Two ways with Ox Heart

[Warning - this post contains offal]

It was supposed to be three.

Three ways with heart.



A hat trick of heart-y preparations to entice the brave and convert the wary whilst trying all the while not to scare off the timid.

The third of these was to be a long, slow braise. I had visions of spoon tender meat in a rich, beefy gravy similar to the French Laundry braised beef short ribs. The reality was a little disappointing.

Most meat that needs slow cooking is a network of fibrous muscle protein and connective tissue layered with strata of fat. As the meat cooks it becomes tender (due to the break down of the collagen) and very tasty.

A braised lamb shank is the classic example – cooked properly a gentle shove with a fork should have the meat collapsing off the bone like a tower block undergoing a controlled demolition.

But heart, I came to learn, is different. The meat is lean, tightly packed and without the necessary additions of collagen and fat that make a truly rib-sticking braise. Rather than falling apart into tasty strands, the meat constricts and seizes up into dense, rubbery nuggets that taste nice enough but texturally are not pleasant.

It was with a heavy heart (arf arf) that I admitted defeat on this one and fed the chunks to some very grateful cats who I doubt appreciated the time, effort and bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that had gone into the dish.

So, two ways it is.



The first thing you notice about an ox heart is its sheer size. They are great, hulking vast rugby balls of meat. Weighing in at a shade under three kilos, even accounting for the necessary ‘trimming’, there is plenty of meat here. A similarly sized rib of beef would set you back around £45. A three-kilo piece of sirloin closer to £70.

The heart cost a tenth of the price – about £7. Even if it merely served to slake my curiosity it was still cheap.

Once the whole thing had been trimmed of anything that looked even vaguely unappetising (no mean feat considering its size), a third of the meat was thinly sliced to be marinated overnight, a third cut into chunks to braise and a third finely diced for a ragu.

The braise, being something of a failure as already discussed, is probably best not dwelled upon so we shall move swiftly onto the more successful preparations.

Ragu



The first of these was a simple ragu. Finely diced heart meat browned in oil then cooked long and slow with a soffrito of onions, celery and carrot, a little cured bacon, half a bottle of wine, some good beef stock and a tin of tomatoes.

Five hours under a cartouche in an oven barely warmer than a Swedish sauna was enough to create a tasty sauce that works well over pasta but isn’t even close to being as good as one made with cheek.

Far more successful though was the following:

Anticuchos

A South American preparation, anticuchos seems to be a fairly generic term for ‘meat on skewers’ and can be made with almost any type of meat. The most famed, though, are made with beef heart.



Marinated overnight in ground cumin, garlic, chilli and oregano mixed with olive oil and red wine vinegar, the thinly sliced heart is then concertinaed onto wooden skewers before being grilled over hot coals.



Cooked quickly like this means the meat has little opportunity to constrict and toughen up. The light charring of the barbecued meat adds a warm, deep savoury note and the marinade, pepped up with the sharpness of vinegar, really lifts the dish.





After 5-6 minutes over hot charcoal, the meat was picked off the skewer onto a hot flatbread and served with rocket, a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise and the leftover marinade cooked down with some tomato puree.



‘This is a conversion dish,’ claimed the GF, whose initial trepidation evaporated once she got a whiff of the hunger inducing scent that is created when meat is introduced to hot coals. ‘This is seriously good. Really good. Good enough to convince non-offal eaters, in fact.’

She was right. Anticuchos is the sort of food that you could easily dish up and dazzle with at a barbecue. Questions over provenance could easily be waved away with vague mutterings about ‘steak kebab’ until the hungry throng come back for seconds.

By that point they will already have undergone their Damascene moment. Oh, you are offal. But I like you

Szechwan Tripe

In order to be rendered even vaguely edible, tripe must be cooked for at least three hours. And that’s only after it’s been soaked, disinfected and bleached.

Bleached.

Of course, unbleached, or green tripe, is available (most notably in France) but frankly the thought of eating something that until recently was in such close proximity to a vast quantity of cow shit is not that appealing in itself. Bring on all the bleaching agents possible, I say.

Having lost my offal training wheels some time ago (probably when I munched on brain) I felt sufficiently ready for tripe which seems to be making something of a comeback.

I’d barely finished editing the accompanying photos when I read this great piece on Word of Mouth. So now seems good time to plough this particular furrow. Or tap into the ‘tripegeist’, if you will (sorry).

Admittedly I was scared. The slab of tripe had been in the freezer for six months and I was convinced that the GF wouldn’t be able to stomach (sorry. Again) this particular adventure. Her trip to Vegas presented the perfect opportunity.



Trippa ala Romana (tripe cooked with onions, garlic and tomatoes) was initially at the top of my list but reading about Szechwan restaurant Chilli Cool convinced me otherwise.

Bird’s Eye chillies are notoriously hot and Szechwan peppercorns contain a compound called hydroxy alpha senshool which causes a numbing sensation in the mouth. Surely this heat/anasthesia combo would render the tripe so insignificant as to be at least bearable?

Wrong.

After cooking down some red onion, Thai chillies and ginger in a hot pan I added the sliced tripe and then the braising liquid of soy sauce, chicken stock and dark rice wine vinegar along with a hefty number of dried bird’s eye chillies and enough Szechwan peppercorns to mimic the effects of a stroke.



Even through all this the niff of the tripe was palpable. Damp and slightly fetid, it called to mind an old house with a leaky roof, home to a family of dogs and wet sheep. It wasn’t nausea inducing but certainly lodged itself in the nostrils.

It cooked for three hours at which point the tripe was removed and the cooking liquor strained and reduced to a syrupy consistency. I stir-fried some finely sliced ginger, garlic and onion then added the tripe to the wok before spooning over the reduced sauce and adding noodles. Just to make absolutely sure I would neither taste nor feel the tripe in went some more chillies and peppercorns.



It was finished with spring onions, roasted peanuts and even more spices then a spoonful of sugar and a squeeze of lime.

The smell had certainly subsided when eating time came around. It actually smelled and looked thoroughly appetising, especially after fortifying myself with a couple of beers.

In went an enthusiastically large mouthful.

And there it remained whilst I chewed. And chewed. And chewed. Long after the flavour had disappeared, the rubbery nugget persisted, moving from side to side and getting no more tender than a piece of cheap gum. I tried. I really did. But there was no way I was going to force this bouncy ball of cow’s stomach into my own.

Not only was the texture seemingly galvanized, the flavour of the tripe remained even through the atomic spices. Thanks to the numbing properties of the peppercorns I could happily have endured root canal surgery but there was still an underlying and noticeable taste, not quite unpleasant but certainly not nice.

The rest of the tripe was picked out and left on the side of the plate whilst the tasty noodles sated my hunger.

It wasn’t all bad. The noodle dish would be delicious with beef shin, pork belly or even chicken thighs but I’ve found my limit. Even the hardiest of holistic, nose-to-tail eaters have to draw a line somewhere and mine comes right before you need to crack open the bleach.

Honey Madeleines

Once again, Bourdain takes the blame.

‘England’s best hope for salvation...a warrior, pioneer, philosopher and fearless proponent for what’s good, and what’s always been good, about English cooking.’

High praise indeed.

This is his summation of Fergus Henderson as it appears in the ultimate food lover’s bible, A Cook’s Tour – the one book I wish I could have written. Forget Dostoyevsky. Move along Melville. Step aside Shakespeare. Let me travel, eat then write it up in shotgun gonzo style. Yes please.

Understandably, the monochrome delight that is Nose to Tail Eating, Henderson’s manifesto/cookbook, soon found its way into my collection swiftly followed by its successor, Beyond Nose to Tail – a similar affair but with an extended section on baking.

Those books were read and re-read. Not just the recipes but the snippets of gastro-philosophy that pepper them. The words and oddly exotic lists of ingredients pored over, mused upon and eventually cooked and eaten. The exotic ceased to be so and all that remained was The Tasty.

Bourdain’s gushing made sense.

Considering my affinity for his work, it took a surprisingly long time to actually eat at Henderson’s London restaurant, St. John. A last minute reservation meant we would eat late but we would eat and I would sample those dishes whose names were familiar but flavours alien.

Cue roasted bone marrow with parsley and caper salad. Langoustines with rich mayonnaise. Smoked eel and bacon. And thick slices of beef topside with boiled carrots.

I felt like an art lover finally laying eyes on a favourite painting previously seen only in reproduction.

The desire for something sweet was tempered by achingly full bellies. There was no room for Eccles cakes or doughnuts. There was barely room for a digestif. But a request to take away some sweet treats was met with a smile. Five minutes later we left, clutching a still warm paper bag, emblazoned with the outline of a pig, containing the famed Eccles cakes as well as half a dozen Madeleines.

They were eaten for breakfast.

St. John Madeleines

The Madeleine tray I bought the GF for Christmas (‘a bowling ball for Homer’, I think she referred to it as) is the most specific item of kitchen kit we own. It has a single, solitary use. But, oh, what a use.

There may be countless Madeleine recipes out there but for a first attempt there was only one to go for. It was deliriously easy and came together with such pleasure that I doubt we will turn elsewhere. Watching the small blobs of mixture spread, rise then bulge up into such a recognisable shapes was most satisfying.



They are also near ethereally light with a slightly malted flavour that comes from the caramelised honey, almost reminiscent of Horlicks.

Makes 12

Melt 70g of unsalted butter with a generous tablespoon of runny honey then simmer until the sugars caramelise (it didn’t seem to matter that it split).

Whisk together a large egg with 55g of caster sugar and a tablespoon of soft brown sugar until a trail can be left on the surface of the mixture. Sift in 70g of self raising flour then fold in along with the butter/honey mixture. Leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Grease the Madeleine moulds with butter and flour, tip out any excess then pop a spoonful of the mixture into each one. It won’t look like enough. It is. Honest.

Bake at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes, marvel at how big they’ve got, delight at the fact they look just like Madeleines then enjoy with cups of tea. If you have any left, they still taste great the following day.





*Would you look at that – a whole piece about Madeleines and not a single mention of Proust. Oh, bollocks.

Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Lamb Breast

Where last week’s jaunt into the culinary underbelly was nothing short of cerebral, this edition sees us travelling to, well, the underbelly.



Breast of lamb, a cut near identical to pork or beef short ribs, is criminally underused and as a result is almost giveaway cheap. It has featured on these pages before (paired with lamb’s kidneys) but it really is delicious enough to stand-alone.

For the gastronomically minded, it can be used to make lamb ‘bacon’ and it is a cut gaining in popularity amongst top-end chefs - Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 features breast of lamb on his menu.

Whilst I’m not averse to tinkering with high end cooking: dishes that take days, rather than hours, to plate up and consist of a dizzying combination of foams, airs, purées, spheres, mousses, geleés, crisps and other such assorted tom-foolery, sometimes what you really want is hearty and basic.

Lamb and beans is a classic combination throughout France and North Africa. Slow cooked shanks with flageolet beans. Lamb stew with white beans and fresh coriander. Rack of lamb with a bean cassoulet.

Whatever the combination there is something hearty, warming and satisfying about the taste of the meat – now beginning to develop some flavour (I find spring lamb over-rated and lacking in flavour) – and the fulfilling nature of the beans.

Breast of Lamb roasted with onion and spiced chick peas (garbanzo beans)

Although there isn’t an awful lot of meat on this particular cut, it is fatty and the inherent richness should leave you feeling sated without being overly full. As the lamb roasts it will release its moisture into the bed of chickpeas waiting expectantly below. The result is some of the tastiest pulses you will ever chow down.

A single piece of lamb breast should easily serve three-four people, depending on how long it has been since they last ate and whether or not they are the sort of friends happy to be fobbed off with extra pulses and veg instead of meat. Thought not. The recipe below is for two.

Lamb breast, about 500g in weight.
An unwaxed lemon
Oregano (dried or fresh, finely chopped – as much as you want)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Zest the lemon and juice half of it into a bowl. Add the same amount of olive oil, the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Slash the top of the lamb and rub the mixture into it.

For the chickpeas

One tin of chick peas, drained and rinsed
One large white onion, finely diced
One large red onion, roughly chopped
Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
A teaspoon of smoked paprika
Salt and Pepper
Four or five sprigs of fresh oregano
A splash of olive oil

Mix all the above together and tip into a roasting tray (large enough to hold the lamb).

Get a ridged griddle pan screamingly hot (leave it on there for five minutes before you even think of cooking on it. Seriously. These things take an age to get hot).



Sear the lamb for four-five minutes until it has some good colour on one side. Flip and cook for another couple of minutes. Place the lamb on top of the chickpeas and roast in a moderately hot oven (c. 150 degrees C) for about an hour and a half. Give the tray a shake a couple of times during cooking.

Lift the lamb onto a cutting board and leave it to rest whilst you are plating up. Pile a heap of baby spinach leaves into the middle of a plate, top with the roasted chickpeas and hunks of meat that you have delicately carved/hacked mercilessly from the bones.



Ideally, serve in front of episodes of the West Wing with a crisp white wine for company.

Feel free to gnaw away at the meat still clinging to the ribs. I did. ‘You are such a shameless carnivore,’ said the GF. If I had been in a position to answer, I wouldn’t have been able to deny it.

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In Over My Head?

As the old adage goes, you learn something new everyday.

Yesterday I learnt three things. Did you know, for instance, that the greyhound accelerates to 45 miles per hour in a single second from a standing start? Zero to forty five in a second? Amazing. It is the second fastest land mammal on earth.

The other two factoids I gleaned through empirical, hands-on research and part of me wishes I was still in a happy cloud of blissful ignorance. Here we go: the brain of a pig is surprisingly small. Tiny, in fact. About the size of a duck’s egg.


['Two squeaks, or not two squeaks? That is the question']

The second? There is a wonderful nugget of meat that sits just below the eye socket behind the cheek bone, only accessible with an adventurous finger after the head of a pig has been simmered long and slow. It falls away in a rather satisfactory fashion, a neat little piece of tasty pork.

I know this because of Project Napoleon.

Project Napoleon, named after the Stalin-esque character in Animal Farm, began quite by accident.

I’d had a request to cook (and eat) brain for the Nose to Tail Tuesday feature (thanks for that). With calves’ and lambs’ brain still illegal, it was up to the reliable old porker to provide the means by which this terrifying prospect could be realised.

I put in a reluctant request with my butcher and received a phone call on Wednesday: ‘I’ve got a pig’s head here for you? Do you want the whole thing or just the brain?’



The question was a no-brainer (ha ha ha – sorry). The head is a culinary challenge I’ve been keen to take on for quite some time: a real test that separates those who merely profess a predilection for the holistic approach and those with genuine gastronomic fortitude.

Why does the head divide the cooking fraternity so? It’s about emoting. As humans we have evolved to read faces, to try and glean as much information as possible from them. The slightest movement can give away a secret, a feeling or an emotion.

Presented with the head of an animal, there is a near certainty that we will lean towards anthropomorphosis. And pigs, even deceased and decapitated ones, look like they are smiling. They look content. Happy even. So turning it into food is difficult.



Once this hurdle has been leapt over, the rest is easy.

One option for turning this insanely cheap meat (this one cost just under three pounds) into a viable foodstuff is to make a tête de fromage, not a uniquely male medical condition but a rustic pâté also known as brawn.

Here the entire head is simmered gently for three hours in water and stock vegetables. Once cooled, the meat, fat and skin is stripped from the skull, the stock strained, reduced and turned into a jelly into which the meat is set.

Yum.

Or not.

I wanted something more refined. I’ve always believed that true culinary skill lies in turning the ridiculous into the sublime. The drab into the delicious. Here was a challenge.

Driving home from the butcher’s I started putting a menu together, one that would showcase this unusual ingredient to its full potential.


Head Over Heels

So, here is the plan – to be served to adventurous dinner guests, just as soon as we find some. Any takers?

Pre dinner drinks with pork scratchings and ears Ste Menehould

Deep fried brain on toast with champagne

Sour Apple amuse

Pea & Bacon Soup made with ‘head stock’ with homemade bread

Refined brawn pâté with sage

Confit cheek with apple jelly, candied bacon and summer leaves

Dessert

Cheese and port

Let’s see just what this head can do…

Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Bone Marrow

It’s been a while but you have been very patient, for which I am most grateful. So thank you.

There has been no slacking, I promise. But I have had a rather surreal couple of weeks.

I’ve taken part in a pilot for a new TV quiz show, been spoonfed sea urchin by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, spilled pink wine over a renowned stand-up comic and Radio 4 stalwart, listened to a restaurant critic talk about his masturbatory preferences, watched buffalo mozzarella being made and dined with a former F1 world champion in his rather palatial house.

Phew.

I’ve also been snowed under with teaching, what with it being exam season and all. There’s a dichotomy for you – hob-nobbing with ‘slebs one minute and then trying to teach the finer points of the British constitutional settlement the next.

No wonder there’s been little time for writing. There’s been hardly enough time to eat, let alone trot out a few hundred words about each experience.

But on with the show.

Today Nose to Tail Tuesday makes its triumphant return with a genuine Fergus Henderson classic: roasted bone marrow (marrow also features in a braised beef dish which shall, hopefully, follow at around 12 noon British Summer Time tomorrow).

It’s thought that eating bone marrow was what contributed to one of our species’ great leaps forward, sometime around 750,000 years ago.



Nutritionally rich and inaccessible to non-tool wielding creatures, marrow enabled early hominids to lead lives less focussed on where the next meal was coming from, giving them time to develop such skills as conversation, sarcasm and perfecting the Cruyff turn.

It has long been a fixture of French cuisine (in Bordelaise Sauce, par example) but has been largely ignored on this Fair Isle in favour of McTucky’s Fried Chicken and other such culinary abominations.



But no longer.

I have to admit, I was excited about this one. After Kidney-gate (not to mention the potential Great Tripe Ordeal of May 2009) I was keen to get back on track with something that appealed.

Anthony Bourdain is a man whose opinion I trust on just about everything. I blame him almost entirely for my food fixation. So, when he says that his last meal on earth would be roasted bone marrow on toast, I’m willing to bow to his judgement. I knew before I started that this would be delicious.

Getting hold of the necessary ingredients is easy and free. Yes, you heard me right: free. Your friendly neighbourhood butcher might just leap over the counter and plant a big meaty kiss on that pretty, or handsome, face of yours when you ask to relieve him of his bones.

Why? Because otherwise he has to pay the local council to have them taken away and disposed of. The less he has to put in those big black sacks, the better. Grab some pig skin and chicken carcasses whilst you’re at it. And don’t forget to actually buy something.

Walk out of there with nothing but a bag of freebies and that kiss might just be followed by a face full of spittle.

Having sourced the goods, have someone (maybe the butcher, maybe a carpenter or amiable tree surgeon) saw the bone into 2-3 inch chunks. Place them, standing up, in a roasting tray and then put the whole lot into an oven (let’s say 180 degrees C) for about 20 minutes.

And relax. You’re done (apart from toasting some bread).

Oh, the smells, the glorious meaty smells. The slightly disturbing shimmer of the now jelly-like marrow. The trepidation. The excitement. The…

…absolute, complete, wondrous deliciousness of the final product. Served on toast with a pinch of sea salt, this is something new, something fabulous.



If you poached a fresh egg in butter and then served it on toast, perfectly seasoned, you would have something similar to roasted bone marrow. But not quite as nice.

It is sweet and faintly meaty and soft and buttery and rich and salty and the crunch from the toast is the perfect foil to the texture of the marrow itself. It is one of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling. Tony, once again, you are correct.

And all this for minimal effort and negligible cost.

N3T4 – Roasted Bone Marrow: a great big hunk of success.

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Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Kidney

You can be so cruel. I was worried for this one.

Kidney has been my bête noire for quite some years.



Fifteen years ago, I made a solemn vow never to knowingly eat it ever again. Ever.

When I was twelve I stayed over at a friend’s house. For dinner, his mother (an excellent cook) pulled a stunning looking pie from the oven. The golden suet pastry glistened and the gravy inside was rich and dark.

It looked great.

One mouthful in was enough to put me off kidney forever. The strong uric smell. The faint ammonia tang. I gipped uncontrollably – not ideal behaviour for a house guest - and decided that some things were not meant to be consumed.

Kidney rapidly moved into second place on the list (tinned tuna still resides proudly and unwaveringly at the list’s summit).

I knew that it was a grim inevitability that this particular piece of offal would grace N3T at some point. I didn’t expect it to be so early on but thanks to a request from Tiramisu, here it is. In week four of the project.

‘Would you like me to take the fat off for you?’ asked the butcher. Each dark brown conker-like organ was surrounded by a dense covering of cream fat.



‘No thanks,’ I replied, wanting to experience the entire process and also hoping to acquire a large quantity of dripping, perfect for roasting potatoes.

By the time I got them home, I’d formulated a dish in my head: kidneys fried in their own fat and served with mustard mash, wilted greens, glazed shallots, slow roasted lamb breast and parsley and mint sauce. A red wine, lamb and rosemary jus would hopefully mask the flavour of the centre-piece enough to repress the gag reflex.

The lamb breast was there to ensure a decent meal even if the kidney proved to be totally inedible. A substitute already in play.



After the kidneys had been peeled (peeled!) I cut them in half bracing myself for the smell of men’s nightclub toilet at one am…

…but it wasn’t to be. Cue surprise one.

The niff was gentle, not unpleasant. Very faintly uric, of course, but no where near as pungent as I was expecting.

The centre of each was cut out and they were soaked in a water/vinegar bath (3:1) for about fifteen minutes (to neutralise the alkalinity) before being dried. For the cooking, they were seasoned with salt and pepper and fried over a high heat in some of the rendered suet fat.

The lamb breast was braised then slow roasted before being fried in olive oil just before serving (more on this wonderful cut next week) and the whole lot piled onto a plate in a faintly ordered fashion with the potatoes, onion, greens and sauces.

Cue surprise two: the kidney was good.

Let’s not get carried away, however. In this sense ‘good’ means ‘didn’t make me dry heave into a napkin until my stomach muscles ached.’




But it was perfectly edible. Tasty even. The richness of the sauce proved sufficient in masking the flavour I was so scared of and although half a kidney was more than enough and I won’t be making any efforts to cook them again, I was pleasantly surprised.

As were my guinea pigs. This week due to location it was my younger brother and his girlfriend. Both cleared their plates. Bruv even went back for more. A good sign indeed.

So, another success for N3T, albeit a partial one. But at 50p each (the same price as the hearts) you can’t really complain.

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[Note on the photos - no DSLR this week so had to wrestle with a compact. More difficult than I remembered.]

Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Lambs' Hearts

Not only are we moving away from the magnificent pig this week, having stuck resolutely to the extremities for the last fortnight (with cheek and tail), we’re heading towards the centre of the beast.

Right to the very heart, in fact.




Despite enjoying exactly the same biological construction as muscle tissue, the heart is firmly within the bracket loosely titled ‘offal’. Why? Because it does something. It performs a function, a function with which we are conspicuously familiar.

Whilst I’ve cooked the occasional pate, offal is not something I’m familiar with. Part of the philosophy behind this feature is to attempt to rectify this glaring omission in my culinary experience.

I’ll admit now that I am squeamish about certain things but I’m also rapidly learning to put aside my fears and prejudices. Partly because I think it important, partly because I hope it makes for good reading.

The same could also be said for my increasingly courageous and accommodating girlfriend. It’s one thing to cook ‘the nasty bits’ for yourself, quite another to foist them upon your loved ones.

‘I knew you were going to walk out of there with something odd,’ she said to me last Saturday as we exited the deceptively cavernous Middle Eastern supermarket on Cambridge’s Mill Road.

I tried to defend my actions, admittedly hard to do when clutching a small plastic bag containing two lambs’ hearts. ‘But they were only fifty pence each,’ I offered hopefully and somewhat ineffectively.

I failed to convince myself, despite my outward confidence.

‘It’s just like a steak,’ I added.

‘It’s not though, is it? It’s a heart. I know what it does and I’ve got one. I don’t have any steaks or fillets but I do have a heart. They are quite important.’

It was a good point. There is a linguistic difference when talking about meat: pigs become pork. Cows become beef and the names of the cuts are often comfortingly vague: rack of lamb, sirloin, brisket, fillet.

With offal it is a different story.

Offal speaks to you in plain language. Sure, there is the occasional softener (sweetbreads, for example) but mostly it is unadorned: liver, kidney, brain and heart. We can relate to these. We know what they do. We have them, as had been adroitly pointed out.

‘I really don’t think I can eat heart.’

This was going to be a challenge. But one I was looking forward to.

There are, it seems, three ways to cook heart. They can be stuffed and roasted, sliced and fried like a steak (no more than medium rare, unless you wish to be chewing on it for a month), or slow cooked in a braise.

Being a fan of the magical alchemy of slow cooking, I chose the latter, sure that if I could convince my most honest critic, I could convince almost anyone.

Braised Lambs’ Hearts with onion and black olive pie, spinach, nettle and mint puree, fondant potato and glazed carrots



Once the sinew and fat has been trimmed away and the heart meat cut into manageable pieces, it takes on a more familiar appearance. It looks, to all intents and purposes, like meat.

Knowing what works, all that was needed was to coat the pieces in seasoned flour, brown them in a hot pan then add them to the Le Creuset along with some onion, garlic, carrot and rosemary. Topped up with red wine and lamb stock, the whole lot goes into a cool oven to cook away for at least two hours.

This is, generally, a good approach to take with any number of cheap cuts which need the low temperatures and lengthy cooking times to break down the connective tissue and collagen that holds the meat together. The benefit is a deliciously rich and unctuous stew with meat as tender as any prime cut.

While spoonfuls of this could easily be served alongside a baked potato or underneath a golden pie crust, the Thomas Keller school of cookery (and if anyone knows a thing or two about food, it is that man) advocates discarding the vegetables (which have already imparted its flavours into the pot), removing meat and reducing the sauce down to a thick, sticky jus.

So that’s what I did.

100ml of cassis liqueur was added to a pan along with the same amount of gravy from the stew and a few cubes of frozen beef stock. A couple of sprigs of rosemary and a split clove of garlic were also dropped in before the whole lot was reduced down. After passing through a fine sieve, the meat was returned back to the jus to warm through.

Although refined, this dish screamed ‘hearty’ (excuse the pun). And what could be heartier than a pie?

I remembered reading somewhere that in parts of France, lamb is often served with black olives. It seemed like a flavour combination that would work so I fried off some onions in olive oil, added some finely chopped black olives and then made a basic vegetable suet pastry to house the faintly sweet mix. Brushed with eggwash, they took barely ten minutes in a hot oven.

Mint is also a classic accompaniment with lamb but instead of a sweet and vinegary mint sauce of the type that graces dinner tables across the land every Sunday, I plumped for a more delicate side of spinach, nettle and mint puree (cook the leaves – one part fresh mint, one part nettle, two parts baby leaf spinach – in a little water, blitz, drain and season).

For the rest of the vegetables, sweet glazed carrots and fondant potatoes, cooked in a little chicken stock, completed the dish.



So, to get to the heart of the matter (sorry), how was it?

It wasn’t just surprisingly good, it was deliciously good. It was the sort of food that somehow has the ability to make you very happy indeed. It was rich, tasty, satisfying and all those other things that go into making a successful braised dish.

The heart had a deep flavour though not over-powering. It was ever so slightly ferric, like very mild liver but also deeply meaty. Texturally it had bite but wasn’t chewy or tough. The small morsels offered a little resistance but more than compensated in flavour. This is everything that is good about food.

‘Can I quote you?’ I said to my girlfriend after she had proclaimed it ‘completely delicious, so good. It’s possibly the best thing you’ve ever cooked. I can’t believe you got me to eat heart and enjoy it this much! Mmmmm, so, so good!’

‘Of course you can quote me,’ she replied. So I just did.

Verdict: N3T – Lambs’ hearts: a complete and utter success. Do again? With absolute certainty. And at fifty pence a go, it is almost sacrilegious not to buy these when they are available.

Any changes? Serve with buttery mash and wilted spinach. Simple, hearty and, in the words of my girlfriend ‘so, so good.’

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The Tail Tale - An epilogue

[TUESDAY MARCH 10 2009 7PM. INT. KITCHEN]
THE GIRLFRIEND ‘I liked your post today, it was funny.’
ME ‘Thanks hon.’
GF: ‘The photos turned out pretty good as well.’
ME: ‘Thank you.’
GF: ‘It looked surprisingly appetising.’
ME: ‘It did, didn’t it?’
GF: ‘But there’s one you missed out?’
ME: ‘One what?’
GF: ‘Photo.’
ME: ‘Which one?’
GF: ‘You know that one.’
ME: ‘Which?’
GF: ‘That one.’
ME: ‘Not helping.’
GF: ‘That one of you and the tail.’
ME: ‘Ah. Yes. That one.’
GF: ‘You should post that one up.’
ME: ‘Erm, I don’t think so.’
GF: ‘You should!’
ME: ‘But I look kind of, I don’t know, I look a bit…’
GF: ‘Yes, but it’s funny.’
ME: ‘Not for me it isn’t.’
GF: ‘Yes but for me, and hopefully everyone else who reads your blog.’
ME: ‘I’m not so sure.’
GF: ‘Pleeeeeeease?’
ME: ‘Maybe.’
GF: ‘Go on.’
ME: ‘But it would instantly strip away the veneer of manly bravado that I’ve carefully crafted over the last 12 months.’
GF: (Badly stifled laughter) ‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that,’ (more badly stifled laughter)

I gave in. Obviously. Something about oatcakes to follow later but in the mean time here you go:



See what I mean about Alien? *shudder*

Nose to Tail Tuesday (N3T) - Pigs' Tails

From last week’s ‘cheeky’ success, we are heading right over to the other end of the animal for today’s N3T.

These, as you can no doubt see, are pig’s tails:



According to Fergus Henderson, tails have a ‘lip-sticking quality’ thanks to the merging of fat and flesh, similar to snout (which is yet to grace the table) and belly (which has. On many, many occasions). Surely this was going to be a success?

Hmmmm.

‘What the hell are they? Oh my god, what are they? Oh my god, they look disgusting. I don’t think I can eat those. I really don't.’

This is the (paraphrased) reaction of my girlfriend after I’d pulled a tray full of tails from the oven. And it was vaguely understandable.

You see, even when cooked, a tail looks completely, totally, resolutely and unapologetically like, well, a tail. Only slightly scarier. If Ridley Scott is looking to make a recession friendly addition to the Alien franchise then he could do a lot worse than cook up some tails.

I suppose this is part of what I was talking about yesterday – about detachment and the intrinsic distance that now lies between animal and consumer. If it looks recognisable then it is unappetising. What we have become used to is eating something that doesn’t have to remind us that what is on the plate was once on a farm.

A tail changes that.



A tail is something we are used to seeing in cartoons and in children’s books. It’s curly, it’s faintly ‘cute’ and almost completely representative of the animal that it is from.

It’s also visible. You cannot see a steak when a cow is walking round a field. Many don’t even know where the fillet is, for example. A tail is on show. It is always there, being curly, being piggy.

But there is a way round this. A simple and easy way to overcome this seemingly insurmountable hurdle.

Slice, cover in breadcrumbs and fry in oil. Instantly you have something that resembles a McNugget or goujon (depending on your personal predilection for fast food or otherwise).

First off the tails were nestled into a deep roasting tray with a couple of onions, some squashed garlic cloves, three or four bay leaves and some rosemary. The whole lot was then sluiced with light chicken stock and a splash of white wine before being covered with foil and going into a low oven (about 150 degrees C) for three hours.



What emerged was what caused the (justifiably) negative reaction from my girlfriend (hence no photo).

Once cool, they were plucked from the remaining stock – which had turned to jelly – and slow roasted in the oven to render out some of the fat (in a similar manner to pork scratchings).

Step three was to slice into bite size chunks then bread them. Instead of breadcrumbs I used crushed corn flakes, partly for colour, partly for texture and partly for taste.

Flour-egg-flour-egg-cornflakes is a good way of getting a nice crust.



They took no more than a minute or two on each side to fry in oil (sunflower or canola oil is fine). By then they were a wonderful colour and perched neatly on top of a mound of mustard mashed potato and some broccoli puree.



And the verdict?

They were good. No more, no less.

Just good.

The texture could be hard for some to overcome. The roasting part had crisped up the tails and given them a slightly chewy bite. You also have to be a little careful not to bite down to eagerly due to the high number of small bones.

But the meat is tasty, noticeably porcine with a smattering of fat (although not as much as the St. John recipe due to the slow roasting phase, which Henderson leaves out) and a generous amount of lean.

They would benefit from something acidic, like a salsa, in which to be dipped because they are seriously rich but the mustard mash provided a nice flavour and textural contrast to the crunchy bites.

Would I make them again? I doubt it, but I will be keeping a bag of these in the freezer to throw into the stockpot every now and again – they’d add a smattering of body and richness to chicken, or beef stock.

So, verdict? N3T 2 – partial success

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Nose to Tail Tuesday - Pork Cheeks

After much bluster and fanfare, it’s finally time to get on with the show.

Nose to Tail Tuesday (or N3T as it shall be known from now on) is about rediscovery, thrift, culinary philosophy and, above all, taste (for a more complete break down of the ethos behind the feature see this post). If we can’t make these cuts taste sublime, or just as good as the expensive bits, then the exercise becomes moot.

For the inaugural dish, we’re starting with these…



…pork cheeks.

These are a criminally cheap cut, often dispensed with or turned into budget sausages. More adventurous butchers, with a more adventurous clientele, might turn them into Bath Chaps. But often they are ignored, especially by the consumer.

Which is a real shame because they are incredibly tasty and, as I found out, very easy to cook.

You could cook them long and slow with stock vegetables, let them cool and eat them, thinly sliced, as you would a ham. Alternatively once cool you could breadcrumb them and fry them. Served with a punchy aioli, they would be delicious.

But I wanted something a bit special to kick off this feature.

Pork and apple sauce is a classic combination, for good reason. The sweetness and faint acidity of the apple cuts perfectly through the fatty richness of pork meat.

With this in mind I chose to confit the pork cheeks, stuff them with stewed apple and serve them, sliced, with apple jelly, candied bacon, spiced parsnip puree and seasonal greens.

Pork and apple, perhaps, but not in the traditional sense.



This is good slow cooking, perfect for a Sunday when you can turn on the radio, fill the house with the most delicious smells and take your time. It really isn’t very labour intensive and you could even do the vast majority of the work the day before or while the pork is cooking.

The end result is totally delicious - like belly only with a more intense flavour. It's got the perfect ratio of meat to fat giving a juicy, porky flavour with the added bonus of crackling as well. This is a rich cut of meat - you don’t need much which adds further to the economy of it.

But true test is whether I’d choose to have it again. The answer? Yes. In a heartbeat, as often as is possible.

Want to know how to do it? Course you do.

1. First off, cut each cheek into three. Season well with salt, pepper and a hefty amount of finely chopped bay leaf and rosemary (about 4 sprigs of rosemary and three bay leaves). Leave them in a bowl in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably overnight.



2. Melt some fat (pork, duck or goose is ideal. I used the leftover fat from the pork scratchings) in an ovenproof dish, wipe any excess salt from the cheeks and nestle them into the liquid. Cook for about three hours in a low oven (about 150 degrees centigrade), turning three or four times. Leave them to cool.

3. For the parsnip puree add one star anise and three cloves to 200ml of milk and 200ml of water and bring to a gentle boil. Let it cool then remove the star anise and cloves. Add two diced parsnips to the infused milk and water then simmer for 20 minutes, or until they are cooked. Strain (reserving the cooking liquid), blitz in a food processor and pass through a sieve. Add some of the cooking liquid if it is too thick. This will keep for 2 or 3 days in the fridge.

4. The apple jelly is easy. Dissolve 2g of agar powder with 125g of apple juice, bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Pour the liquid into a suitable container and leave to cool. Cut into square dice when it is set.

5. For the candied bacon – sprinkle two rashers of bacon with Demerara sugar on both sides (use baking parchment or Silpat for this, unless you want to be scrubbing your trays for nine hours) and cook in a moderate oven (about 170 degrees). Turn once or twice during cooking. When cool, chop the bacon finely. Don’t forget to eat some while you are doing this because it is freaking delicious.

6. Stewed apple is simple, too. Peel, core and dice two eating apples, put into a pan with a splash of water, a tablespoon of sugar and a quarter of a lemon (helps to maintain the colour as well as add an acidic note), with the juice squeezed over the apple. Cook, partially covered with a lid, until the apple starts to break down.

7. Once cool enough to handle, remove the cheeks from the confit and sieve the liquid fat into a plastic container to keep in the fridge. It’s great for many things and keeps forever (almost). Finely dice the meat. Lay a square of crepinette (caul fat) onto a sheet of plastic wrap and press a layer of the meat onto it, almost covering it. Spoon the apple puree in a line down the middle and wrap the whole lot into a tight sausage.

*You could use cured ham instead of crepinette. Let it cool in the fridge to help it keep its shape when you fry it off*

8. To complete – remove the plastic wrap from the cheek and apple ‘sausage’. Fry in a dry frying pan for about a minute on each side (so four minutes in total). Leave to rest while you plate the rest of the dish. Cut the ‘sausage' into half inch thick slices, place on a small pile of wilted greens and serve with a crisp white wine to help cut through the richness.

Verdict – N3T 1: pork cheeks – total success.



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