Absolutely Offal

Monday 19th November 2012
A very chilly breeze greeted me this morning.

 

There is a saying that the only bit of a pig you can't eat is the oink.
Well, I must say I'm a bit more fussy than that, but I do have very good intentions to use as much as I can of any animal that I raise for meat.

Having said that, the last thing left in the freezer will probably be a heart, a couple of kidneys or a wodge of liver. I think this is more because we have not been brought up to eat much offal and so we need to educate ourselves. Sue did make lots of liver pate out of the livers from the last pigs to go off, but it didn't turn out great. Very tasty, we just need to get the texture a bit finer.
We do enjoy fried liver, with bacon and onions. But a pig's liver is absolutely huge, so we need to eat it more often.
But as for the kidneys, heart and lungs...

There was a recipe on TV the other day for making faggots, which used liver, kidney, heart and even some lung (an organ which we have no idea how to use and always ends up going to a friend's very appreciative dogs).


So when the lambs came back at the end of last week, we dutifully placed the offal in the fridge with every good intention of doing something exciting with it while it was still fresh.
But please remember, this is set in the context of a kitchen being ripped apart and brick dust everywhere. Come last night, the bowl of offal was still sitting there. I decided that faggots would have to wait for another day, so sent the lungs off to the dog again.
But for a quick meal I decided we would have sausages and chips and throw in a little liver, kidney and heart. In the past, many years ago, I've cooked the latter two to oblivion in an effort to make them not appear like the actual organs of an animal!

But today I heeded all the advice dished out by celebrity chefs and just fried them all gently.

The result was absolutely delicious! I can't believe we've been missing out on this for all of our lives. Best of all was the heart - if I closed my eyes I would have thought it was best fillet steak, and I'm not exaggerating.

So offal is not so awful after all.

Now for those trotters sitting at the bottom of the freezer.