In case you are worried here a faggot is in
fact a pork meatball and not a homosexual. The word faggot actually comes from the old Norman fagot, which was a bundle of sticks tied up with string. Coal also
came in faggots. Here, the pork meat is bundled in a piece of caul fat which also
acts as a permanent basting.
It’s worth mentioning that the derogatory
meaning of faggot has not fully infiltrated the United Kingdom from the USA;
whenever my Dad called me a ‘bad-tempered faggot-face’ when I was being a
wingey child (which was probably often), he wasn’t
meaning I had the face of camp man. Or maybe he was…
I didn’t think faggots are that popular
these days, but on a recent trip to Swansea, I noticed that every single
butcher in the market sold them. They are also still very popular in the black
country. It is still possible to buy Mr Brain’s faggots in onion gravy in
supermarkets, but they apparently bear little resemblance to proper faggots; though
I have to say, I had never eaten or cooked them before.
Faggots were invented as a way of using up
all the offcuts and offal from butchers’ pig carcasses, they contain some
breadcrumbs to both absorb some of the fat and to ‘cut’ the strong offal
flavours. They have been dubbed Britain’s first take-away fast food by some,
because faggots were sold at the end of the day for hungry workers to pick up
on their way home after a hard day’s graft.
Two things that might put you off
making/eating faggots are the offal and the caul fat, but don’t let it; offal
cuts are very delicious. The strange lacy caul fat looks a bit strange at
first, but it crisps up nicely on top as the faggots brown in the oven. It’s
not hard to get caul fat; your local butcher should have some, and it should be
very cheap or even free, though you may need to give them a bit of notice. Jane
says that to get caul ‘you will need to go to a small family butcher,
preferably an older man, who really understands meat’. To use it, just soak it
in water so that it can unfurl and be much easier to handle.
As you can tell by the title of this post,
faggots are traditionally served with peas. Good Lady Grigson suggests #4
Green Peas in the summer and #295
Purée of Dried Peas with Green Peppercorns in the winter, but I
wanted to serve it with a classic pease pudding (but you’ll have to wait for
the next post for that recipe).
These faggots are made using pork belly and
pig’s liver, but you can use any offal such as heart or kidney. Likewise, you
could exchange the pork belly for another cut – just be careful to either use a
fatty cut or add some streaky bacon to increase the fat content.
Here’s how to make this ‘good-tempered
dish’:
Mince (or ask your butcher to mince) one
pound of pig’s liver and 10 ounces
of belly of pork and toss into a
frying pan along with two chopped onions
and a chopped clove of garlic and
cook them gently for about half an hour.
Try to not allow the meat or onions to
take on any brown colour. Strain off the juices into a bowl and set them aside.
Mix the meaty mixture with four chopped sage
leaves (or a teaspoon of dried sage), half a teaspoon of ground mace, two medium eggs and enough breadcrumbs
to make ‘a firm, easy-to-handle mixture’. I used four ounces. Have a taste of
the mixture and season appropriately with salt
and pepper.
Form the mixture into balls weighing two
ounces apiece, then spread out the soaked caul
fat and cut it into approximate five inch square pieces. Wrap each meatball
in the pieces of caul fat and arrange them in a shallow baking dish.
Pour in a
quarter of a pint of pork, beef or veal stock and bake for 40 to 60 minutes. Twenty minutes or so
before the end of the cooking time strain the cooking juices into the reserved
liquor from earlier and stand the bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice cubes
so that the fat quickly rises to the top and can be skimmed off. Return the
liquid to the cooking faggots 5 minutes for the final five minutes of cooking.
#373 Faggots
and Peas. These were very good – the texture of the faggots were quite
mealy due to the liver in there and the mace gave them a real taste of haggis.
I would definitely give these a go again, but perhaps with some other offal
cuts. 7.5/10
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