Trotter Gear Meez

I cook up a batch of Henderson's unctuous stock recipe a couple of times a year and freeze it up in jars for general use in the kitchen.  The recipe is in Henderson's book Beyond Nose to Tail: More omnivorous Recipes for the Adventurous Cook. It's what Bourdain might call my kitchen Meez (Mise en Place). He writes about this in his Les Halles Cookbook which has been my go to cookbook for the past couple of years. For me, having a few jars of this stock in the refrigerator is part of being prepared to cook.  When done right, it thickens up into a stock that is jelly at room temperature, you have to melt to use and it adds rich texture to dishes it's used in.  I end up using most of my stock of stock in game stews. I also sometimes use it to as a substitute for demi-glace in recipes that call for it; it has a different flavor from a reduced veal stock which I have not made in many years but which I am thinking I'd like to make sooner than later.  You can not beat the rich texture provided by trotter gear.  One favorite is elk medallions cooked following  Bourdain's Salade d' Onglet recipe using trotter gear instead of demi-glace.

From: Beyond Nose to Tail: More Omnivorous Recipes for the Adventurous Cook by Fergus Hendersona dn Justin Piers Gellatly. Bloomsbury 2007