The Loss Theme

 Lokal-int, 2023

Text by Alice Polo

Oh god just shut the fuck up would you? The next word I'm gonna type is my last

[...] 
1

"Bring me nine head cheeses .”
 


"But sir, eating nine head cheeses will make you sick."

"Look at me. Look at my belly. Do you really think I'm going to feel sick? No, trust me.

Come, come here take a good look at this belly, have you ever seen anything more disgusting in your life? And don't give me that shit. You've never seen anything more disgusting. 


So, bring me nine head cheeses. Don't forget I want feet, tongue and heart in that jellied loaf." "Please, you must allow me to call for the chef."

 "I'll devour the chef too if you bring him, just as I'll gobble you if you keep talking. Look, let me tell you a secret, see I'm not just fat, I'm also pretty well off. You see that castle over there on the horizon with the lanterns lit? That's mine, and if I want I can own this place and also the XL PURGE factory right across the road, I can buy it whenever I want. And I would fill every hole and empty space in my possession with jelly and head cheese, with the feet, tongues and hearts of all the scrawny, dry from undernourishment beings who beat their feeble fists at my doors. They will beat with their wretched strength, these haggards, wide eyes and mouths, finally from hunger. Wonderful."

"XL PURGE, sir?”

"Boy, I am dangerous, and you're tiring me, I'm a swine!" "But surely, sir, with a little time you could slim..."

"Why would I? I’m not like you, I’m not scared and besides, there's no time, I ate it, it's in here, see the jiggling? It's time, jiggling. Go now, bring me food and tell everyone to stay away from me, I want to be, as I am, immense and alone; immensely alone. I'm going to expand and expand, and clog the absence around me with the panic of my own gelatinous existence. Unity of opposites, big castles and nothing at all.

"And just remember that you, grossly straight and looking like rails, do no better than me, you afraid and tiny, and the tinier you are the bigger your egos to which you are so attached, from which you’ll never break free - confined, confined - you bagatelles."

[... ]

1.There’s no cheese in head cheese. Traditionally, it was made entirely from the meat of the pig's head, cured and stuffed into large beef lungs or pig stomachs, resulting in a highly nutritious and tasty dish. In its evolved version, it usually includes the edible parts of feet, tongue, heart, skins, snout, ears and tails. It may be that many of us have made head cheese without even realising it: every time we cook chicken broth or stock, we are making a weak version of head cheese. Why weak? The broth is watery and does not firm up into a meat jelly, but if the broth simmers longer and loses enough water, then we get a liquid that, once cooled, solidifies and becomes jelly. A not insignificant detail is that real

head cheese can’t be made by using noble cuts such as hams, fillets or other tender, lean meats, these expensive cuts simply do not contain enough connective tissue, hence collagen, to produce natural gelatine; and if you did use them, you would have to add commercial gelatin and, of course, the taste and flavour of the finished product would be less satisfactory*. As I understand it, all the necessary utensils are present in every house, not even the grinder is required as it would extract the proteins and break down the structure of the fat, resulting in an undesirably cloudy broth. A final introductory note is that there are different types of head cheese all over the world, I won't go into too much detail because I think I have already done enough of that by choosing to put this extremely long recipe as a footnote, but suffice it to say that the main difference between all these recipes seems to lie mainly in the inclusion or exclusion of vinegar and gelatin. Moving on, whether or not one chooses to cure** its meats, they will take pigs' heads, soak them in cold water to remove all traces of coagulated blood, then split them in half and boil until the meat comes off easily from the bones by hand; similarly, tongues, hocks, lean pork trimmings and shanks - cleaned and hairless - are boiled until soft. The heart must be cut open and rinsed with cold water to remove residual blood; due to its continuous work and high myoglobin content, it’s dark-red in colour and it is therefore recommended to cut the muscle into small cubes, otherwise, it will stand out a lot in the final mixture. The outer skin of pork or beef tongues must be removed due to the bitter taste, which is nonetheless easily accomplished by submerging them for a few minutes in hot water.

  Cooking is basically a simple process, but certain rules must be observed. Meat must be covered with 5 cm of water and simmered below boiling point for 2-3 hours, meanwhile, the skins must be boiled separately until they are soft and whole and once cooked, cut into strips. While still hot, the cooked meat must be removed from the bones, as meat is much easier to cut into small pieces when it is not completely cooled, but has already lost much of its cooking heat. After cutting them up, it is a good idea to rinse them briefly in hot water to remove the superfluous fat and grease that would irreversibly cloud the gelatine. The resulting stock should be filtered with a cloth until clarified: of course, the better clarity obtained, the better-looking cheese head. Funny enough, such a jelly is rich in protein, and fat-free.


Next, meats are mixed with salt, pepper, nutmeg, mace, allspice, cloves, marjoram, cardamom, onions, garlic, caraway, thyme, ginger, but not jelly, before stuffing (the hot jelly would draw some of the juices out of the meat thus making - guess... - once again, a cloudy jelly).


Finally, head cheese is, traditionally, stuffed into a pig's stomach. What makes the pig stomach the perfect candidate is its being a one-unit chamber of uniform oval shape with two easy-to-saw openings, while the stomachs of a cow or a sheep are basically three stomachs in one unit and such irregular shape does not make them easy to fill. Once the stomach is reversed and rinsed, its smaller opening is tied to fill it with meats, followed by a careful pouring of the gelatine. After filling, the bigger stomach opening has to be sewn with butcher's twine, or those tools used to fix bicycle tire flats will do. Alternatively, it is allowed to stuff everything into a large- diameter synthetic casing. Then, head cheese should be left at room temperature for a few hours to let the steam out and then placed between two wooden boards to press and permanently flatten the loaf which will reach the perfect rectangular shape with rounded corners.

* Always remember that adding commercial gelatin is not the most desired option, as it has no taste at all and is in fact a poor imitation of naturally produced meat stock, which pork head, hocks and skins effortlessly produce. Commercially prepared gelatin is a combination of neutrally flavoured powder (natural glue) and water. Once cooled, the jelly accounts for about 30% of the product's total weight. What would you prefer to have in your head cheese: 30% of water or 30% of meat broth?

** Traditionally-made products may employ meat curing with nitrite or not. The basic difference is that meats which are not cured will be of grey colour, and will perish sooner. However, curing pork head or legs is a hassle that requires extra space in a cooler, needs dedicated containers and will take some time, too. A hobbyist may not care much about this, but from the commercial point of view, those meats need to be pink and look as pretty as possible. Interestingly enough, meats also gain weight when cured.

Alice Polo