they will roast a pig. There is also a special food that is eaten to keep the evil spirits awayat that time...it it called lawar, which is comprised of grated young papaya (that is not sweet) which is covered with a bright red sauce of raw pig's blood. I was warned about its ingredients in advance by my Balinese friends who did not expect any foreigner to eat it.
I was quite amazed to see a small food stall in Ubud village that served goat's brain soup, using the skull of the goat as the bowl for the brain soup. While sitting there with my sweetheart (and now husband) in 1978, I witnessed two Balinese men trying to stroll down the street, as all the dogs in the area came out to bark and threaten them. The food stall owner explained, "Those men have eaten dog meat ,and the dogs can smell it in their sweat, so they are angry about it."
I also remember seeing the Vietnamese refugees who were relocated in Lincoln, Nebraska ( in the 1980s)shopping in a supermarket. I could sense that their excitement as they discovered that tripe, brains, kidneys and livers were among the cheapest cuts of meat available, as those are the most expensive delicacies in Asia.
There are so many types of food in the world....and Americans seem to throw away so much of the animal product that is edible. So perhaps we should learn to savor all parts of an animal that is killed for our consumption.
Bravo for being adventurous, dear Dorty, and sharing the details so vividly!
Marianne
Dorty,
Your wonderful story brings back memories of visiting China several years ago and everyone in our traveling group looking to my husband as he tried the "mystery meat" in the dish on the table. He became our official "taster." If he ate it then we'd eat it too. We never knew what was in the dish but we all enjoyed it anyhow.
Another food memory is one of Greek Easter as a child in New York. My mother would roast the head of a lamb, a delicacy to the Greeks, but not to me. I ate all the other food at the table, but not that one. I never acquired a taste for dishes made out of heads or entrails of animals - any.
A French delicacy I learned to love from an old beau (who was a waiter at a French restaurant at the time), was escargot.
I didn't want to eat it at first - it looked like snails - yuk. Then he said, "close your eyes and just taste it." I did and I was
hooked on them ever since. The garlic, butter and chewiness of the meat was delicious.
I also remember the scarcity of meat during WWII, but our meals as I remember were tasteless lentils soups. How fortunate we are today to enjoy so many tasty different dishes from around the world.
Thank you Dorty for sharing your Pig's Ear story.
Irene
Oakland, Ca
Hi Dorty,
You know, I very much enjoyed reading your article and I am happy for you that you actually ate the ears, but I think I will stick to oysters, some wine and escargots and skip the ears.
All the best
David
Paris, France
I like pommes frites! Wonderful writing and story.
I'm with Ali, I'll stick with the pommes frites, but thank your for being brave enough to try the pigs ears and write about it for us to enjoy.
I'm feeling adventurous now - next time I'm in Paris I'm up to try some new things. Pigs ears and tripe. But I'll probably always prefer quiche. Great story! I really enjoyed it!
I have this to say about pig's ears.....we have an Old English Sheepdog whose favorite snack is a crispy baked pig's ear. At first we thought "ooooooh" but then we got used to the idea and now there is a jar of pig's ears in my kitchen as a reward when he is a "good boy" !!! So, this English dog sure has a taste for the French cuisine! How did he learn about this snack? His groomer has a jar of them.
Diane Shields
Portland OR