Trotter Gear help!
After reading a recommendation for Fergus Henderson's trotter gear right here in Talk last week, i decided to run out and make some. I found the recipe in a New York Times article, which recommended using a bottle of red wine if you can't find Madeira. I basically followed the recipe, assembled the whole thing, and stuck it in the oven at 350. About an hour into it i realized that there was very little happening in that pot -- my vegetables were still pretty hard and i decided to stick it on the stove top instead -- it is after all a stock, no? Why shouldn't i be able to give it a low simmer?
So, after about 3-4 hours of oven/stove time, i pulled out the trotters and de-boned them. I was left with sticky goo and skin, not a speck of meat. The recipe and associated pics i saw in the web had great shredded meat chunks, but my mostly-pig-skin wouldn't readily shred, so i wound up chopping it. Now i have a way-too-red-winey broth (i think the whole bottle of red was a poor suggested substitute) that is mildly gelatinous at best, filled with chunks of chopped chewy pig skin. Not what i was expecting. (i was expecting a very gelatinous almost jello like stock with some bits of pig floating in it).
Thoughts on what went wrong?
Ugh, just watched the documentary on Kenny last night and this place is officially off my list. Guy literally did not change his shirt or wash his jeans a single time during the taping of the documentary. Disgusting. The old place that they got kicked out of (thank god) looked fine up front but was a freaking rat hole in the kitchen. If you want a hoarder cooking your food, go to Shopsins.