FORCE-FED PITCHA

Have you ever tasted pitcha? Have you liked it? Ick. Have I already offended our handful of pitcha-lovers? Sorry. But show me someone who likes pitcha, and I’ll show you a person who thinks that squid ink is a delicacy. Even Google has only two entries under “pitcha,” because finding it on the Internet is like trying to find a dirty word on your spell-check.

So, what is pitcha? If we must: Split open calves’ hooves and boil them until shards of meat and grizzle can be scraped from the bones. Boil the hooves and onions/garlic, forever. Pour into a pan, and refrigerate it until slightly gelled. Stir in onions/garlic/grizzle/meat and sliced hardboiled eggs. Let it set. Voila. A quivery, granular quagmire that even Emeril would refuse. If you were really lucky, the hooves still had a tidy fringe of hair surrounding them.

In our family, pitcha was not called pitcha. We called it “fus-noga,” the bastard child of the German and Russian words for “foot.” My cousins and I dubbed it “fitch-a-noogie” which is onomatopoeia for the rumbling of ones stomach upon ingestion.

Lest you think that pitcha was the cheap eats of gypsies, tramps, and thieves, it was served on the most festive occasions. Once, I attended a reception, and a wedge of what I assumed was potato kugel appeared on my plate. I attacked it only to find that it was pitcha. I heaved it onto my pants, leaving an indelible stain.

My Aunt Leah would frequently baby-sit for me. One day she served me a bowl of iridescent pitcha. I squirmed and wailed. She tied me with a towel to the back of the chair, and force-fed me the pitcha to its slimy end. I told this to my therapist just last week. He winced. “That,” he said, “begins to explain your recurring nightmares of being trampled by cows.”

If I have offended, please know that for all I care, you may do the backstroke in a pool of the stuff. As for me, I’d rather take my chances stoking the fires of hell . . . where they would probably tie me to a chair and feed me pitcha, just out of spite.