{"id":7066,"date":"2016-02-15T01:19:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T01:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7066"},"modified":"2016-02-15T01:19:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T01:19:42","slug":"braised-sweetbreads-roasted-carrots-sauteed-cabbage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7066","title":{"rendered":"braised sweetbreads; roasted carrots; saut\u00e9ed cabbage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sweetbreads_carrots_cabbage\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought it would be so easy\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

Apparently these innards\u00a0themselves haven’t been considered modern, at least until recently. \u00a0I’m probably not the only one who’s been afraid to cook ris de veau<\/em>, although not for lack of an appreciation of their culinary pleasures.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0I attacked them in my own kitchen once, many years ago, working with the very elaborate and very precise instructions supplied by\u00a0Julia Child. \u00a0I 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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I do order them, in good restaurants, almost every time I see sweetbreads on a menu. \u00a0For the record, it’s\u00a0been one of the few appetizer or entr\u00e9e ‘centerpieces’ I don’t hesitate to\u00a0order when eating out, since I don’t expect to be\u00a0preparing it\u00a0myself\u00a0(oh,\u00a0the hardships of an active, and at least somewhat<\/em> adventurous\u00a0home cook – and his perfect muse<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Then\u00a0last 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.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0ended up going with what seemed to me the simplest and least constructed recipe of the few\u00a0I had come across. I was surprised that it\u00a0turned\u00a0out to be probably the most old-fashioned one. It was from my half-century-old copy of \u00a0Craig Claiborne<\/a>\u2018s \u2018The New York Times Cookbook\u2019 [$25 new here<\/a>; $10 to $15 here<\/a>, at Strand].\u00a0Years after I had bought it, as I moved into other styles of cooking, and\u00a0thinking Claiborne was a bit, well, ‘old-fashioned’, I had relegated it\u00a0to the top shelf in the kitchen, where it was both out of sight and out of mind, only returning it to\u00a0the company of\u00a0its ‘colleagues’ when I had a new, large bookcase built in another room.<\/p>\n

Lately I have found the 700-page volume\u00a0surprisingly\u00a0useful, 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).<\/p>\n

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