Fromage de Téte Porc

Here in Yorkshire, it's called Brawn.

In France, cooked in white wine and set in little jelly moulds, it's called Fromage de Téte or Fromage de Téte Porc. 'Pork cheese head'. No cheese involved, because the French language often uses colourful descriptions of food.

Sounds posh and classy to us. A Frenchman knows exactly what he's getting, because they speak French, ladies and gentlemen. That's why they make fun of us. French sounds romantic only to the English. Trust me, I know, a Yorkshireman suffering a forename like mine, mes amis.

Anyway, I'll stick with Brawn. I was lucky enough as a kid to have shared a back yard with a butchers, Wateralls, and putting aside I use to drop Lifeboy soap in his dripping pot for a laugh, I use to do his ledgers and earn a bit of pocket money helping out around the shop, and learned quite a lot about turning meat into profit.

Brawn is pigs head boiled for hours and hours with whatever herbs and spices you can get your hands on.

Forget any recipes you might find on the web about 'simmer for four hours'. It takes as long as it takes. I start it on the hob and put it on a slow cook setting in the oven. The resulting meat is fished out, chopped up, put in a mould (a loaf tin or two will do) topped up with a little of the liquid and left to set for 12 hours.

Sliced, it's delicious. Yes it sets. That's gelatine, and was originally used  to make sweet jellies too. How can you tell I'm into very ancient recipes?

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You may wonder what happens if you put Lifeboy soap in a dripping pot? Science in action.

Lard is clarified fat. Dripping is fat that has dripped from roasted meat. Old time butchers used to 'cheat'. They'd roast their meats, save off the resulting fats and boil it down with any left over bits of meat and fat they had left over in an absolute massive pot.

Once reduced, it would be strained set and sold.

Soap is made using palm oil nowadays, and it's little more than a fat, a catalyst, and smelly stuff. The chemistry is simple, and thousands of years old. The combo produces molecules that love water, and others that love fats and oils. Any oils and fats are attracted and pulled away with anything, like dirt, stuck to them.

Older soaps used fats and a strong alkali such as lime or caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), and later, a disinfectant like carbolic acid. In a dripping pot, they would react to produce a foam. Lots and lots and lots of it. Everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. Monster reaction :)

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We're having home made Pommes de Terre frites et du Poisson  with purée de pois for tea :)