Imported Head Cheese

[Altarbo]

I'd really like to try out some of the head cheeses and pate's from southeast Asia.

Head cheese is one of my favorite snack foods. After I got over the peppers seeds in it (I initially thought the red pepper seeds were bug eggs and ate the tasty parts, but meticulously had to pick out every "egg") I started bringing it to school for lunch. I ate the grocery store brand on crackers when I was a kid. I tried to get my classmates to eat it, but they refused. They protested that would not eat a pig head. I said it was good, and that there probably wasn't pig head in it, if pig heads were gross. I complained to my dad about this and was informed that were in fact pig heads in it. I stubbornly didn't believe this until I went over to the neighbour's one day to watch her make head cheese. The absolutely creepy sight of our sweet neighbour lowering a pig head in huge cauldron of bubbling herbs actually made me more fond of head cheese.

Small specialty meat stores are plentiful here. As I've gotten older, I've been trying the house made head cheeses from the different places (which sadly, can't be made from pig heads now. Laws, you know.) and really getting to appreciate it.

Strange foreign meat products fill the coolers in the two Vietnamese markets in Baton Rouge. I've gotten awesome meat balls and squid from Vin Phat. I want try some of the head cheeses, but I have no idea where to start. The only English words on some the small, foil-wrapped cylinders are "head cheese" and "pork roll". Are pork rolls the same as head cheese? One the packages I picked up had no English words on it; if it wasn't for the shape and the cartoon of a pig I wouldn't even suspect it as head cheese at all.

So what's the best place to start? Has anyone had an extra pleasant pate from Vietnam or Thailand?