Offally Good Cooking

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

Janine Farzin

Weeknight Carpaccio and love for my grassfed farmers

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After last’s weeks post about loving yourself, this week I’ve been thinking about loving the environment, and by extension, my grass-fed farmers. Grass-fed farmers are today’s environmentalists, providing healthful and sustainable meats while restoring the soil and the ecosystem. If you want to eat your meat raw, as you occasionally should, grassfed is really the only feasible way. And Weeknight Carpaccio is the easiest way.

Factory farming

In 2001, Fast Food Nation was published and it came into my hands. I devoured this book, and it shook me.

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Grilled Chicken Hearts and Artichoke Hearts with Homemade Mayonnaise

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With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, show some love for yourself and your besties with hearts and hearts! Grilled chicken hearts and artichoke hearts are a perfect appetizer or main course.  Of course, we can’t give what we don’t have. So first, take a moment to feel the love. An easy way to start is to acknowledge and appreciate your own magnificence – all 37 trillion cells, in perfect concert….

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Grilled Tongue with Salsa Verde & how to prepare and peel beef tongue

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I’ve heard Sally Fallon Morrell say that tongue is one of the four prized fatty organ meats – along with liver, brains and marrow. As it turn out, it isn’t an organ at all… It’s actually a muscle, just one that happens to be high in good fats and cholesterol. Along those lines, it’s easy to eat, without the jiggly texture of some other organs, but also more tender than all other muscle meats….

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Chicken Liver Mousse and how to get enough iron

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Eating liver is the best way to get enough iron and avoid anemia. For me, the anti-fatigue factor of sufficient iron is the only way to survive a busy schedule! A large batch of Chicken Liver Mousse might be the easiest way to include it in your diet.

The anti-fatigue factor?

There’s a popular 1950s research paper touting the anti-fatigue factor in liver.  In the experiment, there are three groups of mice with a varied diet.  The first group ate a standard diet, the second had a B-vitamin supplement, and the third had a liver powder supplement.  After several weeks, they were placed in cold water to swim.  The first and second groups swam for 13.3 and 13.4 minutes, respectively.  The final group, with the liver supplement, swam for over two hours. The researchers were so taken by these anti-fatigue rats, that they were ultimately released…

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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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