Welcome to the fourth guest post! I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures. Want the world to know that livers set you a-quiver? Are you terrific with tendon? Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here! This guest post comes from reader Karla Ng, who was kind enough to share this recipe with us.
Ingredients:
1 ox tongue, two and a half to three pounds
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 bay leafs
juice of 1/2 lemon
5 cloves garlic
1 large onion, diced
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 220g can of tomato sauce
1 220g can of tomato paste
1 pound of chicken livers (boiled for 10 minutes in salt, pepper and ginger then
mashed; You can substitute 1 can of liver spread to cut the cooking time but
the sauce’s consistency is better with chicken liver.)
1-2 medium russet potatoes
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 cup boiling liquid
Salt and pepper
Procedure:
Place the tongue in a medium size pot and add water until it’s fully immersed. Add 1/2 cup of soy sauce, 3 bay leaves and 2 tablespoons lemon juice to the water and place your pot on the stove. Get the liquid in the pot boiling, and then reduce the heat and simmer for about 2-2.5 hours or
until the meat is tender. I usually let the tongue simmer for about three hours so the meat is super tender and it almost melts in the mouth. You can keep a few slivers for a sandwich! Once the meat is tender, peel the skin from the muscle while the tongue is still warm.
While the tongue is simmering, peel and slice the potatoes. Pan fry them until they’re golden brown and set them aside.
In a saucepan, saute the garlic and diced onion until softened. Add the diced tomatoes and raise the heat to cook them. Once the tomatoes have released all of their moisture, add the tomato sauce, tomato paste and one cup of the liquid you cooked the tongue in. Mash the boiled chicken livers and four slices of the fried potatoes and add this to thicken the red sauce. Bring to a boil then add grated cheddar cheese and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Slice the preboiled ox tongue and serve with the potatoes. You can go easy on the sauce and serve it on the side, or be very generous with it and top
the casserole with potatoes.
Welcome to the third guest post! I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures. Want to show the world you’ve got a real talent with ox-tails? Are you crazy about cracklins? Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here! The guest post comes from Camille Malmquist owner of Croque-Camille, and a pastry chef by trade.
No fridge should be without its jar of Trotter Gear.
Such is the introduction for this very useful bit of mise en place outlined in Fergus Henderson’s Beyond Nose to Tail. When I found out that Ryan was opening his blog up for guest posts on offal and the like, I knew immediately that I wanted to participate. And that I wanted to make Trotter Gear.
I’ve recently become enamored of pig’s feet, which fortunately, are readily available at French and Chinese butchers here in Paris. Trotter Gear seemed like it would be right up my alley. The recipe suggests boiling the trotters for 5 minutes to rid them of the initial scum, which is plentiful.
Next comes the braise. I took the drained and rinsed trotter pieces and put them back in the pot. Onion, carrots, celery, leeks, garlic, thyme, peppercorns and white wine went in with them. It was supposed to be Madeira, but I walked all over my neighborhood only to discover that every single place that sells Madeira was out. What? Welcome to my world.
I then covered the feet and aromatics with chicken stock, a step that my husband, Nick, found to be over the top, and brought it to a simmer. Once simmering, I slapped a lid onto the pot and placed it in the oven for a few hours. When the trotters were completely tender, I took the pot out and let it cool until I could handle the jiggly bits. I pulled the fat and skin from the bones (which I discarded) and put them in an old, spotlessly clean Nutella jar. This part was made easier, I think, by the fact that I had had the butcher cut up the feet for me beforehand.
One can sense its potential even now.
The question is, now that I have the Trotter Gear (and it should be noted that it feels very good to have that jar in the fridge), what do I do with it? Flipping a few pages forward in the book reveals several recipes which utilize the Trotter Gear. As tempted as I was to try the deep-fried rabbit, I couldn’t not try to replicate the Chicken and Bacon Pie I loved so much when I dined at St. John Bread and Wine last spring.
One of the things I love best about the Nose to Tail books is the way they encourage you to COOK, as opposed to mindlessly following a recipe. That’s why I’m sure the authors would have no problem with me taking some creative liberties with the pie. I thought I should try some game, since, well, ‘tis the season, and I found a little pintade (aka guinea hen) at the store one day after work. I wanted that pie badly enough to make it on a weeknight, if that tells you anything.
So upon arriving home from work, I commenced butchering the pintade. I browned the pieces in a Dutch oven and saved the carcass to make stock at a later date. Next into the pot went some sliced shallots, to pick up the delicious fond, and a healthy amount of red wine. The pintade pieces (sans skin) went back into the simmering wine along with about half the jar of Trotter Gear, and a bay leaf for good measure. I let it cook until the meat was falling off the bone, at which point I pulled out the bones and poured the stew into my new pie dish, purchased just for the occasion. (Wait, you say. After working a full day, you went food shopping and then hit up the BHV kitchenware sale to get the ruffly Emile Henry pie dish you’ve had your eye on forever? And then you went home to butcher, braise, and then bake a game bird? Yep. This is why we eat at 10 pm.)
While waiting for the pintade braise, I made a quick pâte brisée, using half lard and half butter. Once the stew was ready and in the pie dish, I rolled out the pastry, cut a hole in the center, and carefully placed it over the dish. I crimped the edges, cut a few more vents, and into the oven it went. The resulting pie was everything I had hoped for. Braised meat is always good, but the Trotter Gear added a mysterious additional level of deliciousness. I actually have a tendency to be squeamish about texture-y things, but I gobbled up my portion with no hesitation and no problems. So I am a firm convert. Trotter Gear is a thing of beauty.
I think I’ve finally recovered enough to start detailing a whirlwind tour of my old stomping grounds in California last week. There were so many insanely fantastic things going on that I’m having to break the whole thing into two parts – Part One, which is all about meeting up with friends, the fried chicken at Ad Hoc, and eating ox penis. I figure that’s plenty for an update. Part Two will deal with my attendance at the First Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival, and all of the awesome things that happened during it.
MONDAY
My good friend Trish and her boyfriend Jarred were kind enough to invite and ferry me to and from the home of what many have claimed is the best fried chicken they’ve ever had. (As a quick aside, I’ve mentioned Trish many times before in posts and I’m now going to be calling her, “The Queen of Candy” because she always has some new and neat candy or cookie at the ready. I’m actually trying to convince her to start a candy-centric blog, because I know she’ll be awesome at it.) Anywho, The Queen, Jarred and I piled into a car and drove the 2+ hours to Yountville to visit Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc. It was so, so worth it.
The first course was this beautiful beet and potato salad that had a wonderful mustard dressing with it. We knew that every possible detail had been taken into consideration just by looking at it. I’m not a huge fan of beets, but these were perfectly soft and the whole salad really set the tone for the rest of the meal.
Here it is: the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Colonel, you better be scared. I realized that I’ve already used the word “perfect” to describe the beets, but I’ve got to pull it out again. Perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. This fried chicken was perfect. The crust was light, golden brown, and bursting with flavor. The chicken meat itself was the definition of tender, each bite melting in my mouth. They had added a light sprinkle of rosemary leaves over the chicken, but the herb wasn’t overpowering at all, instead subtly adding its flavor as we ate. Folks, do me, yourself and your friends a favor: Make this chicken at home and share it. My new buddy Arnold over at the venerable inuyaki.com has a copy of the recipe up on his website with pictures and everything. Just do it. Thank me and Arnold later.
Not to leave the side dishes out, we were also served these Pardina lentils with Carolina gold rice. The lentils had a unique mustiness that worked well without stealing the spotlight from the fried chicken.
This heirloom bean ragout, roasted autumn squash and roma tomato confit was wonderful, but again was just completely over-shadowed by the chicken. I was happy it was there. I enjoyed eating it. But at the end of the day, it was all about that awesome, awesome chicken.
The next course was a serving of Hidden Springs Farm Ocooch Mountain cheese, Marshall’s Farm blackberry honey and a spiced nut medley. The name of the cheese proved to be fodder for a hilarious discussion on pronunciation, with the waiters weighing in with their own ideas. The cheese itself had slightly grainy texture to it with an intense flavor that tapered off into a slightly nutty aftertaste. The honey from Marshall’s Farm smelled and tasted wonderfully of blackberry and we doused the cheese with it. They paired together like two pieces of a puzzle. The spiced nuts were nice, but not really worth going into.
Thankfully, the last course was nothing more than a simple cupcake. A red velvet cupcake with a light cream cheese frosting and puffed rice covered with dark chocolate, but still it was pretty small. At this point in the meal we were all stuffed to the point of popping, but we “forced” ourselves to polish them off. Dense rich cake, creamy frosting, crunchy chocolate. An excellent way to end the evening, and it made our tongues red too. Thank you Trish and Jared so, so much.
TUESDAY
The next night was going to be special: I was finally going to meet up with Hank Shaw from Hunter Angler Gardner Cook. Hank was the first person that wasn’t my mother to really give me encouragement and feedback on this site. Without those kind words, I very well might have called it quits way back then. So, thank you again Hank (and thanks Mom!) for that gentle push forward. To left left of Mr. Shaw is Miss Holly Heyser, who has managed to convince me that I should really look into hunting. She’s got her own website about hunting that’s just a blast to read. Check it out if you’re looking for some motivation to pick up a shotgun.
I jumped into the Jeep my friend Sharon had lent me for the week and started on my way up north to Sacramento. Three hours later, I arrived and found parking near Grange, the restaurant Hank had mentioned in our e-mail exchanges. Apparently there was going to be a book reading by a famous forager named Langdon Cook too!
I screwed the dates up. I was a day early.
There, I said it. I’m human, and I had made a very human mistake. Thankfully, I managed to get in touch with Hank and explained the situation. Hank has no problems adapting and over-coming, and thirty minutes later we were all sitting at a table in Grange, talking and laughing. They’re both incredibly friendly, witty and personable people, which should be a shock to no one. Their personalities in real life are just like their online personas.
For lunch, I met up with a fellow I’d met on Twitter named Joel Peterson. Joel had suggested that we hit up Bun Bo Hue An Nam in San Jose, which he visits at least once a week. It turns out that they serve a “very special” dish called Bún bò Huế. Here’s Bourdain’s take on it (fast forward to 5m37s):
The thing that makes this version “special” is the inclusion of ox penis. That’s right, ox penis. I was having a Bourdain moment of my own, with the phrase “it will make you strong” echoing in my head over and over. But before I get into the fact I ate genitals, let’s talk about the soup itself. The stock was ultra-tasty with flavors ringing in from all over the spectrum. Spicy, beefy, some tartness from a squeezed lime, a slight sweetness from somewhere. The noodles had a great bite to them, and were the needed starch for the dish. A little congealed pork blood and a velvety, peppery sausage called Chả lụa helped round things out. And last, but so not least, was the ox penis. To be honest it was a bit underwhelming, because it was little more than a glorified piece of tendon. Same taste, same rubbery texture. I highly suggest everyone try a bowl if you can. Just order it without the penis. Trust me. Thanks again for taking me out to lunch, Joel!
Welcome to the second guest post! I’m letting anyone who wants to show off an offal dish submit a post with pictures. Feel like divulging your secret beef heart tartar recipe? Are you keen on spleen? Let me know and we’ll post your hard work here!
Having got to the two St John’s cookbooks and being a regular at St John’s Bread and Wine it was time to get into some of the more unusual recipes. I have made the chutney, the poached chicken with aioli and the loin of pork with roast garlic and anchovy sauce. With a great butcher on the way to work who seem to be able to secure most things a pig’s head seemed like a logical next step. It’s not often you can say that.
So I scored the head for a fiver and got a couple of trotters for 50p each.
Half the head was for brawn the other half for a straight up roast. Both recipes are in the St John’s cookbooks though I changed a few bits due to what ingredients I had.
I put him in the sink and gave him a bit of a shave. There was some white stuff incrusted in his ears which I drew out.
I couldn’t believe how small the brain cavity was, I know pigs can’t exactly walk, talk and play cards but it was pretty minute.
Half the head went into a big pot with the trotters, onion, celery, pepper corns, coriander seeds, thyme and water. I cooked this on a lowish heat for about two and a half hours.
When ready I took the head out and stripped the meat off the skull. It was mainly in the cheek area and around the neck.
I chopped some of the fatty flesh from the snout and put that in the mix too, with some finely chopped parsley. The stock I strained and reduced over a strong heat for a good half-hour until it looked thick and gelatinous. I put the chopped meat mixture in an oven dish with salt, pepper and a little slug of red wine vinegar, poured enough of the stock over it and smoothed it all down. It went into the fridge for tomorrow.
Here’s a picture of Oliver’s beautiful brawn. – Ryan
For the other half I first browned some shallots and garlic in some butter in the oven. The head then went in with a couple of glasses of red wine and some water. The recipe asked for stock but I didn’t have any so I put a teaspoon of veg bouillon power in too, with some fresh parsley. This cooked for about two and half hours also.
When roasted I took the meat out, added some Dijon mustard to the liquid in the cooking tray, by now glossy with fat, and some watercress as directed. I then served it – boiled potatoes with the sauce drizzled over it with the head chopped up at table and lots of effort put into extracting the meat.
So was it worth it? As entertainment yes, as food no. The roast head was so fatty it was overwhelming and there was not much meat to be had. The meat I did get was nice though, rich like pork belly. Really, though, it was a fun bit of theatre in the kitchen and there is nothing wrong with a bit of that to brighten up your Wednesday evening.
Thank you very much, Oliver! – Ryan
St. JOHN Pig logo used with kind permission of the St. JOHN Restaurant company.
