This can be a recipe for tête de veau with sauce gribiche for these making an attempt to make tête de veau with sauce gribiche in the USA. Which is to say, this isn’t a recipe for tête de veau with sauce gribiche, however as an alternative one for pork stomach croquettes with sauce gribiche. I can clarify!

Tête de veau, actually “calf’s head,” is a basic dish of the French kitchen, that includes a country hunker of wobbly poached claves head, all fatty and meaty and deliciously gelatinous. Together with it’s normally a brilliant and punchy sauce like ravigote, a sort of mustardy and herby emulsified French dressing, or sauce gribiche, a wealthy mayonnaise constructed on boiled eggs and flavored with mustard, herbs, and plenty of minced capers and cornichons.

I wished to jot down that recipe for our readers right here, however I shortly realized simply what a problem it’s to even discover a calf’s head within the States, to not point out how an individual at house would come wherever near consuming a calf head’s value of meat (and even half a calf’s head!). However fortune favors the stymied, and because it seems I used to be in Paris a number of months in the past, consuming my method across the metropolis with an eye fixed on bistro and brasserie classics that I might develop recipes for at house. At one restaurant—Grand Brasserie—I acquired an concept for an answer to the veal’s head drawback.

There, the chef served “tête de veau” by breading and frying a torpedo of shredded calf’s head, form of like a meaty croquette, with the sauce gribiche on the aspect. This was one thing I might make work for a house prepare dinner within the States.

My first step for adapting this to a US viewers was to modify from veal to pork, since pork is less complicated to seek out and cheaper. My second step: Change from head to pork stomach. I did not suppose a boiled slab of pork stomach would make an ideal stand-in for the basic poached calf’s head—the fats composition and quantity of gelatinous elements are completely different—however I used to be fairly positive the meat, as soon as boiled, shredded, and chilled, might work simply as nicely in fried-croquette kind.

So that is what I did. The method is straightforward to do, although it does take a while: The pork stomach needs to be simmered in an fragrant broth till fall-apart tender, which might take various hours. Then you should shred it, season it, and roll it in some sheets of plastic wrap right into a log. The fats will soften and pool, nevertheless it’s high-quality, there’s greater than sufficient even when a very good quantity seeps out.

After that, you chill the log of rolled, shredded pork stomach till agency, which additionally takes many hours. At this level, it is easy to complete and serve: Simply slice the chilled pork roll into pucks, dredge them in a basic breading of flour, egg, and breadcrumbs (I favor panko), and fry them in a shallow pot of oil till golden on either side.

Plated on beneficiant dollops of sauce gribiche, the outcome appears much more refined and complex than the precise course of is. It is not an precise plate of tête de veau, however I am fairly positive nobody will complain.