Hogs are fun

This post is a bit late to come, as it happened a couple of months ago, but I just got the pictures.

Lauren's aunt Sarah and her family like to eat, have a beautiful house in Berkeley with a perfect kitchen (and a six-burner Wolfe range!), and are the only people I know who own a Caja China. They started a not-quite-yearly tradition of having a pig roast at their place a few years ago. The tradition is quite simple: a whole pig, roasted in the caja china, with a potluck for the other dishes. There's also bourbon involved. Sounds pretty perfect, doesn't it?

In years past, they always ordered their pigs without the head, for it does not fit in the Caja China, and it's a bit more of a challenge to eat than the other parts. This is year, I begged them to keep the head. They pay for it after all! You see, one of the things I love most in this world is charcuterie, and one of the most fun pieces of charcuterie I've ever had the pleasure of making is head cheese, the curiously named product of pig or cow head meats usually set in its own gelatin. I'd made it before in a restaurant, but I wanted it to be my contribution to this lovely party.

In looking around the internet for information about head cheese, I found out that most European countries have some variance of the stuff, and that it's even spread to destinations as far-flung as Korea and South Africa. Interesting that people see livestock heads and want to make jellied cakes out of them. Some people pickle it, and some people stuff it back into a deboned head and cure it. Here, I sought to make a rather typical 'testa' log in an Italian style, without too much gelatin and with distinctly Italian spicing.

The process of getting the meat ready for this type of head cheese isn't actually that complicated. You start by trimming any nose hair and other nasties from the head, and proceed to essentially make a stock. The idea is quite simple, really: there is so much collagen in the head of the pig that the resulting stock is full of gelatin and flavor. Reduce that stock, and use it as your binding agent for all the meat you can pull of the head.

This happened in October, before Obama was elected, so the Berkeley residents in charge of bringing the pig's head to its new home proceeded to put lipstick on its face, in honor of Ms. Palin, mother of Trig. Doesn't he look pretty?


But let's get down to business. Prepping the head is actually quite simple. After washing off the lipstick and cleaning the head, I removed any extra visible hair, and tied the jaw and ears with twine so that it wouldn't come completely apart in the pot.



Then, just do as you would do for a stock. Mix with some aromatics (I used plenty of rosemary and garlic here, as I wanted those flavors in the gelatin). Cover with cold water, and bring to a simmer, for about three or four hour, til the meat slides tenderly off the bone.


Oh wait. At that point, I was told that the pig's legs were too long for the Caja China. Fantastic, I thought, more gelatin! Pig's feet are chockfull of collagen, so I proceeded to hack the feet of the pig, which was chillin' (literally: covered in ice) in the spare bathroom's bathtub. After this massacre, I wound up with four lovely pig's trotters, ready to play their part.



Anyway, after braising, I carefully removed the pig's head, which is hard to do as all the meat is trying to come off the bone. Strain the stock, and reserve just enough for the head cheese, about two quarts. I seasoned it with fennel seeds, chiles, cloves, allspice and white pepper, then let it reduce. We wanted the gelatin to be very hard, so I reduced it by almost two thirds. Then add the salt.




While the stock is reducing, gather the kids, and start taking apart the pig's head! I could have done more cleanly, but it was much more fun to let everyone dig in. Again, this is a pretty simple process. Find the meat, put it in a bowl. Usually starts with taking the bottom jaw out, and then the tongue, which has to be peeled of its outer skin. After that, it's a hunt. There are some bigger pieces, like neck meat and the jowls, but most of the meat has to be pried away from the layers of fat.







And then there's the eyeball...

By the end, it's a complete mess, but everyone's had fun.

At this point, the only tough part. Actually rolling it all together. I laid out a large amount of plastic wrap, made sure the meat was torn up a bit, and lay it out in a rough log shape. Pour the liquid on top, making sure it doesn't go everywhere. Then roll, making sure both ends are tight. It's a bit more complicated than it sounds, and I remember screwing this method up a lot when I first had to do it in restaurants. Eventually, it should like like this:

Ideally, it would have hung in the fridge to keep its round shape, but the fridge was packed with food for the roast, so we had to settle with laying it on its side, and one of the sides flattened a little.


I served it in pretty thick slices, treating it more like a pate. With some toasted sweet batard from Acme, cornichons and whole grain mustard, this was a perfect rustic plate of charcuterie. I'm a modernist in general when it comes to food, but there are certain things that shouldn't be touched. Good charcuterie is one of them. I really liked how this turned out. Not too much gelatin, lots of identifiable pieces of pork head, a good, mildly spicy flavor, redolent of fennel. I ate quite a few slices.


As for the pig? Well, just look at this baby:

There's nothing better than a whole roasted animal. Crispy skin, moist meat, slapped into a sandwich with a little chili sauce. Mmmmm........