Pig’s Ear Popcorn

So my current obsession with all things auricular means an infinite variety to my creations. As you might have noticed I also tend to be all over a food or ingredient for a few weeks and it’s all I want to use/eat. Lately I’ve been experimenting with making popcorn at home. An excellent mix to go on your popped corn is paprika, salt, sugar and dark chocolate.

But what would happen is crispy pig’s ears and popcorn got cooked together to make a delicious snack?

Offal snacks have been on my mind, as there are few offally bits that you can just pick up and run with. Scratching are one. I’m not sure about biltong. Gone are the days however, where my afternoon snack could be a couple of slices of ham. Oh dear. What to do? Tongue is an option, but what else could be out there?

Cue my patented pig’s ear popcorn! Similar to creating crispy pig’s ears, instead of a frying pan, use a saucepan. Fry the ears in hot oil for five minutes, then add your popping corn. Wait til it’s all popped and then shake through your salt, sugar, paprika, or whatever flavouring you’re balling with currently! I like some fennel and cumin seeds thrown in with the popping corn.

I made some to take on a long car journey with me and below is the picture of the remnants, because they were SO BLOODY DELICIOUS I snacked down on them all and forgot to take a good picture.

I used salt, sugar and paprika to shake on, leaving out the dark chocolate … chocolate and pork didn’t seem quite the perfect combination.

Next time you’ve got some pig’s ears lying around your fridge have a go! Or just pop some corn, it’s bloody great!

Nose to Tail Fortnight

Nose to Tail Fortnight is something taking place across London restaurants from TODAY until Sunday 13th May. It’s encouraging people to eat the whole animals. Different restaurants have bought whole animals to cook all of, or are doing special tasting menus. This is its first year, so its not spread country-wide. it is run by Ethical Eats, who are a London food network so I guess it figures. However, I don’t feel like I could ignore it at this stage in my offal-eating world. So.

I am going to attempt t eat my way along the animal. In two weeks. Only using less used cuts and offal. Can it be done?

I should say I’m going to start from the tail up. That is because I forgot what the fortnight was, got some veal tail out the freezer, then realised. So tail forwards it is. I’ve got trotters for tomorrow. I’M GOING TO TRY AND SOURCE SOME TESTICLES. However, despite making a scrappy list of animal body areas, I’ve not really planned this. Lucy, not planning soemthing down to the last detail? What sorcery is that?

This is how I am going to track my progress. It is not species specific:

Take up the gauntlet yourselves and buy and cook some offal these first two weeks of May!