Head cheese

It’s amazing the parallels that existed in country living “back then”. I remember that everybody thought that beef tongue and mustard made the best sandwich ever. I was raised on what my family grew on the ranch, beef, lamb, pork, and what came out of the garden. We supplemented what we didn’t grow on the ranch with abolone, clams, mussels, surf-fish, venison and salmon. It seemed like the food was abundant if you planned well. One of my favorite foods was pickled mussels. I still make those from time to time.

One of the things that I ate as a child, and thought nothing of it, was head cheese. After the pig was butchered, the head was scalded and scraped clean with a dull knife, and then it was sawed down the middle longwise. The brains were scooped out and saved because my grandfather liked pig brains and scrambled eggs, but the brains were no good for head cheese. Then the head was cleaned again to get all the bone dust from the saw off it, then it was cleaned again.

The process usually involved all the women of the family, because the whole family either lived on the ranch or close by. I remember Gramma and Mom talking about how the head just had to be real clean, how they just about couldn’t eat the lady that lived down the roads head cheese, because they could tell it just was not clean enough. They always talked about how they liked to take the eyes out because a person could always tell an eyeball in the cheese, and they didn’t like that for some reason. After they were satisfied that the head was clean, they would place it in a big kettle and boil it for hours and hours. When the meat all fell off the skull, it was ready to clean again. The stuff that came off the skull was sliced and diced into about one-half inch pieces. Then it was put back in the pot and boiled onr more time. This time they put salt and pepper, a few bay leaves, and some sage, and some something else. Mace? Allspice? I forget. It was boiled to get the gelatin out of the ears, lips, skin and snout, so it would set up firmly when it cooled. Then it was poured into regular glass bread loaf pans to set and jell. Then there was much discussion about whether or not to put cracked pepper on the top of the loaf. The men in the family liked the cheese with cracked pepper on top. But the women didn’t so it usually went without.

I still like head cheese, but I have to personally know who made it before I’ll eat it.

I’d tell you how to make chicken foot soup, but it’s too late in the day.