Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Cooking Get in Ma Mouth: Caul Fat (what!?) Edition
Posted by Brad Kaplan @BradKaplanATL on Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 9:30 AM
- Joeff Davis
- FATTY PATTY: The Spotted Trotter's crépinettes made with caul fat
Caul fat. Sounds delicious, no?
Better yet, looks delicious, no??? No.
OK, I'll admit it, caul fat is an unlikely topic for Get in Ma Mouth. Looking at the stuff, a descriptor that might come to mind for most of you would be "highly unappetizing." I like to think of it as cool and unusual, and even somewhat magical in its applications to cooking. It's one of those applications, a classic French dish called Pojarski de veau, that is the real topic of this Get in Ma Mouth. But before we get to that dish, a little background is required.
Let's start with the caul fat (vegetarians among you, divert your eyes). Caul fat typically comes from a pig, and, physically at least, starts off not too far away from everyone's favorite form of pork fat - bacon. Right near the pig belly (or cow or sheep belly), there's a thin but surprisingly strong membrane that surrounds the intestines and stomach. It's white and lacy, with a web-like pattern of strands that hold it all together. This is the caul fat.
- Jimmy Sobeck, EatitAtlanta.com
- Pojarski de veau, ready for the oven
You won't find caul fat at Publix, but a good butcher should be able to get you some. A friend and I actually turned to the Spotted Trotter to buy ours, since we knew that they used caul fat to make their excellent crépinettes. Caul fat typically comes frozen (it melts as it warms up), and is surprisingly easy to work with. You just unroll it a bit and cut off whatever amount you need to wrap up whatever it is that needs wrapping. Which brings us to the Pojarski de veau.
I came across the recipe for this dish in the excellent cookbook The Art of Living According to Joe Beef (Joe Beef is a Montreal restaurant known for its decadent spin on classic French inspirations). Pojarksi de veau is essentially a veal and mushroom meatball. Except it's bigger than most meatballs. And this one has a bone sticking out of it. And it's wrapped in caul fat to keep in the moisture and pack in the flavor. If you're eager to try this at home, and you should be, buy the book. Or track down the recipe on Amazon. Or if that fails, check out the New York Times' version of Joe Beef's recipe, which leaves out the caul fat (quelle horreur!).
The amazing thing about the recipe, and the use of caul fat, is the extent to which it really does result in an intensely juicy and flavorful dish. I have to admit that not every veal patty was cooked perfectly. This being our first time using caul fat, we didn't pay quite enough attention to making sure the wrapping was not too thick in parts. The result was that some of the patties had a bit more fat than was necessary in spots, but that is easily remedied.
Caul fat is cheap and interesting to work with if you enjoy cooking, and Joe Beef's Pojarski de veau is a great dish to test out its magical properties. If you're even more adventurous, you might prefer this BBC recipe for "the Great British faggot." It involves bellies and livers and lungs and hearts, which might all just make the caul fat seem a bit more appetizing.
- Jimmy Sobeck, EatitAtlanta.com
- Pojarski de veau, ready to eat
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Get in Ma Mouth is a look at delicious things around Atlanta. It all started with a fig and mascarpone doughnut "slider," but knows no bounds other than that of eager hunger - sweet or savory, solid or liquid, homemade or store-bought. Click here for an archive of "Get in Ma Mouth" temptations.
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