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.

A nation of fussy eaters

You don't like olives? Seriously?

If ever there was a time to read stories about British eating habits, it was when you're out in France. The contrasts could hardly be greater.

A survey of 2,000 people, Fussy Food Nation, by appliance manufacturer Hotpoint, was reported at greatest length in the Daily Mail.

It seems that the top 10 least popular foods in the UK are:

Snails

Tripe

Oysters

Squid

Anchovies

Liver

Cockles

Kidneys

Olives

Black pudding

Okay, so I can comprehend the snails – it’s what them furriners eat, anyway. And, of course, nothing at all like the cockles and winkles and whelks that are traditional British foods. But then, cockles make the top 10 too.

Offal rates ‘highly’, with tripe, liver and kidneys all making the cut, along with black pudding.

Oysters, squid and anchovies? There’s only one there that isn’t a native British dish.

Olives? Are people serious?

The rest of the list apparently includes avocado, beetroot, goat’s cheese and blue cheese, paté, prawns and mushrooms.

Now obviously the survey isn't saying that many people hate each and every one of the foods listed, but one of the things that strikes me with such a list is the number of traditional British foods that it includes.

In France, many restaurants will have very limited children's menus – in essence, usually little more than a burger and chips. Except that the burger is proper meat, properly cooked. It isn't baby food – and it isn't processed food.

On plenty of occasions, we've seen French children – and we're talking under 10, here – choosing and eating so-called 'adult' dishes: mussels and other seafood, for instance.

It's something that I first started to notice after hearing Rick Stein mention it. And he wasn't making it up.

Yes, McDonalds is popular in France – but it is not (yet, thankfully) as god almighty dominating as in the UK in terms of the culinary landscape.

There isn't a single one – or any other burger joint – in Collioure, and this is a holiday resort.

And indeed, traditional and cheap foods – the latter being a particularly relevant point in these straitened times.

Indeed, in Italy, people are turning away from the supermarket and the ready-meal, and looking back at their 'granny foods'.

They’re doing this precisely because they’re so much better value. And at least one child nutritionist hopes that this will be a silver lining to these times of austerity, in helping to reduce rising obesity.

In other words, that rising obesity does not come from traditional, Italian foods – no, not even pasta – but from processed and ‘convenience’ foods.

Liver and kidney are cheap and versatile and nutritious. And they’re very tasty too.

But as with so much else on the list, it seems that texture is a problem. What texture do the respondents to the survey like? That of the turkey twizzler?

I could be wrong (it has happened), but this seems to me such an indictment of our food culture in the UK – it is like a bloody big firework display illustrating the analysis that Raymond Blanc has made, when he says that we (and the US) have lost our food heritage and that that is a major part of the problems we face.

Within the same few days as these stories emerged came another, as it was reported thatconsumer magazine Which? had tested assorted cereal bars – so often presented to the public as a ‘healthy snack’ – and found that many contain vast amounts of sugar.

Yet therein lies a big piece of the problem: snacking.

And of course, it’s an absolutely massive market.

Little wonder, then, that according to the BBC story, a spokeswoman for Kellogg’s, which makes the Nutri-Grain Elevenses bar and some of the other snacks that Which? tested, ducked the key issue by responding: ‘We’re confused as to why anyone would call a Nutri-Grain Elevenses snack a cereal bar’.”

Well, because ‘cereal’ has come to mean something healthy in the UK – as have ‘nutri’ and ‘grain’. And a ‘snack bar’ is usually readily assumed to be that sort of thing.

For god’s sake, we had an ‘official Olympic cereal bar’ only a few weeks ago – albeit produced by but by Nature Valley and not by Kellogg’s (a company founded by a man who believed cereals would help stop masturbation).

Now, we even have graze.com offering a service to deliver ‘healthy snack boxes’ to you, as if that changes the situation.

Why not just not snack? Why, if you eat proper meals, do you need to snack at all?

Ask yourself: why do cultures that do not snack have better heath stats – including, but not limited to, less obesity?

No, it’s not the sole factor, but it is a factor.

So, in the UK, we are (by and large) fussy eaters; we eat masses of junk food and snacks; we have lost touch with our natural food culture; we have (as previous posts have illustrated) lost our kitchen skills; we have a grocery retail market dominated (80%) by supermarkets – and we have a rising obesity crisis.

When you take all that into account, then quelle sur-fucking-prise.

The heart of the matter

As the end of February rises into view, it seems to be the end of a funny old period; busy and distracting.

There’s been little of inspiration on the food front to report – things that I’m working on, but you’ll have to wait until I’ve got a couple of things actually sorted out before they're worth writing about.

However, last weekend I did take the opportunity afforded by The Other Half’s trip to Perpignan for the Rugby League to try a foodstuff that, to the best of my knowledge, I’d never eaten before – let alone cooked.

The item in question was heart – in this case, lamb’s heart. A single one was enough for me.

Surprised first of all to find that Jane Grisgon’s highly-regarded English Food didn’t even mention heart, I turned my attention to the wonders of the internet.

Various suggestions came up for stuffing heart, but I decided against that.

The recipe that struck me as the perfect way to start was a Canterbury casserole.

The first task was prepping the meat. I’d read that you have to ensure that any white tubes are removed. Well, this didn’t prove difficult – primarily as there seemed very little to remove.

The heart was then opened out and cut into strips about the width of a finger, which were then cut in half lengthways.

These pieces were dredged in seasoned flour and browned carefully in melted lard, before a peeled and chopped carrot, a peeled and sliced onion and two chopped sticks of celery were added and stirred around a bit.

A little more flour, a little more stirring, and then some stock was added. I used beef stock, which I’d defrosted overnight. And because I’d been able to get a tiny bit, I also added a piece of marrowbone.

It’s then brought gently to the boil, lidded and, with the heat turned right back down, cooked for an hour and a half, when parsley dumplings are placed on top, the lid is replaced and it's left for a further half an hour.

This was pretty good. But there are things that I’d do differently.

First, I’d get a bit Frenchified and add a little red wine after cooking the flour through – it’s the best way to deglaze anyway, but it does add layer of flavour to the liquid.

In his book Eating for England, Nigel Slater comments pithily on the nature of the generic English stew, and one of the things he notes is an absence of booze.

Now given that England has no history of wine production, it's hardly surprising that there's little wine in our classic, one-pot dishes, but there are alternatives in terms of beer and cider.

Yet I’ve noticed over the course of recent years, as I've started exploring such dishes, that most recipes that suggest using beer – particularly stout – don’t give enough cooking time for the liquid to become rich and sweet: it usually leaves a slightly bitter taste that, in the context of a meat dish, isn’t what you want.

The reason, I'm beginning to understand, is simple: we have lost the art – or at least the understanding – of slow cooking. Recipes now for anything more than an hour and a half are regarded as a long cook. It’s as though writers are convinced that, if they suggest something of double that (never mind longer), the modern English cook will be horrified and simply refuse to countenance such wanton times.

The Canterbury casserole benefits from the sweetening quality of the heart. Like kidneys in a Lancashire hotpot or a turbigo, they impart a richness to the dish. The marrowbone that I added also helped, while the stock was a proper one. But wine would have added something worthwhile, methinks.

The dumplings give a lovely soft, soothing and deeply comforting touch to the finished dish.

But the second thing I’d change from the recipe would be to reduce the initial cooking time from 90 minutes to a straight hour.

Now I’d possibly parboil the carrots briefly beforehand, but the meat really didn't need two full hours cooking.

But heart is something that I’d happily eat again – even if my first experience of holding and preparing this organ were far more tinged with the knowledge of exactly what it was and the job that it had done until a short while before, than I ever feel when coring kidneys.

Such squeamish inclinations are daft though: as a happy omnivore, a nose-to-tail approach is an importantly ethical one.

And even leaving such philosophical considerations aside, there is so much variety – and so many more culinary pleasures to meat than just a prime cut.

Plenty of rhubarb, but no custard

It's probably a good thing that The Other Half is returning today from his jaunt to exotic parts – or Cardiff, as it's otherwise known – for the entire first round of matches on the opening weekend of the 2011 Rugby League top flight season.

What could have been a quiet girly weekend turned into something that might have had little volume attached, but was close to frenetic at times. I was knackered by last night, but pleasantly so, I think.

Everything got into serious swing on Saturday morning. An early visit to the market gave me the chance to chat with various people and make at least one intriguing discovery: Andy says that orders for hare have pretty much shot through the roof. It seems to be a trend. But just for once, I was able to offer a possible explanation of such a thing: of course, not huge amounts of people will have been able to taste Bruno Loubet's hare royale, but with it getting mentions all over the place and, indeed, being named main course of 2010 by Jay Rayner, hare has had a big publicity boost.

But my mission of the day was not merely to attempt to cast some light on things. At the Longwood van, I had completely confused Matthew with an email order for five lambs' kidneys and the same weight in braising steak. He obviously had a good idea what was intended for the meat, but would have expected that there would be far more beef.

I explained that this was my chance for a sort of revenge on all those insipid steak & hardly-any-kidney pies – and particularly the steak & just-one-small-piece-of-kidney pud at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese before Christmas: this was going to be the apotheosis of the kidney.

But all that was for Sunday: Saturday had plenty of other things in store.

Now while I might be neither mouse nor man, my well-laid plans still went awry when it became clear that there was no crab to be found on the market. Vicki explained that the weather had stopped a fresh catch. Instead, I opted for a squid and mused over cooking it with red chili and linguine.

Sadly – although not in some ways – Ed will be leaving La Bouche. Sad for us, but not for Ed. Having completed his doctorate (architectural history, if memory serves me right), he's got a brilliant post as a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery. All the best, Ed.

And so back to the kitchen.

First things first involved rhubarb, with Otto helpfully using the sheer force of her feline brain to will the juice to drip through the sieve for an individual syllabub, à la Sarah Raven, for that evening.

That done, a second batch went the same way, although it was six sticks this time, a little sugar and just a very little water. Here was one of the experiments of the weekend. I wanted to make little individual jellies – which promised to be fun, since I'd never used gelatine before. But I'd picked up enough from a video of Michel Roux using it to realise that it wasn't too scary.

Maybe not too "scary", but it still needs a bit of technical sorting out. I calculated half a sheet of the gelatine to my rhubarb juice (there was around 150ml). In the event, it wasn't remotely enough. I put a repeat off until Sunday. And in the evening, browsing through Kitchen Secrets by Raymond Blanc, I came across a dish where he'd used his famous tomato essence in four different ways. It included a jelly. I had the secret in my hands.

Using his calculations, I realised that I'd need 3 1/2-4 sheets of the size of gelatine I had for around 200ml of juice. This is what I tried the following day.

While the cooked fruit drained, I took two metal cook's rings and gave them each a base of cling film, tightly stretched over and up onto the sides. These were placed in a dish.

I wanted the jelly to be a tart compliment to something sweet and savoury, so was careful to taste and not over sweeten. The gelatine sheets need to be soaked in cold water for around 10 minutes. Then you drain them well and add them to warm liquid – but not boiling, as it could make the dish bitter. In this case, I warmed a little of the strained juice, then incorporated the squeezed gelatine, which melts really easily, and then added that back into the rest of the juice.

Blanc also explains how to get a "garnish" in a jelly without it all sinking straight to the bottom: wait for five minutes and then gently stir in whatever you want. It took longer for my jellies, but the eventual outcome was in the right direction, as drained and dried green peppercorns were added.

These were popped into the fridge to wait for use (of which more another time). But at the second time of asking, I'd got them to set and that was a victory.

Back to Saturday and more from the same Blanc book. This time, sugar was melted to a hard crack caramel in a large pan (how a proper thermometer helps!) and 200g of skinned hazelnuts were chucked in, stirred around, and then the whole lot was as quickly as possible spread onto a lined tray and left to set and cool.

When it's reach that point, it gets blasted into a paste in a processor: I have a small one, which just coped over a number of shifts. It didn't get very paste-like, so a little water was added, as per the book. This is a praline paste.

This is then mixed with lightly crushed cornflakes and pressed firmly into a tart tin or rectangular 'ring'. Or, if don't quite have that, use whatever will allow you to spread it quite thinly. Stick in the fridge and leave for at least half an hour.

Next, whisk a couple of eggs lightly. Bring some double cream and full-fat milk just to the boil, and pour onto the eggs, whisking to slightly cook them. Pour in chopped, good-quality chocolate and keep whisking until the chocolate is entirely melted and you have a lovely glossy mixture. Spread on top of the praline and cornflake mix and put back into the fridge.

It needs to be left overnight – and indeed, apart from a tiny taste, is waiting for this evening. A portion can be garnished with grated chocolate and even a single hazelnut that's been roasted and then dipped in caramel and quickly hung up by a cocktail stick from BluTac so that the caramel drips into a lovely, long 'tail'. The Other Half saw this in the book and responded with a comment about posiness. I haven't decided whether I'll try this, but I did buy a packet of BluTac on Saturday.

The point is, though, that the dipped nut aside, this is not difficult.

That was almost that for Saturday – except to prep a starter dough for some bread and actually make myself dinner. I decided to drop the linguine idea, but did the squid pan fried, in a risotto with red chili and actually with some Parmesan cheese (a first, given The Other Half's dislike of cheese).

It was enormously pleasing and soothing.

• For snacking during the day, I picked up some Stichelton from La Bouche, having read about a few days earlier on Raymond Blanc's blog, which is not only interesting on what Stichelton actually is – like 'proper' Stilton was before makers were forced to used pasturised milk – but also on the state of British cheese in general. And the Stichelton is absolutely lovely.