'O Pere e 'o Musso

Trotter and muzzle simmered soft, cooled, sliced thin and dressed with nothing but lemon and salt.

Pork, Veal. Not vegetarian — contains pork, veal.

Ingredients

• 2 pig's trotters, split
• 500 g veal muzzle
• 2 litres water, for simmering, which is discarded
• 1 onion, halved
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon salt, for the simmering water
• 2 lemons
• flaky salt, to serve
• a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Method

1. Scrub the trotters and muzzle under cold running water and leave them in a bowl of cold water for an hour, changing it twice.
2. Put them in a pot with the 2 litres of water, the onion, bay and the tablespoon of salt. Bring to the boil, skim thoroughly for the first ten minutes, then drop to a bare simmer.
3. Simmer 3 hours, until a skewer meets no resistance. Top up with boiling water if they come clear of the surface.
4. Lift them out and let them cool completely. Refrigerate overnight if you can. THE COOLING IS NOT OPTIONAL: warm, this is impossible to slice and unpleasant to eat; cold, it sets firm and cuts cleanly. Pour the cooking water away.
5. Pull the meat and skin off the trotter bones and slice everything about 3 mm thick.
6. Serve it cold in paper cones or on a plate, with lemon squeezed over at the table, a good deal of flaky salt and the parsley. Nothing is cooked into it and no sauce is made — the lemon and the salt are the dressing.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes