Tomatoes and Terrines
Comments from the author:
“This article has been dragged, kicking and screaming, from the old BretonDiary.”
Terrines - They come in all sizes and colours and cost about 2 euros each. Originally used for making pate (or similar), I have about a dozen and don't get stressed if I break one. I tend to use them a lot.
Tete de Filet Mignon
One of the things I really like cooking in them is Tete de Filet Mignon. The Filet Mignon is the muscle that, in a castrated male pig, doesn't get used very much - not at all, in fact. It is the pig equivalent of filet steak in a cow (I should say, male castrated bovine animal here - a steer, in other words).
When a filet mignon is cut out of a pig, the butchers aren't, to put too fine a point on it, delicate. They don't have the time. Thus, there is some trimming to be done afterwards. A Filet Mignon is a cylinder, about a foot long, about three inches in diameter and, if we're talking meat here (rather than brains or other gungy stuff like that) the most expensive meat on a pig.
When a filet mignon gets trimmed, the top and bottom two to three inches are chopped off - these are both called Tete de Filet Mignon (although if one is the head, surely the other should be the tail?). These get trimmed and then sold off for about half the price of real Filet Mignon. This is suprising as, to my mind, they taste just a good and, having some fatty meat attached, are an awful lot easier to cook. The only way I know of cooking Filet Mignon is to slice it into medallions and heating some butter in a pan. Then I add some chopped shallots and garlic to the butter and brown gently. Finally I take the medallions of Filet Mignon in one hand, the saucepan in the other and put the contents of both hands onto a warmed plate - you really don't want to overcook Filet Mignon (I realise that I am exaggerating very slightly here).
I buy Tete De Filet Mignon when it is on special offer at work. It is today - about one pound twenty a pound - that's such incredibly good value bearing in mind that with a bit of creative trimming, you're getting about 80% Filet Mignon here!
Sometimes I do the naughty thing and slice some medallions from the Tete de Filet Mignon to be cooked in sizzling butter for just a bit more than a few seconds but no more than a minute - no sauce needed, it would only disguise the subtle taste anyway. The trimmings, I use for stir fry - where I'll probably only be cooking for seconds anyway.
Other times I take four or five entire Tete de Filet Mignons and put them in a terrine with some whole mushrooms (Ceps are the best but anything that's big and meaty will do). A couple of peeled cloves of garlic and a dob of butter. That's all. I cook it until I can smell the garlic (above the normal kitchen garlic stench level, that is).
I discovered, by accident, that this tastes even better if the terrine is packed with tomatoes, peeled onions and large chunks of courgettes (the packing makes a difference - I'm not sure why). I do the same with PUM10. This is chunks (from golfball to tennis ball size) of pork with a 10% fat content (in other words, lean for pork). When you order this, you have no idea what part of the pig the pork will come from. I bought 10 kilos last week and got a dozen premium loin chops mixed in with what I think is some shoulder - good stuff, in other words - but none of it is bad. PUM10 is cheap (about 60p a pound) but needs cooking a bit longer than Tete de Filet Mignon.
Better the next day
Of course, if you leave out the pork, a terrine packed with peeled onions, big firm tomatoes, large chunks of courgette is a nice summer dish - when everyone has got too many tomatoes and they are being given away. This is something that, if anything, is better cold, the next day. I eat it cold with sour yoghurt - this tastes to me, somehow Turkish - not sure why.
Chops in Cider
The Loin chops I discovered in my PUM10 last week will almost certainly end up being cooked in a terrine in the oven. I'm not sure what the correct technical term would be (I'm tempted to speculate on Braising but who knows?) but I put a layer of chopped or sliced vegtables in the terrine, put the pork chops on top, splash some cider over the lot and put it into a hot oven. I'll splash some more cider over it a few times and serve it with mashed potatoes. Just before it is finished, I slice a tomato and put the slices on top of the chops. For some reason, if I try to do this in a pan on the stove - it just isn't the same. It needs the thick terrine to radiate the heat - me thinks.
