24/1038 - Pressed tongue

I promise this will be the last of the tongue dishes for a while! This recipe actually called for three tongues which was the reason for my multiple purchase last week. When I brought them home and realised each tongue was the size of a baby's leg, I decided to split them amongst three recipes rather than having a pressed tongue in the fridge that would serve a small army. My family have been very supportive but I suspect even they may have a tongue limit.

This third and final tongue required poaching and skinning like the first two. I must say I am becoming quite nifty with the skinning knife and only managed one small slash on my index finger this time. I wish I had a dollar for every time my husband walked into the kitchen with a stricken look on his face saying, "You will take a finger off one day!" I like to use the biggest, scariest looking knives for best effect.

The stock the tongues were poached in was supposed to "jelly" after cooking but mine didn't, so I added some gelatine to help the process along. The jelly, tongue and mounds of parsley, garlic and orange zest were forced together in a terrine press overnight. I sliced the tongue rather than putting it in whole, and must confess I completely forgot to add the ham as I was racing against the clock to get this finished before picking the kids up from school.

We had slices of the finished terrine with dinner tonight and I was surprised to find that the jelly was quite nice. My youngest was not so sure and asked for his jelly to be scraped off. Given the amount of tongue he has put away this week, I could hardly complain.