Frogs Legs & Fromage de Tête

As spring approached and the ice and snow melted, we found a couple of new faces lurking around our little pond. A random truck would arrive and two men would trek to the pond, nets and buckets in hand. We found out that we were letting them go "fishing" for frogs - they got to keep the big ones to sell (under the table, of course), and gave us a couple of bags-full of the little guys for our own munching.

The first step was letting them rinse thoroughly. As you can see here, the frog-poachers just gave us the frogs from the waist-down.

We spread out the legs on a tray and lightly coated them with flour, salt, & pepper.

Next, a quick fry in some oil (I think vegetable oil was what we had on hand):

And voila! Top with a little freshly-squeezed lemon juicy and you've got yourself some tasty little crunchy finger foods. It proved to be a lot of hard work to pick off such a small amount of meat, but it's not every day that you get to eat fresh frogs' legs for lunch!

Around that same time, we slaughtered a couple more pigs to sell. Owen decided to give a try making head cheese out of the leftover head. Some people may think this post is gross, but we think it's downright delicious. Head cheese is simply a terrine or mold made out of the meat from the pig's head, picked off, set with gelatin.

Perfectly planned prep: leeks, carrots, garlic, onions, bay leaf & peppercorns:

The head! Gross. Not really. Well, kind of. Split in half, along with the feet, and cooked in water until tender.

Looks like a Top Chef Relay:

Skimming the Skum:

Here is the head, fully cooked. Can you find the teeth? Yum! We decided to leave the teeth out of the head cheese.

Owen picks off the meat:
Cutting up all the meat - the tougher pieces get more finely chopped, and the larger pieces are the tender ones.
Reducing the water that we cooked the head in forms a natural gelatin. We mixed together this liquid with all of the above ingredients and separated into these bowls - made a lot of head cheese! Traditionally, you would use a terrine mold, but we didn't have one, so this worked well. Put in the fridge to set!
The finished product (flipped upside down out of the bowl). Spread on some bread with a little whole grain mustard and you're in pig heaven!

Mittelbergheim, Shmittelbergheim!

A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to tag along to a street fair of sorts in Mittelbergheim, a small Alsatian town on the wine route. Very old, lots of history, lots of wine. Our friend Michel lives there in a house that was built in in the 17th century, and has been in his family since that time. For the festival, various business and homes opened their doors for tours and the selling of various crafts and food/beverage. We set up shop in Michel's outdoor garage, along with friends and a few horses. The weather was quite cold and dreary, but we had a great time exploring the town. Here are some pictures from our day!

Friends arrive via horseback:

Emmanuelle gets served lunch - a traditional Alsatian dish called Baeckeoffe - a baked stew with a variety of meats (mostly pork) and vegetables like carrots & potatoes. Add a nonstop flow of wine (Michel owns his own vineyard, as many home-owners do in this area), and you've got yourself a helluva lunch!

Gabriel and Melina chow down while listening to an intriguing conversation... at least, I think it was intriguing. Our small knowledge of French was practically useless here - most folks were speaking German or traditional Alsatian (a German-French hybrid).

Some photos Owen took after lunch while we walked around the town...

This horse was getting a manicure.A very large and very old grape press.
An "American Country Line Dancing" group! Complete with horrid country music!


Above, people transformed their caves into displays for local artists. Below, a family demonstrates making ceramic sculptures.



In Michel's hundreds-of-years-old garage/attic. I did not want my picture taken. Plus, it was scary up there.

Above - my new buddy. Below - a totally sweet ride.
If you look closely, you'll see the inscription above the door with the year the house was built.

I know we have seriously fallen behind in our blog-posting, but we are still experiencing some difficulty making sure that our older posts that have been modified for confidentiality get updated in various search engines' cache archives. Wow, that was a lot of technical mumbo jumbo! Regardless, I'll be posting shortly with Owen's attempts (and successes!) at making frog's legs (from our very own pond) and fromage de tete (from our very own pig). The Schnapps- and cheese-making posts *might* have to wait until our return. Keep your eyes peeled... and we'll see many of you very soon - just two more weeks until our triumphant return to the States!