I'm not going to start this post with the customary apologetic warning to vegetarians. If either of my readers is a vegetarian, as I once was, I'll give you some credit and assume it's not because of squeamishness.
It was Mexico that converted me from vegetarianism: I knew before I went there I would have to change my diet, but at first I was stuck eating chiles rellenos every day because I didn't know what most of the dishes were, and I was afraid my body had stopped producing enzymes to digest meat (which turned out to be untrue). When I got going though, I didn't stop: chicken feet, cow feet, cow head, tripe, every part of the pig, almost nothing disgusts me. My love of Mexican cuisine led directly to a love of nose-to-tail eating. Really, nose-to-tail is not the best description of the meats I cook, maybe "nose and tail, and feet, innards and other cheap cuts" would be a better name for it, but that's too long. Honestly, I haven't a clue how to properly cook a fancy steak, or a tenderloin, and I can't stand boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
I'm going to share with you some of the dishes I cook with offal and other underutilized (i.e. cheap) cuts of meat.
I bought some pastured chicken hearts and livers from a local farm. I parboiled the hearts and drained them, then fried the livers in some previously rendered chicken fat (I gather bits of chicken fat in a bag in the freezer until I have enough to render), added a sliced onion, 3 peppers, one small eggplant (optional, I just had one I needed to use), and then half a dozen Roma tomatoes. I added back the hearts and tossed in the unlaid eggs I had saved from a hen my husband butchered. I covered and simmered the dish while some rice cooked.
Another farm I often buy grass-fed meat from has lamb bones and livers on sale at a ridiculously low price, 60 cents a pound for both. I can use some lamb stock somehow, and I'll cook some lamb livers as described above - that dish is pretty adaptable and it's a favorite of my husband's. I ordered 8 of the livers, I may make some into a stroganoff, and I also found a recipe online for lamb's liver marsala that looked interesting.
And speaking of liver (which is actually my least favorite organ), I have a salt-and-sugar cured pig's liver wrapped in a cloth hanging in my kitchen right now, a recipe from Fergus Henderson's book The Whole Beast. It's to be sliced and fried and put on a salad that includes radish leaves (the radishes are growing in my garden). I love having things like this, and vegetable ferments, living with me in my kitchen for days or weeks as I anticipate eating them.
I also ordered a beef tongue from the farm, which I pressure cook (15 minutes, or boil a couple of hours, then peel) and make into tacos. That's a delicacy for us, and a very meat-heavy meal, but a pretty cheap one at $3/lb. We also cook pork jowls this way. Pork tongue and beef cheek meat are delicious too but my local farmers don't offer those.
I am always adding to my collection of recipes using stew meat, and we really enjoy these simple, hearty dishes, especially in cold weather. Our favorites so far are hungarian goulash and meat and potato curry. I tend to prefer a stew to a roast, personally, so I will buy a cheap roast and cut it up. Last winter though we were given so much venison we didn't need to buy any meat. I soak venison in a salt brine for 24-48 hours, that takes all the gamey taste out of it. We bought a hand-cranked meat grinder and made chorizo with some of our venison and some pork fat. We left some meat on the bones and made soup with them.
I love bony parts, and not just for stock-making. I pull the soft bone marrow out of my stockpot and eat it spread on a toasted whole-grain bread crust. I used to eat chicken feet (which means sucking the skin and gelatinous bits off the bones, like a poor man's buffalo wing), but since my son was born I find they remind me too much of baby hands, so now they go in the stock pot. In Mexico you can buy roasted chicken necks at the chicken rotisseries, which are quite cheap and delicious, if, like me, you like roasted chicken skin (admit it, you do!) I've never been able to find them here with the skin attached, sadly, and my husband tends to give me mangled and bloody necks when he butchers chickens. Pork and lamb neck pieces are good in saucy Mexican dishes, with beans on the side and lots of corn tortillas to soak up the extra sauce. I'm anxious to try a recipe in an Asian cookbook my mom sent me, a braise of pig's feet and pineapple. I love pork belly poached with Asian spices, served with rice and steamed greens. We make beef soup with short ribs, which are probably my favorite cut of beef; oxtail makes a fine soup too, as does sliced shank (a.k.a. "meaty soup bones"). Mexican and Central American soups are a hands-on affair, with bones, pieces of corn on the cob, and chunky vegetables. A tongue in the soup is a special touch.
On really special occasions, I make a Mexican octopus cocktail. Fish, other than tilapia (which we fry whole, unbreaded) and most seafood is intimidating to me though.
Brains are something I used to be squeamish about, but I'm slowly getting over it. I don't often find them for sale, though. I've tried to get my husband to save the heads from the chickens he butchers to put them in my stock, but he won't do it, nor will he save the intestines for me to try Diana Kennedy's recipe. I did finally persuade him to put the feathers in the compost though. In case you're wondering, there are some things I won't eat. My husband gets the eyeballs from my fish and any other eyeballs go uneaten around here, and I always politely turned down the free samples of spicy grasshoppers in the Mexico city market, which made the vendor laugh. Crawfish are something I don't understand, I can't find anything in them to eat. I've had very good and very bad alligator, and although the though of eating an animal that would eat me if it had a chance is satisfying to me, I don't think I'll bother with it again. Frog's legs are gross, and I won't eat lizards (e.g. iguana, which they cook alive in Honduras, where it is endangered). A year or two ago I saw a news report on one of the Spanish channels about old racehorses being shipped to Mexico from the USA to be butchered, and the meat sometimes being sold at taco stands to unwitting customers. That made me cry with horror and disgust, and I will be very cautious when I return to Mexico to be sure I never eat any horsemeat (again?). Horses are sacred to me; I'd rather eat dog or cat than horse.
As the folks over at Well Preserved have pointed out, the nose-to-tail philosophy can be applied to vegetables too. I'm determined to cook some sweet potato leaves this year, probably in an African dish. African, and Asian cuisines are going to get a lot more love from me in the near future.
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