Trotters

I do not like the term trotters. I guess it all stems from "having the trots," an Australian expression for diarrhea. But when you are trying to convince the general public to eat something, ok, lets all be real here, gross, you have to give it a fancy name. Take Squab. Rocky Mountain Oysters. Vegemite. Whoops, got away from myself there for a while. Trotters are pigs feet. They should, in my opinion, be any animals feet, but I wasn't the one to discover that they could be eaten, so I will secede. It does mean, however, that I should be able to give a name to french fries dipped in a vanille milkshake. So, here is my maiden voyage with les pieds de cochon.

Purchase-
I woke up on Sunday, and it just felt like a day to cook something strange. I walked through the Sunday market on Avenue d'Italie with the devout and the hungover, and found him. My man. Mr. French Butcher. His hands looked like swollen pink chops of meat. He was wearing a hat with a GD pheasant feather in it. He actually burped in the middle of a transaction. I had seen ears and tails and cow tongues and the like, and was almost tempted to buy some pig cheeks, which are supposed to be delicious, but I was on a mission. He grabbed two front feet, beat the shit out of them with a butchers knife to split them, since all the good stuff is inside, and, upon hearing I was both a pigs feet virgin AND an American, he practically threw an arm around my shoulders and offered me a drink. He walked me through the steps of cooking un bon pied de cochon, which subsequently led me to mentally throw out the other recipes I was considering for this food anomaly. Screw lentils with pigs feet, pigs feet stew and braised pigs feet. I was going to make some potatoes stewed with pigs feet, because he told me to. I immediately bought a small bag of filthy potatoes, and hurried home.

Prep-
They don't feel good. Like, think human skin. I threw them into a big pot with a few liters of water, a quartered onion, the fresh bay leaves that he snuck into my bag without me looking, and a mish mash of herbs I found in the pantry left over by other tenants- sage, pink peppercorn, rock salt, garlic, and a few yummy smelling mystery leaves. About an hour into the stewing, the toes began spreading slightly, and I am not stoked to see a SERIOUS lack of meat. This is going to be one weird stew....

Eating-
An appropriate amount of stewing time later, I chucked in some potatoes, pumpkin, broccoli and a few mushrooms. I fished out the pigs feet and bay leaves, and, without much bravado, ate it. Verdict, you say? Broth flavor- CRAZY good. There is enough fat in the feet to give a heap of water the most lovely taste. The soup- meh. Butcher-man got the broth idea down pat, but I'm needing some meat in this mother.

Overall impression-
Making a stew? Buy pigs feet, but buy some other kind of meat to throw in there.

Ok, what should I make next? Cow brains? Frogs legs? Escargot?