So as anyone who knows me even a little is aware I love weird food, especially organ meats. This stems mostly from a love of serious french cuisine and a serious lack of shame about what I put in my body. I dream of working with Escoffier, the Frenchman I most admire, (seen right) some day and cooking foie gras, eel, the gonads of untold species, coque au vin, and make veal stock with that man. So it was with little trepidation that I set out to go sweetbread hunting with my dad. The place to go looking for this kind of product is in little Mexico of my humble town. I found the market I had heard about (and their meat counter which is a foodies dream) and we set about the hunt. Amongt the tubs of tongue, tripe, quail, liver, pigs feet, chicken feet, gizzards, freshmade chorizo, kidneys, hearts, whole goats, and cow heads we found our quarry. My father picked out three of what he deemed to be the freshest pieces and then encouraged me to get something. I chose fresh calves liver and a whole beef kidney. I thought I could handle this with grace and ease. I threw some fresh peppers and rip avocados (when do you find those in the store?) and a bottle of hotsauce I had never tried in the basket and we were off.My dad came back to prepare the sweetbreads (as they require a lot of work in order to be edible and my mother was NOT going to allow it in her house) and I set about what I assumed would be the easy task of cleaning the kidney. I do not have a picture of my kidney but it looked very much like this:
Now what you cannot see in this picture is the underside of the organ. If you turned it over there would be this thick mixture of fatty membrane and tubes. But that is decidely not the first thing that you notice when you lay hands upon a fresh and tender beef kidney. Not is the smell. Imagine the smell of strong urine and rust. I admit I was a little daunted by this pungent smell but my father assured me that I was on the right track and that I should get to it. So I began with a small paring knife to deconstruct this disgusting bit of beef. Deveining, de-mebraning, detubing, etc this little bastard took forever. I eventually got about half of it done and decided to try and cook half of it to see if continuing was going to be worth continuing. (doing half of it took almost 45 minutes). So I once again deferred to my father and he said pat the bits you have done dry, shake in a flour and ground pepper, and then saute them lightly in butter. Butter! How could I possibly go wrong with butter! So I set about this per my father's instructions. It was just as I was throwing them on that my father commented that he himself had never prepared kidney. My heart skipped a bet and all of the sudden the smell of rusty-nail piss became over powering. I reached for the new bottle of hotsauce I had just purchased and tried it. It was spicy as shit and good. I set this beside the plate covered in papetowels I prepped to put the kideny on. The sauce was going to be necessary. My father by now had finished blanching his sweetbreads and was standing around looking amused at the whole scene (and smell I suppose) around him. I shooke the kidney in the browning butter one last time and fished them out and put them on the plate. I looked at my dad and we had the "You go first. No you go first" moment before he gave in and tried it. He chewed and chewed and chewed and eventually shrugged his shoulders and declared them "strong but alright." Now, I think that we can all agree that "strong" is NOT an adjective we want to describe our meat. Whiskey drinks or Hulk Hogan are strong, not animal tissue we plan on eating. So I saunter up to the plate and pick up what looks like the crispiest bit.My reaction was instaneous and unfortunate. I spit it out. It was the most awful thing I have ever tasted. I can't explain other than to say that the tast of them cooked was much like the smell of them raw: like piss and rust. My father (who actually will eat anything) accused my reaction of pyschosomatic. That I knew what I was eating and that was just tainting my thinking on the subject. I tend to ALWAYS know what I am eating and this was still awful.
My dad then read the Joy of Cooking entry on kidney and proceeded to tell me that (inspite of doing everything he suggested) I had gone about the enterprise all wrong and that I should have soaked the kidney in milk for at least two hours before cooking it. This did not make me feel anybetter. It took me two hours to wash the smell off of my hands. I found that using bleach did the trick and that is the end of my kidney cooking days. But my next project is duck I bought as well. Updates to follow on that.
I would like to dedicate this experience and resulting blog post to 3 people and 1 restaurant and the night they all came together. I want to dedicate this post in memory of the night that K, Ch, R, and I went around the corner to that carribean place in Bushwick and supped on blood sausage, pigs ear and all other manner of tasty things. I miss you guys.
