Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: "Have You Eaten This?" [For You, Holly]

remember have you eaten this? let me refresh your memory:

25. Brawn, or head cheese?
holly: "this sounds absolutely disgusting. i don't know exactly what it is but don't even want to find out."

me: "i know that you said you didn't want to find out, but i will get such joy out of sharing this with you, the elements of head cheese.

think about the log shaped mold that they use to make cold cuts like bologna. take that mold and fill it with chopped up pig feet, pig snout, pig ear, pig face, pig eyebrows and pig tails. then, for added flavor, you make white vinegar flavored jell-o and pour it in the mold to fill in the little spots between the face chunks. let that set, slice it like salami, and voila! head cheese.

i must admit, i used to eat it a lot when i was little. it's popular hungarian lunch meat. then, at some point, i started actually looking at the stuff... you can actually see cartilage and hairs and god knows what else in the gelatinous goo. i avoid it like the plague now.

you want some now, don't you???"

holly: "omg tony. i almost threw up just reading about seeing the little hairs, etc., in the log of head cheese. NASTY! but i will never forget now what it is because of the colorful way you explained it."

and now for the educational portion of this post, in case you've changed your mind and you want to make some homemade head cheese for yourself:

[via sky full of bacon, spleeness]

the story behind ssp&e:

so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...

e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]

the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...

3 comments:

Anonymous, 11:16 AM: oh. my.

First off, thank you for dedicating a whole post to my revulsion of the concept of "head cheese" -- utterly fantastic.

Secondly, wow. That was really interesting. It *looked* absolutely disgusting, as a pure raw head, tongue and jaw and all, but seeing the chef handle it matter-of-factly even while acknowledging the grossness factor, was intriguing. My stomach lurched more than a few times but he (chef) is amazing.

I love the concept of utilizing the whole animal, and of getting local animals that were treated humanely instead of factory-farmed. I mean it is true, you can't just raise a rack of lamb.

Gross quote: "The best is when you see all the stock running out of the nasal passages."

What is pimento loaf? Is that a type of head cheese? Do people eat it more commonly plain or like on a sandwich?
The waiter, 11:32 PM: isnt your dad from Iceland?
tony a.k.a. isweatbutter, 12:23 PM: pimento loaf is also called olive loaf although it's not actually the same thing.

pimento loaf is actually just bologna with pimentos (the red things that are stuffed in green olives) throughout it, whereas olive loaf has the olive AND the pimento.

it's usually eaten as a cold cut, on sandwiches and stuff. if you like bologna, and olives, it's quite delicious.

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"Have You Eaten This?" [For You, Holly]

Sunday, October 19, 2008

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