Are you sure you aren't talking about salceson? You can commonly get it in a Polish deli as a yummy cold cut. My favorite is actually done with chicken and has bits of veggies in it like carrots, peas, or corn. It is sort of like chicken soup in cold cut form.
My Babcia and Dziadek ran a Polish Grocery for years. They made their own Kielbasa and many other Polish specialties including Studzielina. The two things that I could not bring myself to the table for were Studzielina and Sledzie.
Wow all this chatter and all wrong answers to the question . Head cheese is not jellied pigs feet and it is at the same time . Using the recipe for jellied pigs feet + incorporating into the mix is boiled toung ,with some veal bones or a peice of shin meat thrown in for added thickening . Follow the recipe to make the pigs feet + beef toung + bones or shin meat . When it made into head cheese it is poured into a large intistine caseing and cooled then regigerated . It usually has more black pepper added to it than pigs feet.
Head cheese and zimne nogi(jellied pigs feet) are not the same.Head cheese can be sliced like cold cuts and put on sandwich bread.Most Polish deli stores sell this in the cold cuts counter and here is a recepie I found:
Ingredients: 1 hog's head 1 hog's tongue Salt and pepper Sage or chili powder How to make HeadcheeseClean and scrape hog's head and wash thoroughly. Wash and trim tongue. Cover head and tongue with slightly salted water and simmer until meat falls from bone. Drain meat, shred and season. Pack tightly in bowl, cover and weight it down. Let stand 3 days in a cold place. Slice.
willo Salceson, I'm not sure of the spelling, is Polish head cheese..no cheese in it, it is the bits of meat left after the larger, better, cuts are gone, cooked with some gelatenous parts of the cow and spices. When cooled, this solidifies and can be sliced as ay other cold cut. Now it is a traditional cold meat, but I'm sure orignally it was created not to waste a morsel of the pig.
I eat really strange things, but I refuse to eat pig head. (though in US once I bought pig ears and tried to fry them but it was a disaster),
Hog head or Pig's feet and ears Apple cider vinegar onions garlic salt black pepper red pepper sage
Boil meat with onions, garlic, salt, black pepper, water and vinegar till falling off the bones. Allow to cool until able to handle with bare hands. Pick meat off the bones, discard bones. chop meat and cooked onions to desired consistency. Add vinegar, salt, black and red pepper, and sage to taste.
Pour into a large pan and allow to cool in refrigerator overnight. Cut in squares, serve with saltine crackers.
My mother made it. She called it (pardon the phonetic spelling) Gotaletka. (jellied pigs feet) She would boil the pigs feet with celery, carrots and spices untill meat was falling off the bones. We loved it as she would set the bones aside and let us kids suck off the small bits of meat remaining. The gelatin would set up on our fingers untill they were glued together like claws and we had to wash them off before we could go back to sucking on the pigs knuckles. Next day the gelatin had set up and we would have a slice with vinagar and a thick slice of pumpernickel bread. Dobze!
Sorry, I wasn`t precise, probably. I love meat like tongue, stomach, kindney or tripe. I can even eat brain as can be seen in my food threads. But I refuse to eat jellied meat like head cheese. It is so revolting that when my parents once put it on the table, I nearly puked right onto it. The combination of jelly and meat is a horrid idea to me.
Oh yeah, I wont eat head cheese either, my grandpa loved it and i'd run when he tried to make me try it. I agree with the jellied thing, it seems to be pretty popular though in Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. I once saw a pork chop that was covered in jelly and had half a hard boiled egg in it. The only type of meat jelly I will consume is stock for soup and obviously that has to be heated up and is no longer jellied. Another thing old timers like that I wont touch is liverwurst...my grandpa would take me out for a burger and he would get his liverwurst and onion sandwich and the smell would throw my stomach for a loop, I usually had to take my burger home.
Yeah the cheek meat is good, and I've been known to eat some brains just to gross all the kids out at pig roasts(party where you roast a pig and drink alcohol basically). I once went to a graduation party some Greek-Americans threw and they roasted a whole lamb or maybe a goat, I liked the way they eat the brain, with lemon and ouzo/raki.
At pig roasts, I will volunteer to help prepare the pig after it is done roasting, that is who usually gets that cheek meat and other goodies.
Aspic dishes -- be it jellied pig trotters or fish in aspic -- are a delicious gourmet delight. Salceson (brawn, head-cheese) is more earthy peasant fare, but also very nice. Smazcnego!
