The offal truth

Lambs' kidneys, cored

With winter coming on, warm, comforting food is a must, and with everyone watching the pennies, anything that helps to keep the bills down is also a bonus.

In which case, it’s well worth considering – or reconsidering – offal.

Cheap, tasty and healthy – what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, offal is one of those things that’s got a bad rap in the last couple of decades or so.

People shrink from the idea of organ meat or don’t know what to do with it.

Well, it’s not that difficult – and it’s not all the stringy liver you might remember from school.

Kidney has a lovely, firm, velvet texture and is wonderful for enriching gravies and sauces. It’s also quite easy to serve dishes whereby you can give the kidney lovers some, bit not anyone who doesn’t like it.

That’s how we do it at Voluptuous Villa, where The Other Half won’t eat offal (unless it’s in haggis), but appreciates the richness that it can add.

And it should go without saying that, in terms of a sustainable philosophy toward farming and eating meat, this is an essential part of the nose-to-tail approach.

So just in time for the weekend, here are a couple of dishes that use kidneys and are prefect for the darkening, cooling days.

First, a couple of notes:

Generally – and particularly if you’re not used to kidney – I’d suggest using lamb’s kidneys, as they’re milder. But it’s up to you.

You’ll possibly need to source them from a proper butcher – supermarkets cannot be relied on to supply them. Some will, some of the time. But in general, they want to sell you prime cuts – not cheap ones.

Now, how it’s done.

You’ll rarely get kidneys covered in fat, but if you do, just peel it off carefully – if you have the time or inclination, you can render that. Waste not and so forth.

Check that the fine membrane covering the kidney is gone – it’s easy to peel off if not.

Then cut the kidney lengthways through the centre – see the picture – with the hole at the top.

From here – providing you’ve got a decent pair of sharp kitchen scissors – it’s plain sailing. With the scissor blades at an angle, gently snip out the ‘core’.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now, the recipes.

Turbigo

Turbigo

Take some lamb’s kidneys and some straightforward pork sausages. I do this for two, with four sausages for The Other Half and two for me, plus four kidneys for me.

Gently melt some butter in a large sauté pan and brown both meats. You don’t want to burn the butter, but don’t worry about the juices coming out of the kidneys. They’re precious.

When the meats are browned, remove to a plate.

If there’s not much butter left, you may need to add some.

Then you want to add some baby onions (peeled) and brown them too.

When they’re brown, add some button mushrooms or, if you can’t get button ones, just halve or quarter some white mushrooms.

Continue the gentle cooking with these.

In the meantime, spoon about a dessertspoon of plain flour into a jug and whisk it into approximately the same amount of sherry.

This is the sort of moment that cheap, sweet sherry was made for.

Add a really generous squeeze of tomato purée and then some stock – beef is probably best, but don’t panic if you only have chicken or vegetable available.

When the vegetables have browned – the butter needs to still be unburnt – pour in the flour-purée-sherry-stock mixture and deglaze.

It will thicken quickly. If it thickens too much, add a little boiling water, but you do not want it watery.

Now season – black pepper only.

At this point, it’s worth tasting, simply to illustrate how bland and boring it is. What’s going to happen is pure culinary alchemy alchemy. The kidney changes everything.

Pop the meats back in – and every last drop of liquid that’s on the plate they’ve been resting on – make sure it’s bubbling, lid and turn down the heat to a gentle simmer.

Now, leave for a good 50 minutes.

After that, smell and then taste. What a difference! Rich and velvety now. You may need to add a pinch of salt – this is the moment.

And when you’ve done that, pop a pan of rice on to boil – it’s the perfect compliment to mop up every last bit of the juices.

Lancashire hot pot

Veg ready for the pot

I’ve been told off including kidneys in this elsewhere, but there are probably as many versions of this classic as there are people who ever cooked it – and while historically it sometimes contained oysters, mine includes kidneys.

Like the turbigo, they add a great deal of richness to a dish that could otherwise be quite bland.

Pre-heat your oven to 160˚C (150˚C for a fan oven).

I tend to use three almost boneless ‘chops’ for two of us, trimming most of the back fat off, but you can also use some neck of lamb (another cheap cut) if you have a friendly butcher who’ll bone it for you.

Take a couple of medium onions, peel and slice. Peel and thickly slice a large carrot.

Melt some lard in a casserole and brown the meats. Remove to a plate.

Add the onion and carrot and soften for a few minutes.

Pop in a bouquet garni (made or the ‘tea bag’ variety), plus the meats and a little seasoning, and gently mix everything together.

Add a small amount of chicken stock – it only needs to come up about a third of the contents.

Peel and thinly slice enough potatoes to cover the dish. Season and dot with butter.

Put in the oven and leave for two hours. Take the lid off and pop it back into the oven for a further 20 minutes or until the potatoes have browned and crisped up.

Serve – with pickled red cabbage, if you want to be really traditional.

The smell as it cooks is divine. The contrasts in textures and the combination of flavours is wonderful. And as with the turbigo, the kidney turns what would otherwise be a fairly generic and light jus to something a lot more special.

Good food doesn't have to be expensive

After all that baking and prep, there was still dinner to make. So just what was on the menu?

Well, it was time for a sausage and kidney turbigo. And since I haven’t described this dish – one of those that I can cook without recourse to a book – for some time, it seemed to be an excellent opportunity to give my dedicated readers (and particularly the new ones) a little seasonal gift of an extra post/recipe.

Around 11 years ago, shortly after I’d ditched the dieting and decided that I wanted to learn to cook, I picked up a book of classic French recipes.

It was one of those with no listed author, but for a decade since, it has been close to one of my kitchen bibles.

Leafing through it, I found a recipe for a sausage and kidney turbigo – and realised that my mother had cooked a version of it, and that I’d loved that dish.

Named after the site of two French military victories in the 19^th century, she’d never used onions, because she didn’t like them – apparently that was her father’s influence – so substituted some reconstituted, dried onion.

There’s no such substitution here.

The first thing to remember is that my amounts are very loose – adjust according to how many you’re feeding and what you like best.

The only thing is, if nobody you’re feeding likes kidneys, don’t try this dish. The kidneys turn a rather bland sauce into a velvety gravy that is rich and utterly divine.

The Other Half doesn’t eat offal (except in haggis) but will happily eat this: because the kidneys are simply halved, it’s easy enough to serve it so that I get them all – and he gets none of them!

For me, this is a rare dish: not only one that I don’t need to look up in a book, but also one that links both the past and the present.

Here’s my version.

Take some lamb’s kidneys and some straightforward pork sausages – go on: as many as you want. Personally, I do this for two with four sausages for The Other Half and two for me, plus four kidneys for me.

Now, core the kidneys – this is where the best thing in the world is really, really sharp. At this point, I’m going to do a rare thing and recommend a brand: Zwilling Henckels kitchen scissors are quite superb – so sharp, I’ve cut myself on my pair more than once when drying them. But that is what you want.

If you don’t know how to do this, let me try to explain.

First, carefully peel off any membrane (and fat) on your kidney. Well, not on your’s, obviously, but on the one in your hand.

Now, where the stuff (untechnical term) comes out at the top – well, that’s the top. Keeping it at the top and with the narrow end facing you, cut the kidney in half – through that top hole.

Now, you have two halves. Taking one at a time, use the scissors, almost horizontally against the kidney half, to snip carefully around the tubes and bits inside.

Got it? It’s not that difficult.

So when you’ve done that, gently melt some butter in a large sauté pan and brown both kidneys and sausages. Be gentle – you don’t want to burn the butter, but don’t worry about the juices coming out of the kidneys. They’re precious.

When the meats are browned, remove to a plate.

If there’s not much butter left, you may need to add some.

Then you want to add some baby onions (peeled) and brown them too.

When they’re brown, add some button mushroom – or, if you can’t get button ones, just halve or quarter some white mushrooms.

Cook as gently as the meats.

In the meantime, spoon about a tablespoon of cornflour into a jug and whisk it into approximately the same amount of sherry.

I’ve done this dish with cheap sherry – and not-so-cheap. Forget the Fino, this is what the cheap, sweet stuff was made for.

Add a really generous squeeze of tomato purée and then some beef stock (or chicken, as I did tonight, because I had some of my own available).

When the vegetables have browned – the butter needs to still be unburnt – pour in the cornflour-purée-sherry-stock mixture and deglaze.

It will thicken quickly. If it thickens too much, add a little boiling water.

Now season – with black pepper only.

At this point, I was tempted to tell you NOT to taste. But actually – do. It’ll be bland and boring. What happens over the following minutes is another example of kitchen alchemy. The kidney changes everything.

Pop the meats back in – and every last drop of liquid that’s on the plate they’ve been resting on – make sure it’s bubbling, lid and turn down the heat.

Now, leave for a good 50 minutes.

Go away … have a glass from the (cheap and sweet) sherry. Watch an episode of a soap opera. Read the paper. Listen to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade.

The magic will have worked when you return.

Lift the lid. Smell. Take a spoon and taste. What a difference! Rich and velvety now. You may well wish to add a pinch of salt – this is the time.

And when you’ve done that, pop a pan of basmati rice on to boil. Rice, because you will want something that will mop up every last bit of the juices.

This is a cheap dish, but a wonderful dish. There is no way that I can imagine of making it haute, but food doesn’t need to be haute all the time.

Indeed, in terms of taste – and ultimately, what else is food about – this is a stunner.

That’s without, of course, pointing out that, if you’re going to eat meat, then eating more than the supermarket-prescribed prime cuts, is a much more ethical approach.

But regardless of that – do try this dish. It’s rarely seen mentioned anywhere, but it is quite delicious.

Cooking the great British banger – and refs getting it wrong again

After British Food Fortnight, British Cheese Week and Chocolate Week comes British Sausage Week – for which piece of information I have the excellent Matthew Fort to thank.

And is there anything much more British than a good banger?

Well no – but that’s why it can do with a week to boost it: the sausage has been so badly served by mass production, not least as that process adds water to the finished product.

Now at this point, I have a confession to make. Until recently – embarrassingly recently – I just refused to budge from the mass-produced sausage you’d find in any corner shop or supermarket.

Peppa Pig pink and with as little texture as possible – inside or out – this was what a sausage was for me. I just didn’t ‘get’ the better ones.

I don’t really have any strong memories of sausages from childhood. There was my mother’s version of the French dish, sausage and kidney Turbigo – which I now cook, a tad more authentically (in other words, it has real onions) and in my teens, when we visited her mothering St Helens, we’d stop at a local butcher on the way to pick up some tomato sausages for lunch.

We must have had sausages – because I know that the crabapple jelly she’d make from fruit gathered at my grandmother’s was perfect with sausages. Yet I cannot recollect the sausages themselves.

I do remember sausages at college: they would lie there in the morning on the tray in the campus canteen, under light and always rather worryingly suggestive of a row of uncut penises. Or perhaps that was simply the effects of student living on my innocent mind.

For a little added context, this was in the years just following the appearance on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life of the Yorkshire Terrier that could ‘say’ sausages. Titter ye not, Missus!

The thing with sausages, though, is that they're not a quick cook. To get the best out of proper butcher's sausages, you need time.

After The Other Half picked up a pack of venison sausages last weekend, this has proved a big week on the sausage front.

I wasn't completely satisfied with the results of those (the pack did two meals): tasty, but a bit dry. The difficulty, of course, is that lack fat.

On Saturday morning, before a manic day, I sat in bed with a cup of coffeee and browsed various sources for answers.

Delia seems to concentrate on recipes that include sausages, as opposed to basic information about how best to cook them.

I was surprised to discover that as eminent a source as Jane Grigson recommends pricking them before cooking – surely that means losing lots of the juices and fat? Although I seem to remember that my mother pricked them – but then again, I seem to remember that she grilled them. Perhaps we had already moved into a culture of removing fat as much as possible?

But sure enough, Nigel Slater came to the rescue. In Real Cooking, he details the basic method. It's not difficult.

Pop a little fat in a pan – dripping or lard or some oil, but not butter because that would burn, and moist definitely not marg. Pop the sausages in (not pricked!), pop the lid on, turn the heat right down and cook for around 30-40 minutes, turning two or three times.

In other words, you're partially steaming the sausage, but in doing that, also retaining moisture. And because it's a low heat, you don't risk the skins bursting.

The following hours were busy. The Other Half came up to Broadway Market for what was probably my earliest shop there, then we took the bus to Marylebone Station and the train to Wembley to watch the Rugby League double header: Wales v New Zealand, followed by England v Australia.

Suffice it to say that the latter provided some real fireworks – and the referee (who'd only officiated his first professional game earlier this year) dropped a number of clangers. I'm not saying that England would have actually won, but the scoreline could have been rather different from the 20-36 that was on the scoreboard at the end of the 80 minutes.

But then again, Australian coaches could make Alex Ferguson look tame, given their constant whinging and whining about officials and rules. They whinge in advance – just to make sure the officials know how they want the game run.

Still, it's all rather cathartic – and when we got home, I was able to watch the second half of QPR-Manchester City. Unfortunately, we'd booked our Wembley tickets before the football fixture list revealed that the Blues were actually going to be in London on the same day.

It was deeply annoying – but at least we won, albeit after a greater struggle than any other match this term so far.

We're breaking records – and I'm still convinced somebody's going to wake me up any time now, and we'll be in a relegation struggle! In this case, I was convinced that former players Shaun Wright Phillips and Joey Barton were going to come back to haunt us (even though Halloween's been and gone). And indeed, the latter had a strong game – including a hardly unexpected hack at David Silva's legs. Doubtless he tweeted philosophically about it later.

But the difference is right there: Silva's now a City star – not Barton. I still say it was the best bit of football business ever done getting anyone to pay money – let alone nearly £6m – for someone with such a reputation as a thug, on and off the pitch.

Anyway, I was starving but the time we got home. With the rush earlier in the day, I'd had to resort to stadium food. Overpriced and really not very thrilling at all. Chips weren't too bad, but the fried chicken was dry. And why, oh why can't you buy a 'meal' without a vast drink with it?

I found myself missing the pies at Eastlands.

A red onion was peeled and sliced, while a little lard melted in a pan. Then it was left to cook away gently. Shortly afterwards, the sausages – plain butcher's pork – went into another pan, also with a little lard, before being lidded and left on low.

Then it was back to the football with a welcome cup of tea.

I peeled the remainder of some spuds from a bag from the supermarket (yes, I do occasionally shop in supermarkets in midweek) and popped them on to boil. The intention was to put them through the ricer, but the varied sizes from the end of the bag meant that some cooked quicker than others and I was left with a bit of a crumbled mess. It took some draining, so I simply left it as crushed potatoes, which worked perfectly well.

And to finish, a tin of mushy peas – this was becoming a bit of a northern day.

To serve, some of the juices from the sausages dressed the potato, while I opted for a spoon of redcurrant jelly on the side.

The sausages were delightful and the onion was soft and sweet – just starting to crisp a little: as I like it best.

It might have been the end of British Sausage Week, but my sausage education will continue. Watch this space for a first experiment making my own!

The case of the missing lard

With the last of a block of lard shrinking gradually, and a very real danger of running out altogether, action was needed.

There’s only one place locally that I’ve been able to buy lard, in one of my close-by grocers. But in the last month or so, they don’t seem to have had any in.

Finally, with the proprietor back from holiday, I was able to check when they would have some in.

There is, it seems, a problem. From what I could gather, trade publication Independent Retail Magazine had carried some sort of item on the subject a number of weeks ago, which was linked to difficulties in getting/supplying the stuff.

The reason, apparently, was that it’s ‘unhealthy’.

Now I’m long enough in the tooth, sceptical enough and a good enough hackette not to simply accept this as gospel – although I do trust my source.

Google, of course, is your friend. So I looked up Independent Retail Magazine and searched that.

A big fat (lardy) nothing.

Metaphorically donning the old deerstalker, I rang the editorial desk. A very helpful gentleman took my call. He couldn’t remember anything, but asked in the office.

Nobody could recall specifics, but it “rang a bell”.

I looked at The Grocer too, but to no obvious avail – although there was plenty of other food for thought.

Via an advert, according to Unilever, those friends of the government and the public health, customers decide to buy a spread – “ie butter, healthy spreads” – “depending on their attitudes to taste and health”.

Don't you just love rocket science?

Now I can’t answer for anyone else, but personally, I choose on the basis of both criteria – hence butter every time. But note that, to Unilever, butter is not healthy.

The myths about fats are widespread even in the retail trade press. In The Grocer, a columnist talked about “calorie porn” in an article that also seemed to believe that we “mortals” had no chance of recreating actual recipes from a TV programme.

And, of course, it enabled a throwaway comment about one dish “looking as healthy as a lard enema”. Because lard is inherently unhealthy.

Mind, you get the feeling that The Grocer really does it have in for poor old lard. In a regular column, one Titania Touché had penned a few comments about producers’ covert attempts to decrease package sizes, while still retaining the same price.

All well and good, but in the context of this, the writer – who understandably is so ashamed of themselves that they hide behind the name of a Shakespearean fairy – notes: “As the momentum behind teeny tiny groceries grows, so our Calories Don’t Count campaign, a covert initiative for long-standing client United Lard, is hitting its stride.

“The Express out-Mailed the Mail this week by reporting that dieting gives you cancer. A fine fillip for the fuller lard-fuelled figure.”

The “lard-fuelled” figure. Because lard, as we know, is the reason behind rising obesity.

Now it strikes me that there are a few possible explanations for all this.

One is because however much some researchers have realised the counterproductive nature of dietery advice on fats (and complex carbohydrates), it really has not sunk through to most of the rest of the populace – including those linked to the food industry itself.

But would it also be entirely cynical of me to point out that lard is considerably cheaper than any of the other fats out there? The one pack available from Ocado, for instance, is just 40p for a standard 250g.

With profitable markets among both foodies for butter and those thinking it’s a healthy choice for marg, both of these have the opportunity for greater profit, particularly in the top ranges – be that for gourmet butters or, say, margarines that have felt the whisper of an olive, thus allowing producers to market them in such a way as to suggest a direct link it to the wonderfully healthy Mediterranean diet.

I am presently no closer to finding out why small retailers are having difficulties getting hold of lard. But I won’t be giving up.

Later, I made the first turbigo of the season: kidneys and sausages, with button mushrooms and baby onions in a velvety sauce of butter and flour and sherry, with beef stock and tomato purée, that becomes richer than ever during the cooking thanks to the kidneys.

Lovely.

As I cooked, I found myself musing on how well it would work using lard at the base. As you brown the meats in butter first, you often have to clean out the pan and melt more butter before browning the onions and starting to cook the mushrooms, because the butter has started to burn.

Unfortunately, that loses a lot of the flavours. But lard is a wonderful cooking fat precisely because it doesn’t burn.

Since you make the sauce by mixing the flour and sherry, before adding the purée and stock, you don’t have to worry about the butter making a roux.

However, since my supply of lard is currently so shrunken, that experiment is on hold.

But have no fear – the lard detective is on the case.

It wasn't all bad

Despite the best efforts of those wretched tarts to leave me feeling that the weekend was a culinary disaster, it was far from all bad.

There were two small tuna steaks in the fridge that had been bought in midweek but then remained unused. They needed eating, so I decided to try something a little different.

Using the basic idea from a recipe in Gordon Ramsay’s A Passion for Flavour, I decanted goose fat into a small pan, heated that and then added the tuna. There was just enough fat to cover. Phew!

You then allow the fish to cook for around seven minutes. In the meantime, I’d taken three large but getting-past-it tomatoes, and skinned, de-seeded and diced them for a concasse.

But on a day that, for the first time this autumn genuinely required the adjective ‘cold’ rather than simply ‘cool’ or ‘chilly’, raw tomato was not really on the menu, so I heated it gently with a little olive oil and some Maldon sea salt, making sure that it's held its shape and texture.

Served simply with bread and a dollop of the confit de thyme that I’d bought from the cheese stall in Collioure – made, as it turned out, by a British ex-pat who had gone to Roussillon to make a new life – it proved a very tasty lunch. The confit de thyme is a clear jelly, with a light taste – rather like apple, I thought. It sometimes seems to me that confit is a word that's used in all sorts of ways, making it really rather confusing: but whatever the etymology, it tasted jolly nice.

As I said, the day was cold. It had started brightly, with the cats all determined that we should get up as soon as it was light so that they could spend some time outside. This involves a concerted effort by all three girls – almost working together – which is never repeated on the following morning. It seems that on Sundays, our felines kindly allow us a lie in.

Given the declining temperature, it seemed entirely appropriate to contemplate the first erwtensoep of the season – a Dutch pea and ham soup, in effect.

As I've become more and more of a foodie, I've started finding it utterly fascinating how different countries have similar dishes. I know it's hardly rocket science when they're similar in terms of climate and produce, but it still intrigues me.

The UK of course has pea and ham soup, the Germans have erbsensuppe: the latter was made as erbswurst during the Franco-Prussian War; one of the very first instant food, invented by Johann Heinrich Grüneberg in 1867. Knorr still make it. Take that, Napoleon III and your infernal margarine!

In a similar vein, the Dutch have a dish called stamppot, which is based around mashed potatoes. Which makes me think of British bubble and squeak or the Irish colcannon. But let's get back to erwtensoep.

There’s actually three sorts of meat in the recipe I’ve got, but since there are only two of us, I skipped the pork chops.

After leaving some dried split peas to soak for a couple of hours, I rinsed them and plopped the lot in a large pot with some water to cover. It’s crucial at that stage to add the water, because the next thing you want to put in is a peeled, diced celeriac, and unless that goes straight into liquid, it’ll start discolouring very quickly.

Add a couple of peeled, diced carrots, some bacon you’ve cut into bite-size pieces and bring slowly to a boil. Then simmer gently for an hour and a quarter. You need to give it a stir occasionally or else the split peas, once they really start turning into mush, will stick to the bottom of the pan and make one hell of a mess.

At that point, add a couple of chopped leeks and some frankfurters that you’ve chopped into bite-size pieces. Leave for 15 minutes and there you have it.

Erwtensoep is wonderful cold-weather food – we almost lived off bowls of the stuff and glasses of gluhwein at New Year in Amsterdam nearly two years ago. With temperatures dipping well below freezing, it finally made me realise the point of mulled wine!

As for the soup itself, it’s traditionally served with an accompaniment of rye bread spread with mustard and topped with smoked bacon. The picture above was taken on that Amsterdam trip.

And after that little effort, there was enough in the pot to ensure an easy lunch for both of us yesterday too.

Which left last night's dinner. In keeping with the sense of darkening, cooler days, I made the first kidney turbigo of the season, crammed full of gorgeous kidney loveliness.

In other words, in spite of the best efforts of those delinquent tarts, it was actually not a bad foodie weekend at all.