Now that I've tackled a head, today I was ready to take on the pig's skin that I had stored in the freezer. The recipe seemed complicated but remembering the huge chicharrones at the market in Oaxaca and thinking about the preparation needed to create such giants, surely I could figure out how to fry up a little piece of skin for a snack. Chang serves a chicharrón as an amuse-bouche at Ko and writes, "I'm sure some people saw it as a little 'f... you' to kick off an $85 meal and I can't say that there wasn't some of that in serving a fried pork rind to start a fancy dinner...But, really, chicharrones have what it takes to be a great amuse: fat, salt, spice, and crunch all in one bite." (Chang, 2009, p.231)
I thawed the skin and boiled it for 1 1/2 hours outside so the piggy smell wouldn't permeate the house.Then after a short chill in the refrigerator, I scraped the fat off of the skin. This procedure was pretty easy but it took some time and patience since there were some crevices in the skin. Then, because I couldn't persuade anyone to sacrifice their dehydrator to the cause of chicharrones, I had to use the "unreliable" oven-drying method that Chang did not recommend. I put the skin on a rack in the oven at the lowest setting (about 150 degrees F) for about 24 hours. This was necessary in order to make sure that it was thoroughly dry and had achieved that "shiny plastic" characteristic. At this point I could break the skin into small pieces
and fry them one at a time in a pot of hot oil. In just a few seconds the skin floated to the top of the oil and expanded into a sculpture of big, clear bubbles. The cooled pieces were bites of irresistible airy pork crunchiness that caused me to blurt out, in a moment of complete inexplicable weirdness, "David would be proud of me!"
No comments:
Post a Comment