Wild Boar Testa – Don’t Call Me Head Cheese
Jun 11th, 2009 | By Hank | Category: Charcuterie, Italian, Wild Game | Comments | 24 Comments |
Coppa di testa. In France it is Fromage de tete. In England, it’s called brawn. All decent enough names; but they don’t translate well. At some point in the past, our ancestors decided to forgo the muscular moniker brawn for a direct translation of the French word for this fascinating cold cut — and by so doing doomed it. Even I get all squinchy when you call it head cheese.
So I’ll call it testa, or brawn. Coppa di testa would probably be best here, because I use several Italian recipes to make brawn from the head of the recently slain Maximus the Wild Boar.
I’d never done this before. After all, who wants to eat something called “head cheese?” But Maximus was not a large boar, and I wanted to to use everything I could — besides, Maximus has impressive tusks, so I want to make a skull mount, and you need to simmer off all the meat to do that.
Oddly enough, I have nearly a dozen recipes for brawn or testa in my charcuterie book collection. My recipe, printed here, is a riff of them, But I owe my choice of presentation to Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand
But it isn’t brawn is merely a hog’s head and a few trotters simmered with herbs, veggies and spices until the meat — and everything else — falls off. You then pick through the bits for the goodies, strain and reduce the stock and rely on the gelatin in it to set the sausage. Easy, right? Sorta.
Let’s start with the head itself. All hog’s heads are not created equal. And I have been fortunate to have the two extremes of the porcine world in my kitchen: Maximus the Wild Boar, and a Mangalitsa pig’s head. Wild boar, especially real Eurasian boar, are generally devoid of fat. Mangalitsas, on the other hand, may be the fattiest pigs in the world.
Note the difference in the back of the head. There is more fat on the back of the head of the Mangalitsa at right than there is in the whole body of the boar at left. This matters, as it will make the coppa di testa from Maximus very, very lean. Which, ironically, is good — all the recipes I read say to remove most of the fat when making brawn. So there you have it: Wild boar make better brawn.
But there’s one problem: Domestic pigs, and especially the snub-nosed Mangalitsas, have short little snouts. Wild boar have extremely long snouts, lined with vicious tusks. You will need a bigger pot than you think.
I adapted in this case by leaving the lid on, and it helped steam the top end of the snout, which doesn’t have all that much meat on it anyway. Because the head was small, I added two pieces of the backbone as well as the shanks from all four legs, plus a domestic pig’s trotter.
I brought it to a boil, skimmed off the froth and then added aromatic goodies and let this think simmer for more than three hours. Four might have been better, but it was getting late at night.
When the meat became tender, it was time to pick it off the bones. Let me tell you this is a grim business. There are all kinds of tissues that attach themselves to a skull, and not all are good eats. Aim for what looks like meat. Skip the brains, and anything overly glandular. I reckon the yield is about 60 -70 percent good stuff; I tossed the rest.
Meanwhile the strained stock was boiling away, and when it had reduced by a little more than half, I added enough salt to make it taste too salty — people tolerate saltier foods when they are cold because we don’t pick up the saltiness quite as much then.
You then chop the meaty bits into irregular pieces. I decided to make the tongue the largest bits, so I cut them into about 1/2 to 3/4 inch pieces. Everything else was chopped smaller, and some marginal bits I chopped even finer. You want various textures.
Once the stock was ready, I strained it one more time through cheesecloth, then poured it over the meats, which I had set in a steel bowl.
I don’t know exactly why I wanted to stuff this into a beef casing. Part of it is because I had one in the freezer. Part of it was because I’d seen round coppa di testa before, and it looked tastier than the square loaves of head cheese I’d seen elsewhere. It is purely a presentation thing; you don’t eat the casing.
So I stuffed the head cheese into the beef bung cap — doesn’t that just make it sound even more revolting? — tied it off to compress the meat and broth, then hung it on a dowel set over the cleaned stock pot in the fridge overnight to set.
Or so I hoped. Setting the gelatin in the stock is the bugbear of brawn-making. Too much gelatin and you have an appalling, rubbery block o’heady grayness. Mmmm…gray rubbery pig head… But too little gelatin and everything falls apart when you cut into the loaf or sausage.
I had to wait a full 24 hours to know if I’d failed, as we were busy all that day. So when we came home last night, I brought out my sharpest knife, ran it under the hottest water I could get from the tap (this helps it cut cleanly through the testa), and sliced. I didn’t dare slice too thinly, as I knew I was a little on the light side when it came to the gelatin. But sliced thick, it worked.
The testa held together on the plate, and could be sliced. All I could ask for with my first try. It looked like the brawn I’d seen in books and on charcuterie plates. But would it be worth eating?
I set up a tasting station: Plain, testa with grainy mustard, and testa with pickled bell peppers.
The plain brawn was warm with holiday spices — I included a whole cinnamon stick and a few cloves into the stock — salty enough and lean enough to avoid biting into something overly chewy (what that an eyeball? Ew!!!) But I think the best part was the gelatin, which just barely holds this thing together: When you eat it, the heat inside your mouth melts it immediately and it returns to brothiness — and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather taste brothiness than gelatinousness.
Adding mustard is an excellent addition (very English), and adding the pickles is just as good. Holly thinks too much pickle with the testa overwhelms it, and I agree. She liked it best with a smidge of mustard and a little piece of the pickled bell pepper.
Would I make this again? You bet. For you hunters out there, it is a perfect use for a smallish big game animal; definitely a boar, but a doe deer would also be ideal. I still think the heads of larger hogs and deer are best broken down into cheeks (great cured or braised) and the tongue. As for the rest, you can then simmer it down, pick out the meat and run it through a grinder to make a ravioli filling.
UPDATE: I thought I’d share some other fellow bloggers’ experiences with brawn, so here are some I’ve read. If you have more you can point me to, I will add them:
- From Menu in Progress, Coppa di Testa
- From Nose to Tail at Home, Making Brawn
- From Figments, Head Cheese
I work for a fish and game agency, and while I am not a hunter or angler, I reap the benefits of having friends and co-workers who are. I think I am going to have to ask them to save the heads of the boar and deer for me so I can try making coppa di testa.
Thanks so much for this piece. Well done.
I love brawn. I used to bring brawn sandwiches for lunch all the time as a kid, and I know exactly what you mean about the soupiness of the gelatin as it melts.
Of course, mine came from the supermarket – I’m sure wild boar brawn is something else entirely.
Wow, Hank you impress me every single time. And that shot of the snout is just awesome. Heck you hang that photo on a wall.
Maybe one day I’ll have testas to try this on a doe or hog I kill. Sounds devine.
This is fabulous, Hank, both in the writing and the descriptions. And I laughed out loud at the photo of the snout. Perfect!
AWESOME! Nice job, Hank. Been hankering to do something like this for a couple weeks after finding this link:
http://www.gourmet.com/food/video/2008/09/cosentino_pigshead
I’m envious, sir.
Looks great – and much more adventurous sourcing of pig’s head than ours! We’re overdue to make another batch.
Thanks everyone for the comments on the snout photo. I’d been struggling with the photos of the skinned head, and when Hank complained that the snout was sticking out, I turned the camera on again and went running to the stove
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This was divine – I’d never eaten any head cheese before. The gelatin turned me off. But Hank’s right – it just turns into broth in your mouth. Lovely, flavorful wild boar broth.
A rose by any other name Hank!
My dear ol’ Mema called it head cheese and boy howdy it sure tasted good no matter what anybody called it.
Can’t wait to try your Testa!
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who was perversely amused at the snout shot! When I was a kid, we’d occasionally butcher a hog; my mom would make headcheese using a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe. I never thought I’d like something that sounded so disgusting, but I love it.
However, I can’t bring myself to eat that other Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy, scrapple. Or,as I like to refer to it, anything left on the floor after all of the good stuff is gone, mixed with cornmeal. Truly revolting!
You’re a peach Hank.
Thank you for the link, and thank you for the Coppa di Testa lesson!
Gotta do an article on the cured venison cheek. The only cheek I have had the pleasure of eating was a braised veal cheek at the Inn at Little Washington. If the venison is half as devine, it sure would save a lot of $$!
oh yes. Love Brawn. Hats off to you for giving this a go – looks pretty involved to say the least.. but my, the end product looks amazing.
well the English also call membrillo “quince cheese” – wonder where the cheese part is.
I love fromage de tete – although have not made it yet. Thanks for the lesson.
Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia on the use of the term “cheese” for things like head cheese and membrillo:
>>When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries’ supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or “molded cheese” (as in “formed”, not “molded”). It is from this word that we get the French fromage, Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge, Breton fourmaj and Provençal furmo. Cheese itself is occasionally employed in a sense that means “molded” or “formed”.
The first time I ever heard the phrase “head cheese” I was about 15 years old and reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe. I had no idea what it was. It didn’t sound particularly appetising. But neither does “Brawn” it sounds like a brand of oven cleaner. I guess we’ll have to go with testa. It looks good- most ‘head cheese’ that I see is is all gelatin with suspicious chunks of stuff in it. Yours looks like food. I would love to try it with venison.
I’m always so impressed by the stuff you do that I can’t think of anything to say. But this time, awesome as your headcheese project is, I just have to say, “You have room in your refrigerator for a stockpot????”
[...] tasty tripe! Mr. Shaw over at the awe inspiring Hunter Angler Gardner Cook just posted about some Coppa di testa he made from a wild boar nicknamed Maximus. Just like everything Mr. Shaw posts, it’s an [...]
Just found your blog through Nost To Tail At Home. Great post. Great blog.
Adele: You must have gotten some crazy looks in the cafeteria. “Your eating WHAT?!”
Michael: Sorry, no testa for you — for now. It does not keep all that well, so I’ll have to make another batch down the road for you. Anyone know if you can freeze this stuff?
Tina: I’m not overly fond of scrapple, either. Taylor ham, on the other hand…
Brady: Next time I get a venison cheek, I will be sure to cure it for you!
Elise: Thanks for the info – I never really knew the answer to that one…
Angry Brit: I picked out most of the suspicious bits — I am not a big fan of testa that has things like bit of eyeball in it. Ew.
Lulu: Yes. Yes, I do.
I helped a chef friend make some during the winter: http://quisimangiabene.blogspot.com/2009/01/its-slobberin-time.html
And it was most delightful on good crusty bread with mustard. Less gelatin is better, no doubt. Here’s another post I just read today: http://chadzilla.typepad.com/chadzilla/2009/06/hogs-headless-cheese.html
I freeze souse, which is in this family. Souse from Dietrich’s looks more like head cheese (that I am familiar with) than what they sell as head cheese. Both are delicious. Dear wife has put her foot down, don’t argue with a former book salesman with cleaver (and don’t call her a saleswoman), I am not to make this in her kitchen.
Try the brawn lightly scored with a sharp knife, both directions, with very finely chopped onion and a good vinegar. If you are into capers they will also add to this.
Oh and Lulu, I also have room in the fridge for a 24 qt stock pot. The 40 qt won’t fit however.
NTSC: Thanks for the tip! I will freeze this for later…