I thought it would be so easy to come up with a rather simple modern recipe for sweetbreads, but I was surprised at how few resources there were, and none of those I found looked interesting, or as uncomplicated as I wanted, at least in the time I had allotted myself.

Apparently these innards themselves haven’t been considered modern, at least until recently.  I’m probably not the only one who’s been afraid to cook ris de veau, although not for lack of an appreciation of their culinary pleasures.  I attacked them in my own kitchen once, many years ago, working with the very elaborate and very precise instructions supplied by Julia Child.  I didn’t get lost in the process, and they were delicious, but I must have thought they just weren’t worth the trouble (as with the time I made tripe, also by her formula).

Maybe I had just forgotten about them, since they aren’t found next to the chops and cutlets in the neighborhood meat case (to be fair, sweetbreads are very perishable, and so would generally have to be ordered, if available at all.

I do order them, in good restaurants, almost every time I see sweetbreads on a menu.  For the record, it’s been one of the few appetizer or entrée ‘centerpieces’ I don’t hesitate to order when eating out, since I don’t expect to be preparing it myself (oh, the hardships of an active, and at least somewhat adventurous home cook – and his perfect muse).

Then last night I found myself searching everywhere for sweetbread recipes, in my files, book shelves, and on line. After a while I noticed that a couple of hours had flown by, and I now didn’t have much time left to maneuver.

I ended up going with what seemed to me the simplest and least constructed recipe of the few I had come across. I was surprised that it turned out to be probably the most old-fashioned one. It was from my half-century-old copy of  Craig Claiborne‘s ‘The New York Times Cookbook’ [$25 new here; $10 to $15 here, at Strand]. Years after I had bought it, as I moved into other styles of cooking, and thinking Claiborne was a bit, well, ‘old-fashioned’, I had relegated it to the top shelf in the kitchen, where it was both out of sight and out of mind, only returning it to the company of its ‘colleagues’ when I had a new, large bookcase built in another room.

Lately I have found the 700-page volume surprisingly useful, for its catholicity (including dishes now obscure), and for its tendency to cut to the chase, omitting a lot of the baggage which accompanies many more contemporary recipes (like, I suppose, what I’m writing now).

The offal was good (love how that sounds), very good, and I’m now not going to be timid about initiating a future acquaintance with this wonderful cut – and with new recipes.

• one pair of sweetbreads (approximately 9 ounces) from Consider Bardwell Farm, soaked in ice water for almost two hours, drained, placed in boiling water to cover, adding a little lemon juice, the heat lowered, simmered 10 minutes, drained and immediately cooled in fresh ice water, then all connective tissue and covering tissues carefully removed, the oven preheated to 350º while one small-to-medium scraped carrot (from Whole Foods) and one smallish yellow onion (from Norwich Meadows Farm), sliced, were added to 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter in an oval copper au gratin pan, along with one small fresh bay leaf from Westside Market, one sprig of parsley from Whole Foods, and a sprig of thyme from Foragers Market, cooked slowly until the onion was softened and golden, 1 teaspoon of flour sprinkled over the pan, the sweetbreads added on top of the vegetables and herbs, along with 3 tablespoons of white wine, 1/3 of a cup of good chicken stock, salt, pepper, heated until simmering, covered and placed in the (350º) oven, baked 20 minutes, uncovered and baked another 10 minutes, the sweetbreads transferred to 2 plates, 1 tablespoon of fino sherry stirred into the pan, the sauce served over and beside the meat [Claiborne writes, from the posture of classic French cuisine, that the sauce should be strained, meaning it would be only a liquid, but I don’t always feel like abandoning the vegetables, especially when they haven’t really been overly cooked]
• medium carrots from Alewife Farm, simply scrubbed, then rolled in olive oil, salt, and ground pepper on a small ceramic oven pan, roasted at 400º for about half an hour, or until tender, sprinkled with chopped parsley from Phillips Farm
• Savoy cabbage from Hoeffner Farms, many of its outer leaves layered together on a board and sliced very thinly, tossed with salt, pepper, and three flattened juniper berries, sautéed in a little butter over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until the leaves were tender and had begun to brown and (hopefully) crisp slightly at the edges
• the wine was a great French (Alsace) white, Pierre Sparr Pinot Blanc Alsace 201the music was Bellini’s ‘La Sonnambula’, a gorgeous recording with Cecilia Bartoli, Juan DiegoFlórez, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, the Orchestra La Scintilla conducted by Alessandro De Marchi
• the music was Bellini’s ‘La Sonnambula’, a gorgeous recording with Cecilia Bartoli, Juan Diego Flórez, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, the Orchestra La Scintilla conducted by Alessandro De Marchi

Over in the fresh pasta department at Eataly on Friday, it seemed that Luca Donofrio was getting a head start on Valentine’s day by featuring a red pasta. I was seduced.

Once it had been cooked however, the gorgeous pasta, Casunziei, lost some of its color, but it was still rather valentine-ish in its loveliness, and especially the loveliness of its taste.

The pockets are a Piedmontese specialty similar to pierogis.  These were half-circle dough pouches, in this case I believe beet ravioli, with a filling of radicchio, Speck, and ricotta.

• I boiled them gently and briefly, then moved them around in the simplest of sauces, some rich ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘ heated with some fresh sage leaves, also from Eataly, and a sprinkling of poppyseeds

• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Fuori Strada Grillo 2014, whose gorgeous soft packaging presumably means a smaller carbon footprint than that of the glass bottles that have been around for maybe half a millenium
• the music was Hans Abrahmsen, Concerto for Piano (2000)

Winter fish: Delicious, and an excellent accompaniment to a cold February evening, this meal felt and looked custom-ordered for the very cold weather outside, but the fish was actually the only ingredient that wasn’t already waiting inside the kitchen.

• two sliced leeks from Eataly and one ounce of chopped bacon from Millport Dairy tossed with a third of a cup of olive oil, placed in a non-reactive pan and roasted for 10 minutes before a teaspoon or more of chopped sage, also from Eataly, was added [thyme is an alternative, and in fact the herb specified in the original recipe] along with 1/4 of a cup of white wine, the pan returned to the oven for 20 more minutes, before the leek mixture was topped by two halves of a nearly one-pound fillet of King Whiting (Silver Hake) from Pura Vida, which was drizzled with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, the pan again returned to the oven and left there until the fish was cooked (about 10 more minutes), when it was removed and garnished with more chopped sage (or thyme, if using)
• red fingerling potatoes from Berried Treasures roasted with rosemary from Stokes Farm, tossed with a small amount of micro arugula greens from Lucky Dog Organic
• the wine was a California (Sonoma) white, ROX Scott Peterson Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2014 
• the music was Telemann’s ‘Flavius Bertaridus’, with the Academia Montis Regalis conducted by Alessandro De Marchi

It was Valentine’s day, so I included a little deep red on the side.

This was our breakfast-but-also-lunch on this rather sweet holiday.  We don’t have bacon and eggs every Sunday, and tomatoes are rarely a part of it when we do, but this fast-breaker was put onto the table even later in the day than usual, and therefore it was lunch as well as breakfast.  I also thought the bright red fruit would be a somewhat electric reminder of the holiday just beginning.

The bottom line was that I think tomatoes and eggs are just about as natural a pairing as bacon and eggs, and including all three in an early afternoon meal made it something of a feast betimes.

Once I had sat down and was well into its enjoyment, I thought to myself, and told Barry, I felt it was one of those meals you want to go on, and on. I suspect every element of it had addictive properties.

• the eggs, topped with chopped thyme from Foragers Market, Maldon salt, and good telicherry pepper, freshly ground, were from Millport Dairy Farm, as was the double-thick smoked bacon in whose residual fat they were fried; the tomatoes were Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, slow-roasted with garlic from Keith’s Farm and abundant pungent dried Italian oregano from Buon Italia, finished with chopped parsley from Eataly; the kale micro greens, undressed, were from Lucky Dog Organic Farm; the toast was from three different breads, a small amount of each: the heels of one days-old sourdough loaf from Rock Hill Bakery and a two-day-old semolina loaf from Eataly, and a fresh Bien Cuit baguette from Forager’s Market baked, well, today

Mark Bittman called this recipe, ‘Ligurian fish and potatoes‘; it was the basis for the one I’ve been using for years.  It’s a classic, or at least I think so, for its ability to showcase, mostly unadorned, the taste of a superb wild fish, as well as for the ease with which it can be prepared.

This time I added some rather flashy micro greens in lieu of the parsley specified in Bittman’s original recipe.

• one 13- or 14-ounce cod fillet from American Seafood Company at the Union Square Greenmarket, prepared along the lines of a recipe from Mark Bittman which I came across almost 12 years ago: I cut the fillet into two pieces and laid them both on a bed of coarse sea salt and completely covered them with more salt, before setting them aside while I sliced, to a thickness of less than 1/4 inch about 12 ounces of small German Butterball potatoes from Tamarack Hollow Farm, scattered them in a baking pan with a scant tablespoon of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and cooked them for 30 minutes or so in a 400º oven, or until tender, meanwhile thoroughly immersing the cod in several changes of water and drying the two pieces before placing them in the pan on top of the potatoes with a little oil drizzled on top and some freshly-ground pepper scattered over them as well, the pan returned to the oven for 8 to 12 minutes (depending on the thickness of the cod), garnished with ‘Hong Vit‘ micro Asian radish greens from Windfall Farms
• a handful of the very last of the curly winter kale from Tamarack Hollow farm, sautéed in olive oil in which one medium clove of garlic from Keith’s Farm, split, had first been allowed to sweat for a few minutes
• the wine was a French (Languedoc/Pays d’Oc) white, Demoiselles de Castelnau Cuvée L’Etang Picpoul de Pinet 2014
• the music was David Matthews’ Piano Concerto Opus 111

I’ve assembled this dish once before. That will happen sometimes, even consciously.  I remembered liking it a lot. It was as good last night as it was the first time; maybe even better, since there were no leftovers this time. We skipped a cheese course, to savor the pasta more.

It’s a rich-tasting primi or secondo, very Italian, and very simple to prepare.  As I wrote the last time, the concept of cooking a dry pasta without a pot of water seems somewhat counterintuitive (I forgot the process myself this time, and had started boiling a large pot of water before I realized my mistake), but once you’ve gone through the process, it makes perfect sense.

• inside a large non-reactive pot, briefly sautéed in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 medium cloves of chopped garlic from Keith’s Farm, 2 generously-sized rosemary sprigs from Stokes Farm, and 4 rinsed and filleted salted anchovies from Buon Italia, until the anchovies had broken up, then a 16-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes (already-chopped or whole, and ideally without basil), with the juices, added and cooked for 10 or 15 minutes, crushing with a wooden spoon if the tomatoes are whole, salt added to taste, the heat increased and a can of good chick peas, with the liquid, poured in, along with about 2 cups of good chicken broth or water, and a third sprig of rosemary, everything brought to a soft boil before half a pound of dry Afeltra Pasta di Gragnolo ‘Vesuvio’ was added (alternatively, use some other small pasta, like farfalle or a small penne or rigatoni), the heat now reduced to a healthy simmer until the pasta was cooked al dente and the broth thick, stirring frequently (this may take half an hour), adding more liquid if necessary, spooning it into bowls, drizzled with a little olive oil, and sprinkled with good grated Parmesan cheese from Buon Italia [the basic recipe for the pasta comes from food52.com, but I have annotated it here, mostly to reflect my own experience]
• the wine was a very interesting Italian (Piedmont) red, La Casaccia Monfiorenza Freisa 2012 [NOTE: appellation now only shows the 2014 on its site], which was entirely new to us
• the music was by David Matthews, “September Music” and “Symphony No.4”, from this 1991 album, streaming on Spotify; later, lingering at the table, we listened to an absolutely beautiful new (2016) piece, ‘Let Me Tell You’, by Hans Abrahamsen, sung with incredible intensity and brilliance by the amazing soprano Barbara Hannigan (here, talking about the piece with the composer and Paul Griffiths, the author of the text)

(it looks a bit askew, but I wanted to save the piece of parsley)

 

I really love this dish, and please don’t tell the Italians, but nothing else works as well as a sort of mental ‘palate cleanser’ following a day or a sequence of days which had featured fairly rich meals.

• Italian-grain Afeltra spaghettetone from Eataly, cooked al dente, then tossed in a large, enameled cast iron pot in which two garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm, minced, and one crushed peperoncino had been heated in some olive oil before they were joined by cooked little neck clams from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, along with their cooking juices (the clams had been steamed open with a little water in a separate pot), the entire mix sprinkled with a bunch of parsley from Eataly, chopped, then served in shallow bowls
• slices of excellent sourdough bread from Rock Hill Bakehouse, in Gansevoort, NY, which is sold on Saturdays at the Union Square Greenmarket
• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Corvo Insolia 2014
• the music was a number of classical-era symphonies by contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart; all of these works area seriously underappreciated today, Gossec, Vanhal, Manhaut, and Kraus, performed by Capella Coloniensis

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.