 |
OK everyone, it is time for my first-ever blog event! We have Wine Blogging Wednesday, Grow Your Own, Paper Chef and all kinds of other food blogging events, but thus far I have not yet found one that centers on meat.
Meat being my specialty, I thought it a good idea to start what will be a regular “Meat & Greet” among fellow readers and bloggers as a way to highlight meat as an ingredient. Some months will be simple, others baroque. Some ingredients will be easy, like pork, others less so. Like, well, this month:
The theme for this inaugural Meat & Greet will be offal. Variety meats, offal, the Nasty Bits, call it what you will. Offal cookery occurs in every cuisine and can be as varied as pickled tongue to grilled hearts to sauteed sweetbreads to boiled brains (not sure I like that one).
I am specifying neither a type of offal nor a critter from whence it came: Your choice. Submit your recipe before May 1, then I will post a round-up shortly thereafter.
And there’s a special bonus for this first event: The recipe chosen as the tastiest by a variety of offal eaters will win the much-coveted The Good Cook: Variety Meats, edited by Richard Olney. It is a hard-to-find classic of the genre and I am willing to give away a copy in the interests of exploration and fun.
Here are the rules:
- Post up a blog item on your favorite variety meat dish by May 1, and email me the following at: scrbblr AT hotmail DOT com. (Your subject line should be MEAT & GREET.)
- Who you are and where you live.
- Your blog’s URL.
- A permalink to your offal post.
- A small (100 pixel x 100 pixel or thereabout) image of your dish, if possible.
- As a courtesy, please link to this announcement when you post.
Looking forward to hearing from you all!
What a great idea! I just found a copy of Variety Meats myself, and it’s a fantastic prize for this contest.
Pates, Terrines and Gallatines (and those could be in a different order) is another great volume from that series.
It is indeed a great volume; I am slowly getting a grip on gallatines and terrines. Hope you two will enter – I am looking forward to what you may create!
Sounds like an interesting contest. I was gonna take you up and try hog heart last week, but I’m afraid my shot placement pretty much negated anything short of sausage there.
As a semi-aside, and maybe I’ll just have to wait and watch… but how does one prepare a tongue for cooking? I have enjoyed it many times at chinese markets, but I have no idea where to start.
Makes me wish I still had the bison heart in my freezer. Alright, to the butcher I go…
I will be posting a recipe, I don’t know if I will actually be making it. A 6 lb pate needs a reason, however I do have a memorial service that we think we need a pate for in the right time period.
It will be a Country Pate with smoked sweetbreads.
In anycase since I already have a copy of Variety Meats, please do not award it to me even in the slight chance that I would win.
Cool – looking forward to seeing what you two come up with. Never had smoked sweetbreads before…
I picked up the idea from a cooking course based on the menus of Paul Bocuse at CIA. A four course meal, we prepped everything then did and ate the smoked sweetbreads. The Tournados a la Henry IV (I think – fillet on artichoke heart with sauce), potatoes duchase (spelling here) and an tart of some sort, perhaps apple.
Wrong cooking course, the smoked crisp sweetbreads came from one based on the menus of The Mansion at Turtle Creek with an entree of venison chop.
Just read the post and love the idea of a contest! It may be just the excuse to go get a bit of tongue and do some tacos, or try to replicate the first tongue I ever tasted at a Basque restaurant in Boise that had an amazing gravy/sauce with it. Ooo…and then there’s the pate wrapped in caul fat from Viande and….
Although I am far more interested in wine, I shall give this topic a try. Great theme
What a great event idea! I love offal, though I don’t prepare it very often.
Braised beef tongue, here I come…
WOW….I am so happy to finally have a meat event! I’m from MI and we eat meat and gravy is a food group. I’m also a sausage maker, please keep this in mind for a future theme as we’re due for some more grinding and stuffing soon.
My mother used to prepare beef tongue so well the meat would fall apart. She made sandwiches and put them in our school lunches, and I remember my schoolmates were always very grossed out when we discussed what was in the lunch box. Ah, those are good memories!
Great idea!!! I’ve got some bloody dish to share
Is caul fat considered to be offal because I have a perfect recipe.
Hmmm. I’m sorry but I’m going to have to say “no” on the caul fat, Ivy. I love using it (when I can find it), and caul fat does come from inside a pig, but it is just a lacy wrapping of fat used to hold things together, and when you cook it it pretty much dissolves.
Now if you wrapped a kidney or a heart or tongue or liver or sweetbreads or something else in caul fat, that’d work. Tripe counts, as does spleen, lights (lungs), even feet or head.
Incidentally, jowls and oxtails do count as offal in most cookbooks, although I really can’t see why. They are pretty standard muscle meat in my book. But if you want to use those ingredients, you’re in!
Again, sorry about the caul fat.
Thanks Hank. I do have a recipe for wrapped liver with caul and liver wrapped in baby lamb instines but I won’t have time to post for them as I will be preparing them on Orthodox Easter Day (27th April). I have one ready with stuffed intestine (not a typical sausage). Would that recipe count as offal?
Not a typical sausage? OK, I’m intrigued. That’ll do — but remember, the deadline for Meat & Greet is May 1, so you would have a few days to write up the liver dish if you wanted to. Either way, sounds good!
OK I have a reason to make a pate this weekend which will use liver and sweetbread, assuming I can find sweetbreads, else it will be pork liver and chicken liver.
So I think I’m good to go.
Will you still be accepting entries the night of May 1st? The day holds a particular significance in respect to the dish I have in mind.
Yes, Adele, I will take entries until midnight Pacific Time May 1, which actually bleeds into May 2 for those east of us…
http://blog.charcuteire.com/2008/04/29/country-pate.aspx
As mentioned this is an unofficial entry in the offal contest. I already have the book. I’ll get the e-mail off soon.