lend me your ears.

I've recently become a strong believer of responsible eating and knowing where the food we eat comes from. I've said it for a while now but I believe a high majority of people are disconnected from their meat. They only see meat as coming in neatly plastic wrapped packages; they miss the part where that cut of meat came from a once living and breathing animal.

People often have trouble consuming cuts of meats when they realize they've come from something alive. The minute you start to eat something like liver, hearts, ears, or tongue you become to connected to that food and that animal. You realize that it was alive because you're aware that your body has those organs or features too.

This weekend I was out grocery shopping at a local Chinese supermarket. In their meat section they have some cuts that one would rarely, or never, find in the average grocery store. As I took my time browsing around I came across pig's ears. I was pretty fascinated with them and decided that this long weekend may be a good opportunity to try my hand at making them for the first time.

I started with this:

And ended up with this:

The entire process of cooking was pretty tedious. Two hours of slow poaching followed by a night of chilling, followed by slicing, and then finally a marinade. The pig's ears are served chilled and deliver a wonderful crunch from the cartilage and a satisfying chew from the skin and fat. The ears themselves don't have much flavor but deliver an wholly enjoyable mouthfeel.

All the flavors are very Asian in origin and distant from what I normally used doing. However, I'm learning and I'm treating this as part of Garde Manger. I've only just started to branch into that area of cooking and I now finding myself wanting to learn more.

I posted my adventure of cooking Pig's Ears on a cooking related community at LiveJournal. I received many favorable comments to what I had done. These are just some of the 150+ comments to what I had done.

"I love your entries because it's so clear that you really, really love food."

"If I didn't know what they were, I'd try them in a heartbeat, they look so good. If I did know what they were, I'd still try them because they look so good, though it might take me a minute longer."

"I totally expected this to be something gross and disgusting and I'm surprised that I'm interesting in trying this. You obviously did a good job in tempting me!"

It's comments like these that make me feel good about what I'm doing and where I'm going with food. I'm pushing myself, going in new directions, exploring new horizons, and learning new things. I'm growing as a cook and that's the most important thing for me. Also, by inspiring others and opening people's minds I feel as if I'm contributing to my craft, which is also important as I am connected to something larger than just what I am doing alone.