maybe my best Rognons de Mouton outing; thinking it was the sorrel

 

Every so often I think about offal, and then I have to do something about it.

Yeah. Well, this time I started by asking one of the sheep farmers I regularly see at the Union Square Greenmarket whether they had any lamb kidneys.  To anyone unfamiliar with this delicacy it might be a surprise to learn that I was actually surprised that the answer was yes. To explain, there appears to be a number of local offal fans who often sweep up any of these and the other types of innards which most people might not even be aware existed. This happens before I manage to get to Union Square; apparently innards people are early risers.

I learned today that there’s even a subgroup whose thing is consuming offal totally raw. Why am I not surprised?

Before I moved to New York in 1985 I traded with traditional butchers who still offered traditional, if not universally popular, fare in the form of kidneys, sweetbreads, tongue, tripe, brains, and of course liver, which is less exotic than most. Oddly, these shops were not located in communities where there were unusually large numbers of recent immigrants, but in middle class mostly-white communities.

I think that since then American middle class white communities may have lost interest in diversity, at least when it comes to animal protein.

I’ve always been interested in what is out of the mainstream, and living with the two volumes of Julia Child recipes for more than a few years, increased my curiosity and also gave me the means to satisfy it. I’ve cooked veal and lamb kidneys, sweetbreads, tripe, veal and lamb tongue, and both veal and lamb liver, but, so fat at least, I’ve skipped brains.

Last night I enjoyed the best lamb kidneys I’ve ever prepared.

The recipe I used was mostly my own invention, a conflation of the Julia Childs recipes which had introduced me to kidneys half a century ago, what I have learned about Italian cooking over the years since I had moved away from Julia, and my imagining how a Mediterranean tradition might prepare kidneys in an age which generally appreciates a simpler cooking style across the board.

Someone please correct me if I;m wrong, but I think I get the Italian right by calling it, ‘rognone di agnello trifolati’ finished with a sauce of garlic, white wine, butter, parsley, and sorrel.  Whatever it’s called, it’s delicious.

Note: Do not wash the kidneys before cooking, as they will absorb water, and be very careful not to overcook them or the dish will lose more than its magic.

• four lamb kidneys (8 ounces total) from Catskill Merino Sheep Farm, sautéed in butter (in this case in a tin-lined copper au gratin pan) until brown all over on the outside but still very rare in the center, removed and kept warm while introducing into the pan one large sliced Rocambole garlic clove from from Keith’s Farm, cooking it for one minute, adding white wine and reducing the liquid by half over high heat, quickly slicing the kidneys in the meantime, removing the pan from the burner and slowly swirling into it 2 tablespoons of chilled butter, salt and pepper, returning the sliced kidneys and all of their juices to the pan and briefly warming them in the sauce, sprinkling sauce and kidneys with a combination of chopped parsley from Eataly and some micro sorrel greens from Windfall Farms, then carefully warming the sauce over very low heat for a minute or two
• some quite small La Ratte potatoes from Berried Treasures Farm, halved lengthwise, tossed with oil, chopped rosemary from Stoke’s Farm and sage from Keith’s Farm, seasoned, and roasted on a ceramic pan in the oven
• two Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, cut horizontally into four slices, added to the pan with the potatoes a few minutes before they were removed from the onion, seasoned with salt and pepper
• a handful of ‘French Breakfast’ radish greens from Eckerton Hill Farm, wilted in olive oil in which a small garlic clove from Berried Treasures had been allowed to sweat for a bit, then seasoned with salt, pepper and a bit more olive oil
• the wine was a California (Napa Valley) red, Ken Deis Napa Valley Merlot 2014
• the music was Marek Janowski‘s magnificent Dresden ‘Götterdämmerung‘ (so sorry there’s no sequel)

Pollock is a favorite with both of us, and the micro sorrel which I found at the Greenmarket a few minutes after walking away with the fillet became a star when I combined the two.  My sighting the little greens was especially lucky because I did not have any chives at home, and it was that fine little allium which I had worked with in preparing this dish before.

• one 15-ounce pollock fillet from P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, split into two pieces, seasoned on both sides with salt and pepper, placed in a buttered copper au gratin pan, spread with a mixture of soft butter, zest from what may have been a Frost Lisbon Lemon, grown locally by Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, and some micro sorrel greens from Windfall Farms, baked 12 to 15 minutes at 350º, removed to 2 plates, spread with the cooking juices, sprinkled with a small number of salted capers which had been rinsed, drained, dried, and briefly heated in a little hot olive oil, the fillets finished with additional, fresh sorrel
• purple winter kale from Tamarack Hollow Farm, wilted with olive oil in which one slightly-crushed Calabrian Rocambole garlic clove from Keith’s Farm had been allowed to heat until pungent
• half a dozen Maine cherry ‘cocktail’ tomatoes from Whole Foods, slow-roasted along with a generous amount of dried Italian oregano from Buon Italia, olive oil, and two more garlic cloves, halved, from Keith Farm
• the wine was an Oregon (Willamette Valley) white, Ponzi Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2014
• the music was several of quartets by David Matthews

it was breakfast, but then pretty soon we realized it had also been lunch

 

It was 2:45 when I started to write this post (my computer then acted up, delaying its completion). I’d finished washing the dishes and was sitting with my first coffee of the day.  While at first we had been thinking of this as a breakfast meal, we had gotten a late start, late even by our Sunday standards. Now it will be called lunch, and even a late lunch, by the standards of most decent folks.

I love bacon and eggs, and I’ve loved both from the days I was first able to eat grownup food.  In our house, for my robust father, but not for my equally vigorous mother, grownup food at breakfast meant very fresh raw eggs carefully whipped on a plate with salt & pepper, the mix of whites and yolks soaked up with some good toasted bread.* This was also my own favorite breakfast (I think that my brother joined my dad and I in this idiosyncratic indulgence for at least a few years, but my sister definitely gave it a pass). Visiting relatives and guests may have remarked about it, but not until I was 17, and had arrived at college, did I learn just how weird most people thought my favorite breakfast was.

My father had died earlier that year.

Once I had my own small kitchen, in graduate school in Providence, I revisited my raw egg breakfast treat a few times, but, alone in my Benefit Street studio, the pleasure I had enjoyed in our breakfast room on Haverhill was gone.

I’ve run through much of the enormous range of egg treatments since then, and enjoyed all, but I always come back to some version of the eggs we enjoyed today, simply fried, with toast, and sometimes bacon.  Spiegelei.

• the eggs were from Millport Dairy Farm, the thick bacon (4 slices altogether, or about 6-and-a-half ounces) was also from Millport, the small amount of chopped fresh hot ‘cloud peppers’ were from Norwich Meadows Farm, the fresh tarragon was from Eataly, and the toast in the picture above was from slices of a Blue Ribbon Bakery Market rustic sesame seed bread (when that ran out, we had toast from a loaf of Rockhill Bakehouse sourdough bread)
• the happy music was Giovanni Gabrieli: Symphoniae Sacrae, Book 2

Speaking of personal idiosyncrasies, my own alone this time, while finishing the bacon and cooking the eggs today I was juggling with the business of toasting the bread, but this time not with our trusty 1934 art deco Toastmaster, but using a device whose functions were somewhat more primitive, but no less effective.  I think I can also say they were more ‘toasty’, in a primitive, or ‘country’ way.

On the top of the burners of my 1931 Magic Chef, immediately next to the big 13″ cast iron pan I was using, I had placed a shiny new range-top, no-moving-parts, metal toaster box I had recently located on line. From a family-made manufacturer in Barrington, Rhode Island, it was identical to one I had purchased in a Newport ship chandlery in the late 60s and had used for decades before acquiring the Toastmaster at a Manhattan street fair. The ‘Camp-A-Toaster‘ has the natural advantage over most more elaborate devices of being able to toast slices of any thickness, but, for the survival of the toast, requires fairly close monitoring.

Still, it’s totally brilliant.  Thank you Fred (Fred Solomon was the inventor of the Camp-A-Toaster).

 

* Dad grew up with 17 brothers and sisters, on his Wisconsin family’s large ancestral dairy farm; while we always imagined the raw egg thing was about getting in a morning meal when there was little time and so much competition, it might have been about not wanting to ask too much of whoever was cooking, or part of an early 20th-century health vogue, and then it could also have been just personal taste.

It wasn’t yet midnight when we sat down to this pasta dish yesterday after returning from a performance of Robert Ashley’s opera-novel, ‘Quicksand’, at another ‘kitchen’, The Kitchen. The designation ‘Midnight Pasta’ is not my doing, but is rather inspired by its simplicity, the fact that all of its ingredients are staples nelle cucine italiane, and the speed with which it can be prepared (20 minutes or so).  The affectionate name, in Italian, ‘spaghettata di mezzanotte‘, hints at its popularity.

I cut a printed version of the recipe, by David Tanis, out of the ‘Dining’ section of the New York Times back in 2011.  The article’s titillating headline read, “At the End of the Night, Satisfaction“.  In fact, there may be an almost infinite number of variations to this meal, and I imagine almost all of them are equally seductive.

We had seconds, and skipped a cheese course.

I followed the Tanis recipe more or less as printed, although I reduced the amount of pasta, and that of the remaining ingredients in the same proportion.  I also added some reserved pasta water and emulsified it in in pan where the cooked and drained pasta had been returned.  Also, while I did not use Parmesan cheese he mentioned as an option, I further tweaked his formula by adding some toasted homemade breadcrumbs to the top of the sauced spaghetti once it had been placed in the two bowls.

• the ingredients I used were 11 ounces of Setaro spaghetti from Buon Italia; 3 garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm; 3 rinsed and filleted salted anchovies from Buon Italia; a tablespoon of capers, also from Buon Italia; much of one peperoncino di Sardegna intero (yes, Buon Italia too); 2 tablespoons of Italian parsley from Eataly, chopped; and two tablespoons of breadcrumbs I had made from a number of different kinds of bread, ground in my vintage Osterizer (one of the very few electric appliances I have in the kitchen)
• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Fuori Strada Grillo 2014, whose gorgeous soft packaging, the makers describe as safe for a bicycle water bottle (we weren’t on bikes last night)
• the music included a good number of pieces in the box CD set, Music From The ONCE Festival 1961- 1966 (of which Robert Ashley was one of the founders)

There are a few modest new things going on here, new even to me.

I’ve worked before with the same basic swordfish recipe [Bon Appétit, 2005] used here, but I’ve never finished the steaks with winter savory; I’ve eaten rutabaga all my life, having grown up in a more-or-less-German-American kitchen (learning only much later that the French normally think of that vegetable as suitable for pigs), but I think I’ve never before attempted to prepare them as frites, even faux-frites; I love the flavor of celery in any form (incidentally, in Europe it’s celeriac, and not what we know as celery, that’s the kind preferred for cooking), but I think this was the first time I had pan-grilled the green stalks themselves.

• two swordfish steaks, off of Scott Rucky’s fishing vessel, ‘Dakota’, out of East Islip, Long Island, from American Seafood Company in the Union Square Greenmarket, dried, sprinkled with salt and a mix of 6 different peppercorns, ground coarsely in my ancient mortar, browned in a little olive oil on one side (about 3 minutes) inside a tin-lined copper au gratin pan, then turned over and the pan transferred to a 400º oven for about 7 or 8 minutes, or until barely cooked, removed and placed on warm plates while a seasoned butter was added to the pan (composed of  2 tablespoons of softened butter, a quarter teaspoon or more of the same peppercorn mix, half of a teaspoon of organic lemon zest, a bit of salt, one minced rocambole garlic clove from Keith’s Farm, and chopped parsley from Eataly) and scraped together over medium heat along with the cooking juices, to collect the brown bits from the bottom, the sauce poured over the steaks, which were then sprinkled with chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm (damn, that stuff really lasts!)
• about a pound of ‘Gilfeather turnips’ from Alewife Farm (the turnip/rutabaga hybrid is of Vermont origin, which, by one account, “has a mild taste that becomes sweet and a creamy white color after the first frost“), cut as french fries, tossed with about one tablespoon of olive oil, salt, pepper, one clove of garlic from from Tamarack Hollow Farm, minced, and two sprigs of rosemary from Stokes Farm, chopped, spread evenly onto a large, seasoned, unglazed ceramic oven pan, and roasted at 400º for about 25 minutes
• several celery stalks from Migliorelli Farm (yes, in late January!), their leaves removed and reserved, trimmed, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, pan-grilled, finished with the reserved leaves, which had been chopped, and sprinkled with micro arugula greens from Lucky Dog Organic
• the wine was a New Zealand (Marlborough) white, Mount Nelson Sauvignon Blanc 2013
• the music was Hans Werner Henze’s idiosyncratic 1971, Concerto for Violin no 2

For the last couple of months I’ve been moving around a single smoked pork chop in our freezer.  It was the survivor from what had originally been a package of two.  Neither of us can remember when we had 3 chops, that is, one guest for a dinner, but to make matters awkward, our favorite vender for these things always sold them only in pairs, so it seemed that I would eventually have to make a meal, for the two of us, of what would be less than 4 ounces of meat, once cut off the bone.

Last night it happened.  Surprisingly, even with the additional constraint of only a small number of potatoes and not much more than a handful of kale, to fill out two dinner plates, there was enough for a pretty satisfying meal (translation: we didn’t move on to a cheese course).

• a small amount of rendered duck fat, from an earlier meal, which I keep in the freezer, heated inside an oval, low-sided enameled cast iron pan, one sliced spring onion from Eataly, white portions only, the green reserved for later, swirled around in it, one smoked loin pork chop from Millport Dairy added to the pan, covered with tin foil and kept above a very low flame (just enough to warm the chops through, as they were already fully-cooked), turning the meat once, then, near the end of the cooking time, the green parts of the onion which had been set aside earlier, now also sliced, added, the pork removed, plated, brushed with garlic oregano jelly from Berkshire Berries, then covered with both the white and green onion pieces
• a small amount of green kale from Tamarack Hollow Farm, wilted in olive oil in which one clove of garlic from Norwich Meadows Farm, halved, had been cooked until it had begun to brown, and finished with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil
• small German Butterball potatoes from Tamarack Hollow Farm, unpeeled but scrubbed, boiled in heavily-salted water, drained, dried in the still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, halved, tossed with a little butter, and sprinkled with homemade breadcrumbs (lots of homemade breadcrumbs, because there were so few potatoes) which had already been browned in butter
• the wine was a California (Russian River Valley) red, Scott Peterson Rox Pinot Noir 2014
• the music was Unsuk Chin, 3 Concertos (piano, cello, sheng), performed by the Seoul Philharmonic conducted by Myung-Whun Chung

• barely two ounces of fresh tagliatelle from Eataly’s (Luca Donofrio), boiled until al dente, tossed with a sauce composed of one chopped spring onion, including some of the green stem, and parts of one red and one yellow ‘cloud pepper’ from Norwich Meadows Farm, which had been heated together in olive oil until softened, sprinkled with homemade breadcrumbs which had been browned in a cast iron pan
• the bread was from a loaf of Eataly’s ‘rustic classic’

 

• four 3-and-a-half-ounce flounder fillets from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, sautéed in olive oil and butter over high heat until golden brown (2-3 minutes, then 1-2 minutes on the other side, served with a tomato butter made by melting some ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘ and adding one chopped shallot from Whole Foods, cooking it until softened and fragrant, removed from the heat, allowed to cool for 2 or 3 minutes, then tossed with quartered Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, seasoned with salt, and chopped tarragon from Eataly added, along with a few drops of red wine (Chianti) vinegar
• micro arugula greens from Lucky Dog Organic served on a small pool of very good olive oil
• I had used more butter than I should have in the ‘sauce’, so I was happy to have more of Eataly’s excellent rustic bread on the table
• the wine through both courses was a super-delicious Spanish (Galicia) white, Benito Santos Egrexario de Saiar Albariño 2014
• the music, also throughout the meal, was by the much-neglected Johann Adolf Hasse, his magnificent baroque opera, ‘Cleofide‘, performed by William Christie and the Cappella Coloniensis, with Derek Lee Ragin, Emma Kirkby, Dominique Visse, Randall K Wong, Agnès Mellon, and David Cordier  (NOTE: I shivered at the beauty of the music of the Aria, ‘Dov’e se affretti’, and especially Derek Lee Ragin’s performance, in Act III Scene 9); the entire opera can be heard here, on Spotify; also, by the way, unlike Kirk McElhearn, in the review linked to above, I liked the recitatives, but then, I’m pretty German; and I didn’t miss the tenors and bases at all)

Something new. Unfortunately I can’t write that phrase as often as I would like to, but on a trip to Dickson’s Farmstand Meats last week I spotted a beautiful pâté de tète set in aspic, and asked Philip to vacuum pack two small slices in each of two packages (in order to be used in two meals).  The delicacy is known by many names, including ‘head cheese‘, but it was, I think, something new on this site, and delicious, whatever it might be called.

I’m now remembering how much my Father loved head cheese, which of course is not a cheese at all, and as kids we couldn’t get past the name. He also really loved Limburger cheese, which doesn’t have a name problem, but we all ran from the lunch table when he opened its package and exposed the pungent smell produced by the bacteria largely responsible for body odor, and smelly feet.

Dad, I’m thinking, was a sensual man.

I just realized that Limburg is from the part of the Germanic world from which the Wagners originated; ah, the power of heritage!

When I thought about including this beautiful pâté as a first course in this meal, fortunately I already had on hand some cornichon, a bottle of good prepared French mustard, and a loaf of crusty bread.

No Limburger in site.

• one small slice of pâté de tète from Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, with a few Maille cornichon, Edmond Fallot Dijon mustard, and slices of ‘rustic classic’ from Eataly
• the wine was a California (North Coast) white, Jac Cole Oak Fermented Chardonnay North Coast 2014

The main course included one of our favorite recipes, a simple sautéed duck breast, with a new finish. There were also some very-late-season Brussels sprouts from the Greenmarket, the secret for whose availability on one of the last days of January I was unable to learn that day.

• one 12-ounce Pat LaFrieda boneless duck breast from Eataly, its fatty side scored by a very sharp knife with cross-hatching, sprinkled with a mixture of salt, ‘India Special Extra Bold’ Tellicherry peppercorns, and a bit of turbinado sugar (which had been infused in over time with a vanilla bean), the breast left standing for about an hour before it was pan-fried over medium heat with a very small amount of duck fat remaining from an earlier meal, removed when medium rare (cutting it into the two portions at that time to be certain) finished with a drizzle of organic lemon, sprinkled with some beautiful micro arugula from Lucky Dog Orgnanic, and dressed with a bit of olive oil
• small Brussels sprouts from Milgliorelli Farm, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and three unpeeled garlic cloves, spread onto a large, very well seasoned Pampered Chef oven pan in a 400º oven and cooked until tender and slightly carbonized (the time will depend on size, but these took barely 15 minutes), finished with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and stirred
• the wine was a French (Bordeaux) red, Château Penin, Bordeaux Supérieur 2011, from Chelsea Wine Vault
• the music throughout most of the meal was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, Jaap van Zweden conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra

I was excited about the opportunity of chopping up what seemed a first to be a very large celery root to serve what I thought would be a very generous amount of pseudo–frites, so early in the evening I cancelled the idea of including roasted Brussels sprouts, however special the opportunity of enjoying them from a local farm in late January might be, thinking that incorporating another vegetable into the meal might be a little too much.  And then I added a handful of micro greens, both for their color and for the effect they might add of an imagined additional volume.

The Brussels sprouts could wait.

The celery fries turned out to not be smaller in number than I had expected, so the little greens ended up carrying more than their weight (or at least offering a fresh diversion from the browns in the meal).

• four small lamb loin chops from 3-Corner Field Farm, cooked on a very hot grill pan for about 5 or 6 minutes on each side, seasoned with salt and pepper after they were first turned over, finished with lemon, chopped winter savory form Stokes Farm, and olive oil
• one celery root (about 12-13 ounces) from Norwich Meadows Farm, scrubbed, peeled, and cut into the size and shape of potato frites, tossed in a bowl with olive oil, a half teaspoon of Spanish paprika picante, salt, and pepper, spread onto a medium-size Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pan, and roasted at 400º until brown and cooked through, removed to two plates, and tossed with chopped parsley from Eataly
• micro arugula greens from Lucky Dog Organic, washed, dried, scattered on the plates and dressed with good olive oil, a squeeze of one small, local lemon/lime from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, salt, and pepper
• the wine was a California (Lodi) red, JC van Staden Malbec Lodi 2014
• the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No 8, Jaap Van Zweden conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic

Yes, it’s been around the neighborhood for a while, but I was told this dish was better than ever this time.

• skate wings from Pura Vida Fisheries, about 14 ounces altogether, coated with a coarse polenta which had been seasoned with salt and pepper, sautéed in olive oil (and a bit of butter) for a few minutes, removed from the pan, the pan wiped with a paper towel, and some butter, chopped shallots from Whole Foods, and sliced garlic from Tamarack Hollow Farm introduced into it and stirred over a lowered flame, followed by the addition of a little more butter, juice from half of an organic lemon, and chopped parsley from Eataly
• a handful of racinato (cavalo nero) from Tamarack Hollow Farm, briefly wilted with olive oil and one small garlic half which had first been heated in the oil
• the wine was a California (Santa Barbara) white, Rasmussen Chardonnay 2014
• the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E Major, Jaap van Zweden conducting the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra