Actually cooking organ meats week after week
I was craving the savory flavors of puttanesca… but what to do on a Monday night? Add liver! Any night is a good night for liver, but I find that if I always start the week off well, everything is easier. I created a weekly meal schedule for our family many years ago… to be sure we would have a steady relationship with the most nutrient-dense foods. Chicken Liver Puttanesca was a great Monday night meal and is sure to have a repeat appearance in our home….
Fall Minestrone with Sweetbreads feels right on time. Leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter and a chill in the air means staying home is starting to feel so cozy again.Â
This recipe is one of my favorites and precedes this blog by a few years. It made an appearance on early lists… Me wondering if I could or would start this site. This week offallygoodcooking celebrates it’s fourth birthday. Hooray!  Â
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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.”…
Sweetbreads are so simple and elegant, they will pick up the flavors of anything you cook with them. Â 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!…
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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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, annual averages for 2015 time use surveys show women spending 37 minutes per day in ‘food and drink preparation.’ This is about 27% of all their household activities. Â This compares to 17 minutes spent by men; 20% of their total household activities. As I learned in Michael Pollan’s Cooked, this category basically counts up minutes spent opening packages and warming prepared food, assembling the prepared ingredients of a sandwich, and of course any actual chopping or preparation of food in a traditional sense that may occur.
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