Head cheese
Ingredients:
750 grams pork jowl,
3 pork ears,
4 pork tongues,
4 kidneys,
Pork stomach or artificial membrane,
Salt, black pepper, thyme, garlic – to taste.
Procedures:
Place a pot with water on the stove, add salt to taste and bring it to a boil. Wash the pieces of meat thoroughly and add them in the boiling water. Let them simmer until they are tender, then remove them from the stock. Add the black pepper, thyme and crushed garlic into the soup, taste it and adjust the seasonings if needed. In the meantime, soak the pork stomach into cold water so that it loses the extra salt used for preserving it so it can be filled up later.
While still hot, peel the tongues then slice them as well as the rest of the meat in 3 - 4 cm thick cubes. Add the meat pieces into the stock and mix well. Take the membrane from the water and if needed, enlarge the opening so you can fit the pieces of meat through it. Start filling it up alternating the types of meat cuts so that when you slice it, it will have a nice aspect. When the membrane is almost full, start adding part of the stock as the gelatin from it will hold everything together. While doing this, make sure to gently press it so that you can check if there is enough stock to cover the meat inside the membrane. If the liquid starts coming out when you gently press it, you are ready to tie the membrane very tightly or sew it so that the stock cannot get out.
Fill a large pot with water and bring it to the boiling point at which moment you introduce the head cheese into the pot and simmer it for at least 30 minutes up to an hour. Take it out of the pot, place it on a clean wooden chopping board, place another board on top of it and add weights on top of so that the head cheese is pressed and has a somewhat flattened shape. Let it stay like this till it cools completely so that the gelatin inside sets and coagulates then put it in the fridge. When it is cold, slice it and serve it with grated horseradish or mustard.
