Caul Fat Terrine

What is caul fat, you say? That is an excellent question. To be honest, I had heard of it before but I had to look it up myself. Caul fat is also known as lace fat, mesentery, crépine or fat netting, and is the thin membrane which surrounds the stomach internal organs of some animals, such as cows, sheep, and pigs. It honestly looks just like lace, and is used to wrap items such as pork tenderloin and such, to add moisture. It is used much like barding, and a really common dish is called crepinettes, which are sausage patties wrapped in caul fat.

I had caul fat as a black box ingredient for a recent competition, and I had never worked with it before. I did a few quick experiments with it beforehand. I didn't want to take the easy way out and just use it to wrap something, I wanted to use it in a terrine. I tried wrapping it around the terrine to see what happened, but I didn't like to outcome. Although the lace was visible in some areas, it melted away in others leaving a greasy layer. Frying caul fat caused it to melt away as well. I decided to use it inside the terrine along with the ground chicken to replace the pork fat that would normally be used. This worked quite successfully! 

Head Cheese

Head cheese is not a dairy cheese at all, but rather a terrine made of animal flesh (traditionally the head) set it aspic. It is a cold cut that originated in Europe. The process to make it isn't difficult, although it may be a bit of a turn off for some people. Head cheese is also incredibly cheap to make, because when you think about it - no one wants to buy pigs heads. It's not a prime cut at all.

To make head cheese, you take a whole pig head and use a blow torch to burn off any extra hair or fur that may still be attached to the skin. This smells REALLY BAD but you also do not want a hairy terrine. Next the pig head is boiled in a pot of water, vegetables, and aromatics, much like a stock, for six hours until it is tender. The stock is strained (and reserved) and the meat is taken from the head and chopped roughly. You can use as much or as little meat as you wish depending on how much head cheese you want. Pork cheeks and ears have many other great uses, and you may wish to omit the brain and eyes. Also try to trim off as much of the fat as possible, which can be used for something else. Be sure to remove the teeth as well!

The meat is then mixed with some chopped fresh herbs, seasonings of choice, and aspic to bind it, then set into terrine molds and chilled. It is sliced to serve, and it great with some crusty bread.

Bacon Maple Walnut Terrine

We had some leftover chicken forcemeat from various terrines so the solution was to use it up and make a few new terrines. To jazz up these terrines, we did inlays and outlays. Inlays are something that goes evenly through the middle of the terrine, but sometimes ingredients that are simply stirred into the terrine, such as nuts and dried fruits, are also considered inlays. Outlays are something that is wrapped evenly around the outside of the terrine.

One group did a mushroom inlay and golden beet outlay.
Another group did a meat inlay and cabbage outlay.
My group made a maple walnut butter to use as the inlay and double smoked bacon as the outlay.