[Sca-cooks] Food and squeamishness

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Susan Fox-Davis:
>>>  I was wondering, has anyone ever served food at a feast such as a whole
>>>pig's or ox's head, or a whole piglet, or, basically, anything that can
>>>stare right back at you while you munch on it?
>>
>I'm going to ask the white-girl-city-kid question:  how exactly do 
>you eat a pig's or ox's head, when it is presented whole like that?

Serious head-eating cultures frequently seem to prefer to split the 
head, to better get at the brain and tongue, and have a little better 
control over the cooking rates of the various parts (think of the 
times when it's a good idea to separate the dark meat and white meat 
of birds, and cook them for different periods of time. You can still 
eat the head whole, but people that like brains often find them 
pretty overcooked and tasteless by the time the rest of the head is 
done.

>   Which parts are edible, or at least tastier than others?

I suppose you're not too hugely squeamish, or we wouldn't be having 
this discussion. Think of all those rarely-used, rarely-noticed 
muscles in your head. Your cheeks, lips, the ones you may use to 
wiggle your ears or nose, or eyebrows, or those weird people that can 
wriggle their scalps back and forth. Most of those muscles are 
present in sheep's, calves', and pig's heads, and are essentially 
viable meat. Attached to them are various bits of gristly stuff, some 
made of elastin, which doesn't break down in cooking, and collagen, 
which does (IOW, it becomes tender enough to chew, for those that 
like stuff like pig's feet, oxtails, etc., it's pretty similar).

Choice bits on a pig's head, for those that like or will eat them, 
anyway, seem to be the jowls (the cheek muscles, so much so that they 
are often cured separately like small hams: see Bath Chaps and that 
Italian stuff like pancetta but whose name I forget, which is the 
traditional bacon source for pasta carbonara and arrabiatta...), the 
tongue, and the eyes (actually the muscles behind the eyes, although 
some do eat the eyes themselves, which I consider a bit much myself).

>  Which are nasty or too cartiliginous to bother with?  I take it 
>that the eyes are no good, since they usually seem to get taken out 
>and replaced with fruit.

The eyes are frequently removed when the head is roasted, because 
they shrink and fall out, and can look a little scary even to those 
with pretty cast-iron stomachs, hence the cranberries. Some people do 
eat them, but they have a lot of very tough membranous stuff (talk to 
your doctor about how delicate your cornea is when scratched, but how 
friggin' tough it is to puncture). The apple in the mouth is similar; 
the jaw muscles contract and force the mouth open; you don't want to 
serve a screaming animal, usually.

The ears and snout have non-soluble cartilage; some people eat them 
anyway; one of the terrors of my in-laws' house in the summer was 
cold pig's snout/ear salad. I'm all for crunch, but for some reason 
cartilage isn't on my approved list of sources, especially when you 
boil the ear or snout for three or four hours and the skin is nearly 
disintegrated, but the cartilage is still intact.

Some French recipes for calve's head vinaigrette, or head cheese, 
etc., call for the ears and snout to be removed, at least from the 
final product.

And then, there's the skin, the thin sheets of muscle encasing the 
head, and the more tender (when cooked) connective tissue holding it 
all together. Again, sort of like cooked pig's feet, but shaped 
differently.

>  Brains?

Best when cooked separately, but sometimes just eaten out of the cooked head.

>   Ears?  My dog likes dried pig ears, they are sold by the dozen in 
>pet supply stores as chewies.  Maybe she is on to something that we 
>should know about?

She's not squeamish. For me, I guess it's kind of similar to when you 
bite into something like a chicken leg or thigh, and sometimes get a 
knuckle of cartilage in your mouth. Some of that stuff does cook to a 
tender state, but a lot of it we're just conditioned to regard as 
cartilage, which is a bit like bone, and spit it out. Ironically, one 
of my favorite parts of a roast chicken is the very end of the wing 
tip, because you can eat the little bite, bones and all, like a 
potato chip.

Adamantius