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Offally Good Cooking

Delicious meals with the best cuts so you can look & feel younger

Janine Farzin

Long-simmered and tender Tripe with White Beans

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Long-simmered and tender Tripe with White Beans is inspired by Marcella Hazan’s Honeycomb Tripe with Parmesan Cheese.  I had previously processed and prepared the tripe with vinegar and salt, as I describe here.  The remaining ingredients are nearly all pantry staples.

Hazan describes tripe in such an appealing way. “At one time tripe was so popular that restaurants used to specialize in it, preparing it in a score or more of of different ways. One of the reasons it has becomes such a rare item may be that people no longer know how to prepare it. When you know how to go about it, tripe rewards you with tenderness so succulent, and a fragrance so appetizing, that more expensive cuts of meat cannot match.”…

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Pozole, Mexican pig’s head soup

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I’ve cooked Pozole a few times, and Menudo dozens of times, but just recently realized how similar they are.  In short, you’ve got a rich broth, flavored with toasted chiles, topped with some fresh condiments.  Where Pozole uses the pigs head for the rich broth (and hominy), Menudo uses marrow, trotters, and tripe. …

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Eggnog featuring raw eggs, of course – an easy, original recipe

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Eggnog, previously known as milk punch or egg milk punch, is a great beverage any time of year.  And a delicious vehicle for consuming raw eggs (and milk). Culturally though, it still has a holiday feel.

My 1940’s copy of 300 Ways to Serve Eggs and 1945 Bartender’s Friend have nearly identical recipes.  Though 300 Ways with Eggs has a dozen or more variations. These include mixing up the alcohols or substituting some or all of the milk/cream with juices, coffee, or cider.  As opposed to single servings, Bartender’s Friend offers a quart-sized base recipe….

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Sweetbreads with tomatoes and peas – celebrating its half birthday!

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Sweetbreads are so simple and elegant, they will pick up the flavors of anything you cook with them.  Leave it to Marcella Hazan to pair with butter and sweet peas; this recipe is adapted from her original in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

Sweetbreads with tomatoes and peas is truly a summer dish – when fresh shelled peas and tomatoes are weighing down my bags at the farmer’s market.  But somehow, on it’s half birthday, I realized that it was a bit Christmas-y, too!  And besides, despite my devotion to eating seasonally, canned tomatoes and frozen peas are pretty universal in our home.

I think that this dish is perfect with rice and a salad.  In the summer, use the rice as a vehicle for broth.  In the winter, a steaming cup to precede your meal would be lovely.  Happy holidays!…

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Deviled Kidneys (and Other Innards) for Breakfast

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Deviled Kidneys with Leftover Brussel Sprouts and Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Fergus Henderson has a recipe for Deviled Kidneys in his book, The Whole Beast. He introduces it as “The perfect breakfast on your birthday, with a glass of Black Velvet (half Guiness and half Champagne).”  If this dish is good enough for a birthday breakfast, it was definitely something we needed to try.  And wait, did that say breakfast? Should we be eating kidney for breakfast?! Yes, we should.  See, it says ‘breakfast’ right there in the book.

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Liver Tonic, a high-octane Bloody Mary

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“Tonic, noun, 1. a medicinal substance taken to give a feeling of vigor…  Adjective, 1. giving a feeling of vigor or well-being; invigorating.”

The Bloody Mary has always been known as a cure for a variety of ailments.  The tomato juice alone is probably the key element, as it is rich in vitamins and minerals.  Most notably, these include vitamin C, the antioxidant lycopene, and the electrolytes potassium and sodium.  However, with the Bloody Mary, there is always the risk of letting the cure become the cause.

To avoid any risk and maximize benefits, we skip the vodka and add raw grated liver.  And there you have it, near and dear to my heart: the Liver Tonic.

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Italian liver piccata and how I learned to love liver

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It wasn’t always this way.  In the beginning, I had to force myself to finish a serving of liver.  Week after week, I’d lovingly prepare this Italian Liver Piccata (adapted from Marcella Hazan in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking), if not with some trepidation.  Then I would serve it with confidence – if not a ‘fake it til you make it’ kind of confidence – to my family.

I had learned that organ meats are the foundation of a healthful diet, with liver being the most important.  And I wanted a healthy family.  But I didn’t grow up eating organ meats, and my mom had not said kind things about her own experience.  Yet, my 100-year old grandmother (my best barometer of ‘food’ and food quality) served liver every week and still loves it.  I knew it was the best way to fortify myself and my family; I had to get on board.

Here’s how it would go down:

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Menudo: Mexican tripe soup, or affectionately, cow’s stomach soup

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Even though I have a savory palate and wouldn’t mind soup most mornings for breakfast (especially through winter), the kids don’t love that idea.  In fact, I would say that they don’t even like that idea.  Unless, of course, it is menudo, Mexican tripe soup, as adapted from Rick Bayless in Authentic Mexican Cooking – affectionately known around our place as ‘cow’s stomach soup.’

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