April 28, 2004

• mmmm. chitlins. but really, haven't we been eating hot dogs all these years?
• I'm just waiting for the day that someone makes feces-eating fashionable and trendy, with the requisite bestseller, Oprah circuit, and all.
• I've enjoyed poached calves' sweetbreads in the past (which, since Mad Cow, I will NOT do anytime soon), my Grandpa ate pig's feet like Snickers bars, and my mother has eaten tripe all of her life. All are yummy. Head cheese (or "souse") was a family staple just a generation ago-- like polenta and all the other "peasant' foods, everything old is new again, and ripe for rediscovery. Dine adventurously! Life is too short for White Meat McNuggets!
• The advantage of eating organ meat? The fact that they taste good? Also there's currently a somewhat trendy school of thought that says eating nose to tail is ethically the right thing to do. Shows respect for the animal and all that. Kinda smacks of "there are kids starving in Africa, so finish those brussel sprouts young man." THe best quote is from Thomas Keller, something to the effect that grilling a tenderloin is warming, making a piece of liver appealing is really cooking.
• I remember reading David Sedaris' hope (rm file) that tobacco would be recognized as a vegetable. Then I found out he was a prophet. The real culinary genius, for my (severely limited supply of) money, is the one who can make vegetarian ingredients taste exactly like big chunks of delicious meat. I wish I could stick to vegetarianism, but I tend to cheat way too often; Red Bamboo feels like cheating, but isn't.
• I used to eat scrapple. Not anymore. I really luv liver 'n onions. I'll never put another piece in my mouth. Meat production methods in the Eu Ess Ay are vile, the way meat is butchered is disgusting, and the way it's preserved, handled, and packaged afterwards is gross. Feeding cattle green grass and grain produces good meat. Feeding wood pulp, urea, antibiotics and chemicals makes crap. Butchering carefully in a sanitary environment yields good meat. Accepting sick animals for butcher, sawing through the spinal cord, puncturing organs and spreading feces makes crap. Aging meat, wrapping it cleanly, and freezing, if necessary, yields good meat. Adding chemicals to preserve and "brighten" meat yields crap. I don't eat crap. Chicken gizzards, "dirty" rice made with chicken livers, steak and kidney pie, liver and onions, menudo, pickled pigs feet, kielbasa--these and more--all tasty items that are greatly missed.
• People, please don't miss out on a good bowl of menudo just because it has tripe in it. Of course, I mean menudo the soup with tripe, not menudo the band whose music is tripe.
• I tried a new as-close-to-authentic-as-you-can-get Szechuan restaurant a couple of months ago and was persuaded to try the "menage-a-deux" (which was actually three things): a spicy combination of tongue, tripe and (I think) heart. It tasted a whole lot better than I was expecting it to, and was thinly sliced so it wasn't obviously strange organ-type shapes. Well, apart from the tripe. Funny thing is how the staff automatically toned down the spices for us whiteys. We asked for medium-spicy and the hostess came out to explain that we probably couldn't handle that much spice, and recommended mild. It was a good thing she did.
• Stop it! My mouth is watering already!
• BlueHorse - go to the next local fair and bid on an animal of choice raised by a 4H kid, then have it custom butchered (no, not the child!). As I recall, you're from Idaho, where fairs and butchers should be relatively easy to find, as they are here in rural California. Or, if they run sheep in your neck of the woods, strike up a friendship with a sheep herder. They'll sell wether lambs cheap, or maybe even give you one. My mother's favorite sheep guy even gives her lovely leg of lamb roasts every year.
• Offal sheep recipe is in this month's Saveur magazine. As for me, no thanks. I had trouble with McNuggets as a kid-- but I'd eat any part of a sheep rather than one of those Mc apple pies... that is, after CNN revealed that they inject the pies with boiled down beef parts'n'stuff.
• path: Have you SEEN the "scientific" feeding schedule they have the 4-H kids use? My kids used to be in 4-H, and it's mostly a good thing, but there's no way you can get fat stock using the "traditional" methods. Gotta feed that antibiotic laced, urea-based feed or the kid can't even get a white ribbon--not even in showmanship. The old-timers were the ones that could really raise grass calves and put a finish on them. Except all my old cowboy boyfriends are now in their late seventys/eightys, and have either sold the ranch or bought the farm. :( I purely do lubs both lamb and mutton, and this is big sheep country, but my husband HATES it. The area west of us is used for growing mucho onions, and sheep farmers will bring in big dump-loads of onions to feed all winter. Gives mutton a distinctive flavor--great stews. I really really REALLY enjoyed the food in Turkey, simply because they do use so much baa-meat. One of the best meals I ate over there was at the Kirban Byram--Islamic holiday of the Sheep Sacrifice. Helped with the butchering--except for the part where the lady of the house threw the head on an open fire to singe off the wool--phew! (and I didn't do eye plucking and tongue cutting either) Traditionally, 1/3 of the meat goes to the poor and relatives; 1/3 goes to keep the family till next slaughter; 1/3 is used in the feasting--nearly a week's worth of hosting friends and relatives. These are fat-tailed sheep, and the fat's rendered down into a big pot of grease. The meat is cut off the bone and immediately fried up. The meal is served on a cloth on the floor, with the meat in one large pot, swimming in grease, a HUGE bowl of fantastic tomato-onion salad, and all the WONDERFUL unleavened flat bread you can eat, fresh off the fire. Continous glasses of hot, sweet chi (tea) accompany. I was a tad leary of three inches of grease, but the meat is eaten folded into a piece of bread and dipped in grease--so......when in Turkey .... It was GREAT. You haven't really tasted meat till you've had grass-fed naturally raised.
• BlueHorse - made you hungry, did't I? And the 4H stock isn't that fat in my poverty sticken town. We seem to be pretty much down to basics, here.
• In the past one considerable advantage to eating 'organ meats' was that they were often ridiculously cheap, and hence a staple in the diets of immigrants and those who knew how tasty they could be. Many ethnic cuisines feature them. For example: boiled beef tongue, peeled, and sliced thin -- exquisite cold in sandwichs or served hot in a mixed grille.
• Tongue's also good "pickled" - cooked, peeled, sliced and marinated in a good, garlicky vinaigrette. And oxtails are really good, especially stewed with red wine and tomatoes.
• But isn't beef tongue more expensive per pound? It's considered a delicacy in my family, a special treat (as opposed to chicken or ground beef). Something that confuses me - I could see how intestines or extremities would be cheaper or less desirable, but I would have thought that organ meat or tender cuts like tongue would be more expensive or more desirable (for taste and nutrition).
• jb - I think people got scared off some organ meats, especially liver and kidneys, since they tend to be the one that cleanse the body of toxins, and who knew how many of those would stay in the meat. Where I live, liver shows up occasionally and kidneys never. Tripe is common and cheap (there's a big demand among Latinos.) the same goes for chicken feet, which are pretty wonderful if you can get over the oogly reaction. All the beef hearts must go for pet food, but chicken gizzards have their proponents. Tongue, on the other hand, tends to freak a lot of people out. "I don't want to taste anything that can taste me back!" is the common turn down. So, supply and demand undoubtedly have a big influence on price - the poundage of the organ meats is pretty small compared to the muscles that produce steaks, roasts and hamburgers. And, for tongue, I've never seen it sold in one pound lots - you buy the whole thing (at least 3 pounds for cattle) or nothing.
• Beef tongues are really hard to chew. Like eating fake rubber steaks, and they don't taste so good so I usually skip them. I don't know we like them so much over here.
• Zemat - hard to chew?? They're really tender if cooked properly. The breaded tongue cooked in the Mexican restaurants here is wonderfully tender. But you need a Basque restaurant for the full experience.
• ARE YOU IMPLYING MY MOM ISN'T A GOOD COOK, PATH? *shakes fist furiously*
• Ham be risk nut.