Pig's head- was Re: [Sca-cooks] Blood Bread

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach UlfR:
>Phlip <phlip at 99main.com> [2004.01.18] wrote:
>
>>  Head cheese. boil it down, remove the bones, and set it up in a loaf pan and
>>  chill it. Slice it for sandwiches....
>
>That is the default option, I want alternatives, so I can ambivilate
>between them.

What do you _mean_, you 'had head cheese for lunch'? [Sorry, punch 
line of an old joke, or a cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker 
magazine in the 1920's, or something like that.]

The other obvious classic (if such a term can be applied to pig's 
head) is the French habit of serving boiled, deboned calves' and 
sheeps' heads chilled, with a vinaigrette made with plenty of chopped 
herbs. I suppose you could do something like that. Legend has it that 
the dish is so spectacularly unattractive that the sauce _has_ to 
have the chopped herbs, to obscure the main ingredient. But then 
similar stories are told about Tournedos Rossini (traditionally, it 
is said, served by a waiter with his back turned to the diner's 
table), and that's just the droppings of a male bovine.

I vaguely recall my late father-in-law making a salad of simmered, 
chilled, and shredded pig's ears and snouts, with shredded root 
vegetables (carrots and white or icicle radishes, sorta like daikon) 
in a sweetened vinegar sauce (no oil). I also remember the ears 
giving me the willies, with their layer of crunchy cartilage; I guess 
it's an acquired taste I have yet to acquire.

Adamantius