Hog Maw

I've often lamented about Halloween party food recipes being too geared towards children, or for people who like hot dogs wrapped up like mummies in dough bandages with small goobly eyes.  That stuff is always fun, but where are the spooky, dark meals that could be served at a classy Halloween dinner party?

Enter Hog Maw.

According to Wikipedia:

Hog maw, sometimes called Pig's Stomach, Susquehanna Turkey or Pennsylvania Dutch Goose is a Pennsylvania Dutch dish. In the Pennsylvania German language, it is known as Seimaage (sigh-maw-guh), originating from its German name Saumagen. It is made from a cleaned pig's stomach traditionally stuffed with cubed potatoes and loose pork sausage meat. Other ingredients may include cabbage, onions, and spices. It was traditionally boiled in a large pot covered in water, not unlike Scottish haggis, but it can also be baked or broiled until browned or split, then it is often drizzled with butter, sometimes browned, before serving. It is usually served hot on a platter, cut into slices, and topped with horseradish or stewed tomatoes. It can also be served cold as a sandwich. Often served in the winter, it was made on hog butchering days on the farms of Lancaster and Berks Counties and elsewhere in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Jenna's wonderful version of this unique dish is the sausage and potato varietal, baked in the oven to a crispy golden brown.  It's visually shocking (and probably disturbing to some), but the house filled with a terrific scent similar to that of a Thanksgiving turkey.  She serves her Hog Maw in slices with roasted brussels sprouts and a baked three-bean casserole.  It made for an absolutely perfect birthday dinner but could very well be the main course at the aforementioned Dark Halloween Dinner party.

Cocktails And Fireside Dining

Took a very nice break from Haunt prepping...

Halloween Party Food: Salami With Bourbon & Sour Cherry

As an homage to the classic Manhattan cocktail, Brooklyn Cured created this pork and bourbon salami and infused it with sour cherries for a touch of sweetness and complexity. The sweet and smoky flavors of bourbon and cherry serve as the absolute perfect complement to pork.

Click here for igourmet.com

Halloween Party Food: Rust Belt Saucisson

Smoking Goose's latest creation is a mid-western take on a French classic. Made with 100% purebred Duroc pork from fourth-generation Gunthorp Farms in LaGrange, Indiana and blended with white pepper, garlic, lemon peel, nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon. Cold smoked over Applewood, hickory, and barrel staves.

Click below...

I'd Eat It

Halloween Zombie Diseased Steak.

Click below...

Meatless Stuffs

This is more of a public service announcement.
Think of it as a recommendation and nothing more.  No preaching.  No nothing.
I would have liked to have read about this recommendation a while back as I searched for alternatives to meat. 
I'd also like to add that I'm not a full-on vegetarian or vegan, but I've been trying to limit my meat imprint on the earth, so I've been experimenting with the options out there.

To date, the best and most convincing alternative to eating beef is a product by Gardein.  The texture and flavor IS beef to me.  Just had it in a meat[less] sauce lasagna and I swear to the gods I couldn't tell the difference.  Like not at all.  And I was TRYING to tell the difference.

So, if you've been curious about it, give it a whirl.  I'm planning on trying the other varieties from this company.  We've been BIG Morning Star brand vegetarian products people, but this is the first time the texture was the real deal and I didn't feel like I was eating a computer's interpretation of what meat must taste and feel like (similar to Seth Brundle's steak in THE FLY).

Anyone have any recommendations for someone looking for alternatives to meat?

Vincent

Source unknown.

Long Pigs

Prior to 1931, New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, allegedly in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed by accident, and cooked and ate it. He reported that, "It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."


More information.