Heads you win...

I blame Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo. Before they wrote and filmed the scene in The Godfather where the man who proudly owns the valuable racehorse wakes up to find that he has been sleeping alongside the head of the said horse, animal heads were respected things. Hunters mounted the heads of the animals they stalked, and everyone else just went about eating the heads of animals considered edible – Bath chaps; brawn; sliced brains with brown butter; roasted sheep's head. But heads have disappeared from our cooking, by and large. Ox cheek is a delicious token of what we have lost, and some smart cooks still respect tongue and pig's ears. But just recently, heads seem to have been making a sly, quiet comeback. A few years ago, Anissa Helou, in “The Fifth Quarter’ proposed a “Head Dinner For Two: poached sheep's brain and eyes with fleur de sel; lamb's tongue with vinaigrette sauce; lamb's cheeks with blanquette sauce” In her new book, “Sushi Slim”, Makiko Sano uses the head of a grouper to make her collagen soup. In The New York Times, there is a story about a Beijing restaurant which has brought to the city the traditional speciality of roasted rabbit head. I had a fantastic discussion with a local fishmonger about hake tongues and monkfish cheeks just the other day, and have resolved to go in search of lots of fish heads to get my tongues and cheeks. And when Paul Flynn in The Tannery brought us through his tribute to the cooking of Fergus Henderson, Fergusstock, the roasted pig's head was the centrepiece of the meal. Did I eat the pig's eyeball? Reader, I sure did. So, will there be an Irish restaurant serving fish head curry, or red-cooked brains, or pig's snout stew with ears, tails and peas, sometime soon? I don't think so, but I do think we are missing out on something delicious, largely due to nothing other then squeamishness. The head remains a hidden part of our culinary culture, and we need to bring it out into the kitchen. Heads you win... Photograph taken at the Dungarvan Food Festival by photographer David Clynch http://www.davidclynchphotography.com