(Josh, of course, cannot resist holding one of the heads up to his face like a mask, just because. I take his picture.)
"All right, we're going to cut out the cheeks."
I do not blink. "No problem."
Pigs' cheeks are just like our cheeks, fleshy rounds. Feel along on your own face, if you like, as I describe: cutting from
the hinge of the jawbone, dig the knife up under the ridge of the cheekbone, down to the arc of the upper teeth, curving around
just short of the corner of the mouth, and back under, following the jawline up again to the hinge. You're left with a palm-sized
clump of meat and fat, not exactly round, which Josh can sell to restaurants in the city because pork cheeks, as it turns
out, are some of the most luscious things imaginable. If you can ever get your hands on some, you can prepare them just so:
B
RAISED
P
ORK
C
HEEKS
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon butter
4 pork cheeks
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
6 peeled garlic cloves
6 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups dry red wine
Preheat the oven to 325degF.
Heat the oil and butter to "almost smoking" in a heatproof casserole over medium-high heat. Brown the cheeks on both sides
and set aside. Toss in the onions and garlic and saute until they begin to color a light gold. Add the tomatoes and seasonings
and cook, stirring, until the tomatoes have begun to give off liquid, a couple of minutes. Add the cheeks back to the casserole
and pour in the wine. Bring to a boil, cover, and place in the oven. Cook for three hours or so, until meltingly tender. Serves
four.
Bring to the table alongside polenta or egg noodles. Don't tell your more squeamish guests exactly what it is they're eating.
Aaron demonstrates how to cut out the cheeks the first time, and then I unhesitatingly pick up a knife and set to. I've found
since working here that I have a surprisingly strong stomach for this stuff, compared to most folks who come into the shop,
even some of the folks who work here. But one thing does worry me. So the next time Josh walks by, I wave him over, making
sure Aaron is out of earshot.
"So, is it possible that I could, you know, cut through into, like, into the brain? Seems like brain is something I want to
avoid. Or, I don't know, the eye?"
Josh stares consideringly down at the head. I show him how it seems to me that when I'm cutting at the top end of the cheek
I'm getting awfully close to some sensitive areas.
"I don't think you could do that." He doesn't sound entirely certain.
The shop is full of customers; it's afternoon on a Friday, always a rush time. Josh looks over his shoulder at the bustling
line. We're not an apologetic bunch at Fleisher's, but at the same time, we do try to have a little concern for our clientele,
some of whom can be a tad squeamish. Jessica can't even count how many complaints they've had from scandalized mothers who've
been at a loss to explain to their small children the sight of men in white coats walking from the truck parked out front
through the shop doors with whole, skinned lambs hoisted over their shoulders, eyes wide, teeth bared, and tongues lolling.
(The lambs, not the men.)
"If you do, though, this is what you do." He says this with uncharacteristic understatement, nearly whispering. "Slowly put
down your knife, take off your apron, go to the bathroom, and puke.
"That's what I'd do."
But I don't ever cut through into the brain, and pretty soon I'm de-cheeking pig heads like a champ. It's actually work I
enjoy, in a perverse way. I like grabbing the heads by the ears and pulling them around to face me. Like exposing the sharp
teeth, getting a glimpse of what the jawbone looks like beneath the flesh. Like the neat packages of meat I wind up with.
"Good job," Aaron says. I might be imagining it, but I think I can see the wheels turning as he tries to decide what to throw
at me next. "Cut off the ears too. We'll smoke them for dog treats."
"No problem." They come off with two quick saws of the knife, exposing the white tubes of the ear canals.
"Good." He walks into the kitchen as I move on to more pedestrian work, bagging livers and kidneys for the freezer, breaking
down some of the sides, which I still can't do in anything remotely like one minute, twenty-five seconds, but have gotten
pretty comfortable with. Shoulder off loin, loin and belly separated, loin off round, all the pieces piled into a repurposed
grocery cart to be rolled back to the cooler, looking pleasingly grotesque, a psychotic's dream of a shopping trip.
A while later Aaron returns, and I can see by the glint in his eye, belying the businesslike set of his face, that he's come
up with a new challenge.
"Okay, Jules. Just talked to Josh. We're going to make headcheese."
"No problem."
Now, in my opinion,
headcheese
is maybe the most unfortunate misnomer in the culinary world. For while some people might get a little queasy over the definition--the
meat picked off the boiled head of a pig, shredded, seasoned, and set in aspic--it certainly is less disgusting than the images
conjured by putting the words
head
and
cheese
in such close proximity. I already know this, and figure I can handle whatever is coming, since it will involve no unidentifiable
pale curdy substances from inside a pig's skull. "What do we do?"
"First we have to brine these heads for a week. There are some big white plastic buckets in the back by the sink. Go get a
couple, and I'll tell you how to make the brine."
So, following Aaron's directions, I mix up a combination of water, salt, cider vinegar, and spices in the buckets. When I
grab the first head to dunk into it, though, it becomes quickly obvious that they are not going to fit.
"Well, we'll cut them in half on the saw. You can do that, right?"
"Sure."
"There's a trick to it." Of course there is. "I'll show you." Aaron takes a head over to the saw, stands
in front
of the saw blade (I thought we weren't supposed to stand in front!), balances the head on the ridge of its snout (
not
the steadiest, flattest way to hold it) with the mouth facing toward him, and leans forward (leans forward!) to open it up,
pointing out to me the sharp front teeth at the front of the ridged palate.
"These teeth are actually harder than the steel saw. So you have to stop before you get there and slide it back, then finish
the job with a cleaver. You could break the saw blade on those teeth, and if that thing comes loose, snapping around like
a whip? It's all over."
I carefully do not react to the stunning images he has brought to mind. "Gotcha."
"Okay. Go ahead. I'll watch you do the first one."
I'm just about to pull the button to get the saw going when Josh comes up, aghast. "What
the hell
are you doing? If you cut through there, you'll expose the brain. It'll contaminate the brine."
"Jules is going to remove them," replies Aaron without a hint in his voice that he is taking any pleasure at all in the imminent
prospect of having the apprentice scooping out pig brains.
Josh's eyebrows shoot up nearly to his hairline as he says, "O-
kaaay
" in a high-pitched singsong thrumming with skepticism.
So the saw comes on and, gripping the head by the exposed cheekbones, leaning in, determinedly refusing to entertain notions
of somehow stumbling forward and slicing my own face in half, I carefully run the thing through the whirring blade, up through
the chin, to just short of where I imagine the lower set of front teeth to be, and back away from the blade again, pushing
the red button to stop the dangerous spinning. Grabbing hold of either side of the slice I've just made, I pull the skull
down and apart into two halves, joined by the bit of front palate and lip still uncut.
"Done."
It's actually a pretty impressive sight, this head split in half, exposing the shape of the inside of the mouth, the row of
teeth, the impressively thick bone of the skull (no, I was definitely never going to cut through that accidentally while removing
a cheek, and I finally believe Hans's assertion about the small-gauge bullet being in no danger of penetrating this bone),
and the two halves of the brain, surprisingly small, nestled pale and moist like oysters in their shells. Before Aaron can
prompt me, I scoop each half out with cupped fingers. "And done."
Jesse's looking on, fascinated and a bit appalled. "Wow."
I just hold the brains out to Aaron. "Do you want to keep these for anything?"
"You can throw them away," he says nonchalantly. I do, tossing them, equally nonchalantly, into the trash. All this nonchalance
is, I will say, partly put on, but neither am I particularly disgusted by what I've just done. The brains were tidy things,
looking just as brains should look.
"See? Easy as that. Now you'll just cut through the front bit with a cleaver." He moves the nearly bisected head over to the
table next to the band saw to show me. "When you swing the cleaver, always keep your other hand behind your back. Don't want
your hand anywhere near." Aaron doesn't say, but I think he's at least a little impressed with me. At least he damned well
ought to be.
I get through the four heads we have, sawing and scooping and cleaving. I'm not very good with this last, just as I've never
been good at hitting a baseball with a bat or a billiard ball with a cue. The idea of a cleaver is that it's about blunt force
rather than razor sharpness. It is for hacking, for breaking through bone. Swing it hard from above your head down to the
point that needs separating, an action that requires both strength and precision. I generally can manage only one of these
attributes at once, if that. With my right hand tucked self-consciously behind my back--the instinct is to hold the meat down
with it, but Aaron is right, my aim is far too wild to risk getting my hand anywhere near my swing--I cleave. Takes a couple
of tries. First I am too timid, then I am off the mark. Luckily, a few messy, asymmetric chop marks make no difference in
this case. I load the heads into the buckets of brine, put on the covers, and label them with the date, written in Sharpie
marker, on a length of masking tape. They will sit in the corner of the cooler for a week or so, unmolested.
For that week Aaron comes up with no particular challenges to my intestinal fortitude. He feeds me a bit of raw beef fresh
from the grinder, both of us popping a pinch into our mouths at the same time. "It tastes sweet, right?"
It does. "Yeah. It's good."
He cooks up a steak "black and blue"--very briefly over very high heat so that the outside is charred dark, the interior still
cold.
"Just the way I like it," I say. I'm not even lying, exactly. Exaggerating perhaps, but maybe not even that.
Then it comes time for Headcheese, Stage II. First thing on a Tuesday morning, Aaron lifts the pigs' heads from where they've
been brining. The flesh is now pale and bloated and smells somewhat unsavorily sour. In the biggest stockpot in the kitchen--a
remarkably large object, probably two and a half feet in diameter and tall enough that, when it's set on the stove, I have
to stand on tiptoe to peer in--we bring several gallons of pork stock to a simmer, then slip the heads in, until the pot is
filled to the brim with gruesomely grinning, fleshy half skulls, eyes still in their sockets, cloudy now and shriveled, bobbing
in the rich broth. There they quietly bubble away throughout the day; in the evening Aaron fishes them out to cool on large
trays overnight.
The next day we pick through the trays, the meat now falling easily off the bone. We lift out jawbones and skulls, and also
the ridged hard palates, stray teeth, knobs of cartilage, shrunken eyeballs.
The eyeballs give me a little trouble, I have to admit. But I'll be damned if I'll show it. I industriously run my fingers
through the remains of the heads while Aaron strains the broth through a cheesecloth and boils it down some more until it
is gelatinous, sufficient to, once cold, hold the meat I've picked clean in suspension.
By the time the headcheese has been made up, the shop has already sold all the chops and roasts and pig's-ear dog treats culled
from the last four hogs Josh bought, and he's due for another delivery. This time when the pork sides come in, along with
their accompanying cardboard boxes full of extra bits, I start right in on unwrapping the heads, pulling them out of the boxes
by the ears, slapping them down on the table, and cutting off the cheeks. There's an order in from the city that needs to
get filled right away, in time for the next morning's delivery. Aaron is beside me at the table working on his side-breaking
time. ("Breaking sixty seconds today, Josh!")
I'm halfway done with my third head when my knife slips into a little pocket of something soft, and an unexpected ooze bursts
forth, something approximately the color and consistency of guacamole, leaving an avocado smear on my knife as I pull it away.
For a moment, I just stare in puzzlement.
"I... um... what's... um?"
Aaron glances over and freezes as if he's just seen a wild animal readying to pounce. In a slow, even voice, he says, "Throw
the head away now. Go wash your knife and your hands."
I belatedly emit what I think could actually be called a squeak, dropping my knife to the table with a clatter. "What is it?"
"It's a... an infected gland, or.... Just throw it away."
I do. Hurry back to the sink and scrub both my knife and my hands with scalding, soapy water, unable to repress a whole series
of convulsive shudders.
Aaron's already laughing at me when I return to the table. "You shrieked like a little girl, Jules."
"Oh, please. You were freaked too." There's a tone to his teasing that I like, though. He's covering up his disgust by poking
fun at mine.