Celebrated Chef Ben Ford showed the guests on Supper Club with Tom Bergeron an example of a head-to-tail meal that could show up on the menu at his restaurant Ford's Filling Station in Culver City, Calif. The notion of cooking head-to-tail means using nontraditional and sometimes less appetizing parts of the animal so that none of it goes to waste. In a country where we think that there is no end to the resources that we have at our disposal, the slaughter of animals for just one preferred part is common practice.
Ben Ford?s menu for this show included "head cheese" made with the head and trotters of the pig. Ford proved that the head of the pig can be quite tasty while reminding his guests that even though people in other countries commonly eat all parts of an animal, U.S. restaurant patrons are not yet accustomed to it.
In the entrée, Ford demonstrated how to prepare another interesting part of the pig, the kidneys. He sautéed the kidneys with fennel and onion and then grinded them into a chunky paste to be spread throughout the inside of the pig's body. Atop the paste, Ford placed the remaining back fat, letting no part of the pig go to waste.
At first it seemed that the hooves and cartilage of the animal were not used in the menu. Not so. Ford even found a place for these seemingly uneatable portions of the pig. While Ford didn't actually use the hooves and the cartilage from their entrée pig in the dessert, he demonstrated that they too could be used to make a gelatin based custard dessert. Diners are often surprised to find that gelatin is made with the hooves and cartilage of the animal. Served up with local blood oranges, even hooves can become delicious.
Here are some other green cooking tips from Chef Ben Ford:
Sip on the best. Serve your guests a biodynamic merlot from Napa winemaker Robert Sinskey. Robert Sinskey was one of the first successful biodynamic and organic vineyards in the area, employing the same practices that have been used to produce high quality wine all over France for years.
Make it Heritage. Ford served alocally raised Heritage pig. The pigs live off the land, on grass, grains, and windfalls.
