Ox Heart Carpaccio

17 Oct

When you need a quick lunch at work, why don’t more people take a chunk of offal and a lime?

A question indeed. With all the talk of ceviche and the explosion of sushi in popularity, why isn’t carpaccio and tartare more routine? I don’t the answer, but I thought I’d try an alternative lunch last week and have some ox heart carpaccio. Queue: one lump beef, a tupperware, things to marinade.

I took my chunk of ox heart (read about that here) to work, chopped it into a size I would call a morsel, then squeezed a lime over the top and shook a bit of green tabasco on top. This was my pack-up. The tabasco is still in my bag and has come in handy on more than one occassion since. Always be prepared. The idea was in my 15 minute break, to have a healthy snack of heart and an orange. Main and pudding.

Here is the heart, immediately after being prepared:

And look at the difference:

It REALLY does cook the meat. This particular lunchtime I had to go back on the shop floor, so it marinaded for a bit too long I think (20 mins) – I think 10 mins would have been better. BUT it was well delicious. I added some Beauty Oil to the carpaccio mix. It was delightful. Obviously I wouldn’t eat this every day, but I would recommend trying it.

Maybe days when you need some extra iron? Or if you had a steak, you could trim a bit of and use it like this. Summer food. Hearty food. *pun intended*

For me, it was an experiment that went well. Try it and see!

Oxheart Revisited

15 Oct

I bloody love Brideshead. So does my friend Lauren. And on the last hot day of summer, we were finally converted to the baroque.

By Brisdeshead, I obviously mean the 1981 BBC version. Nothing else will do. I’m not sure if its Jeremy ‘rubs-thighs’ Irons, or the Oxford connection, or the phrase “I’m sorry about your pig”, but together it is sublime. Castle Howard is really the star though – much more than Jezza, or even ole Gielgud.

The other excitement waiting for me at Castle Howard was the butchery there, where they claim to have a good range of offal. FYI they do. And the butchers are lovely! And I got a haul of black pudding, sausages and … an ox heart!

A breakfast of kings went down the following day. But I was most excited about the ox heart! From the estate. Imaginary Catholic-guilt-wine-tasting-idolent-summer-interwar-halcyon-days-heart. Hearts are big. I really wanted to treat the Bridey (the heart) nicely, so decided to treat Bridey as if the cut was a roasting one – but pot-roasting.

First you have to prepare your heart. Abattoirs slash all hearts to check that they are healthy, so it does sort of butterfly open already. Remove the bits of sinew.

Here I am pulling the sinewy heart strings out. Pulling on Bridey’s heart strings. (I wouldn’t actualy sigh over Bridey, but I like the sound/concept.)

Did you know you can put your fist through the blood vessel of a cow? I didn’t until I tried. That’s how big cows are. Massive.

They were a couple of other things I wanted to do with my heart, as well as roasting it, so I sliced a nice muscular part of it off, for a rainy day … you’ll see what I mean …

Next was time to cook my heart. I used the slow cooker. I mean, why wouldn’t you? A better term if you don’t have a slow cooker would be casseroled whole heart, I guess. The idea is to cook a whole heart and then serve it as if its a joint (practise for Christmas really).

What I did was to put the heart in the slow cooker, cover it with water (maybe only just, so a little sneaky bit of heart peeps above the surface) and then cooked it on high for 6 hours. You can see its lying on a bed of onions, carrots and swede. There’s also quite a lot of fresh rosemary tucked around. Snuggly. Turn it over half way through the cooking time.

 

Here I am, doing some carving. Heart makes lovely slices. If I ran a delicatessen counter, I would totally sell slices of cold heart. (Puns about that on a postcard – or the comments – please …)

As you can see, a lovely gravy is made by the veg and the meat together, nothing else added.

Check the grain of that meat out! And it was super tasty. And only a few ingredients. Simple, delicious snackage. The heart was fresh and tender and tasted beefy. BEEFY. But in quite a sophisticated way. I will definitely cook ox heart again. I think it is my favourite of all the hearts.

You can also use it cold in sandwiches. Here is my train baguette. Baguette de coeur de boeuf. Baguette de coeur de boeuf de la Castle ‘Oward.*

 

Castle Howard (*cough cough* Brideshead) suits me, doesn’t it?**

*Can you tell my French is less good than my German – Blutpfankuchen indeed!

** I just realised and stood in front of the sign that said son’t stand on the steps. Sorry. Don’t do that.

 

Tears of Christ and the Fifth Quarter

12 Oct

Last week, my beautiful life partner took me for a surprise dinner to Salvo’s Restaurant. Salvo’s is a restaurant that I wanted to go to since I moved to Leeds really – everyone said how amazing the food was and my friends who had been to Italy said how authentic it was too. This however, was no usual night at Salvo’s, but a night of offal feasting!

Needless to say, the food was amazing. Each course surpassed the previous one and there was a lovely chatty atmosphere. I got to eat some NEW OFFAL and got some lovely ideas to bring home to cook too. If a night like this is done again, I’ll definitely go, because it was totally delicious.

Our menu came with some historical notes:

This is one aspect of Roman cooking which derived from the practice of paying the slaughterhouse workers of Rome (the most modern slaughterhouses in Europe were found in the Testaccio distrct in the 19th century) with some of the less noble parts of the beast which were then often sold on to the local hostelries. The skills and knowledge of the Roman cooks created culinary masterpieces from the cheapest ingredients, refining ‘Cucina Povera’ or the cooking of the poor, to gastronomic heights.

And so to dinner*:

Sopressata alla Toscana

Typical ‘insaccato’ from Tuscany made with the tongue and other pig bits, served with mustard fruit

What an elegant way to begin an Offal Supper, the mustard fruits were like spicy glace fruits and the ‘insaccato’ was delicious.

Crostino Toscano

Roughly chopped chicken livers with anchovies, capers and white truffle oil on toast

Amazing. Anchovy and liver is awesome.

O muss’ e puorco sorpressata

Pressed pig’s head with red chilli and amalfi lemon, watercress salad.

Nasturtiums always get my vote, so I was sold even before tasting. Post devourment, this was my favourite dish. Citrus cutting through the pork, so very delicious. Tongue-tingling in the best possible way.

Zuppa di lenticchie con cetechino di Modena

Umbrian lentil soup with cotechino sausage. Originated in Modena and now traditionally served at Christmas, but borne out of hardship in the 15th century, the pigs rind is stuffed with minced lean and fat pork and cooked slowly.

Daz’s favourite. Served with some fresh shaved fennel to help cut through the richness.

Risotto con midollo di vitello

Risotto with veal bone marrow

New offal to me. Marrow in the risotto, as well as in the bone. Plus I loved delving in the bone with a teaspoon. (I couldn’t believe that the people near us didn’t eat theirs – I almost asked if I could have it, but felt I ought to be more decorous than that.)

Rognoni trifolati al senape

Lamb’s kidneys in grain mustard sauce with barone sourdough.

Yum. I ran out of things to mop the sauce up with. Again I restrained my gluttonous self from actually licking the plate.

Linguine con aglio, olio e animelle d’agnello

Pasta with garlic, olive oil and chilli, served with lambs sweetbreads alla pizzaiola

At this point I was so excited by each course that I kept forgetting to snap a photo. It was better presented before I dived in. Alla pizzaiola is with tomatoes and capers according to the staff we asked. Capers appear to be an ingredient I’m not using enough of. Again, gorgeous.

Coda alla Vaccinara

Old Roman style oxtail with celery and pine nuts, enriched with bitter chocolate, pecorino mash.

Lovely. I would have never thought to serve a chunk of oxtail as a cut in its own right. Lovely sauce and the cheesiest mash ever.

Here I am eating the prickly pear fruit brought round to freshen all our palates before dessert. Gip (one of the owners I think) brought it round and explained that he imported it to sell, but ate most of the stock himself! I’d never tried it – I would say to me it was a bit like a cross of watermelon and carrot, but a little drier than that would sound. Daz (who hates fruit) manfully tried it, but it wasn’t his cup of tea. I’d go for it again.

Sanguinaccia

Pig’s blood and chocolate pot with chilli almond shortbread.

I was pretty excited to see this on the menu as it’s a pudding I’ve been meaning to make all year. Very tasty.

Thank you very much Salvo’s for making such a delicious dinner. I loved all the courses, the service was lovely and the atmosphere great. I was also really intrigued to see quite a mix of different people there too – offal is clearly a universal love! If you’ve not eaten there yet, GO, I don’t think anyone would be disappointed!

*Please note, my pictures were taken on my phone – for clearer, professional shots of the food, please go to the Salvo’s website.

Foodie Penpals the Seventh

7 Oct

Woah there. Seven months of Foodie Penpals … Wahooza! Seven months of getting ace parcels of deliciousness to my door? Wahoooooooooooooooo.
This month I was paired with two Sarahs. Sarah who I sent my parcel to runs a blog about lots of things, but one of the most important aspects is her candid discussion of mental health. You can read about how she found the package at her blog ‘Make-up and Mirtazapine’.

My parcel came from another Sarah, who has her own writing blog here. And once more, what a lovely parcel I got!

I did my usual ritual of saving it and then settling down with a cuppa and some cake, for the unpacking!

What would be inside my box of wonder?

All the amazing things! Sarah had clearly read through other posts and worked out what things I’m interested in and what sort of things I like. She set out by saying that she tried to theme it around Rosemary and sent some from her garden. Then there was some chilli vinegar, some parmesan biscuits, some chilli chocolate, a liquorice bar, some apple and elderflower tea, some rosemary cake and a pot of dukkah, which is a spice blend that you can add to everything! There was also some interesting infomation about rosemary and how it pairs really well with dark chocolate.

A great box of lovely new things to try and lovely homemade things to sample.

The dukkah was pretty exciting – I put it on top of some soup I made this week, which made it super tasty! The soup was a lentil, home-cured pancetta, chard and cavolonero soup. Or a veg box special in a less-pretentious tone.

The powder on top is the dukkah, which is a blend of sesame, almonds, hazelnuts, cumin, coriander, sugar and salt. I really like it. Other suggestions are to dip freshly baked bread into it and to sprinkle it over salads and cous cous. Another flavour of dukkah that the company does is pistachio and sumac, which I might try to re-create at home!

I’m sure I’m going to create some more delicious things from this great box of tricks too!

Thanks again for another lovely foodie penpal month, if you’re inclined to join in, please go over to the lovely RockSalt’s page and sign up.

 

Rabbit and Rosemary Ragu

3 Oct

As part of the year of the offal, rabbit (and all other game) is totally allowed. Wild animals are definitely free range, they can choose their own diet and usually death by shotgun is pretty surprising and fast. A win all round.*

Rabbit is a meat I really love, but whenever I’ve cooked with it before, I always feel like I haven’t helped it fulfill its culinary potential. A bit dry. A bit flavourless. This time, I was determined to do some good cooking and have a lovely end product. To this end I employed my slow cooker (I know I’m repetitive), to simmer the rabbit slowly, creating a delicious stock and keeping the meat moist.

Rabbity goodness. I put the rabbit (already jointed) in the slow cooker with a generous sprig of rosemary (sent by my foodie penpal) and covered it all with water. I then left it on high for 8 hours.

The next stage was to separate the stock from the meat (with the future idea of rabbit risotto), then the meat from the bones, thus creating a platter of rabbit for sandwiches and also said risotto. I did some excellent anatomy as well. Rabbits have chunky thigh bones – check out the scary spine too …

 

Primeval!

To make your rabbit ragu, it is of course simple. Cook an onion with some garlic til it is all softened. Add a teaspoon of rosemary and as much rabbit as you feel like. Add a tin of tomatoes and simmer for about twenty minutes. Cook your pasta ten minutes before, drain and serve with some tasty ragu atop!

 

 

Next time you’re buying a chicken to cook and separate, please think about doing it with a rabbit.

 

*I do recognise that sometimes the birds are injured and need their neck wringing. That is less pleasant, but still if you have a good gundog pretty fast. I would rather that than leukemia.

The versatility of Cold Oxtail – part 3

25 Sep

Continuing my flirtation (that’s becoming more of an obsession) with the cold offals, is the last chapter in the suggestions I came up with for things to do with a cold ox tail. This recipe also put me in the new territory of baking bread (don’t judge too much). I guess it’s also a kind of Americana too …

So, in the words of Katherine Hepburn “Hot Dawg!”, this was good.*

To bring anyone new up to date, I have recently been bemoaning the fact  that you can’t find ready made offal sandwiches in Leeds. This has caused me to get experimental with cooking and cooling my own offals. The legacy of which began in posts one and two and continues now.

I welcome you to the Inaugural Presentation of the Ox Dog. That’s right. An Ox Dog. A hot dog, filled with ox tail. Ox dog. Ox dog. Ox. Dog.

The real inspiration behind here was a post from RockSalt about making hot dog rolls, which you can find here. I trust Carol Anne and believed when she said how simple they were to make. They are. I’m no bread baker, but even I managed to make some presentable rolls.

This is them before they got ovened. The recipe is super simple, so please do have a look and have a go. Basically you add yeast to water, let it bubble, then add egg, flour and salt. You don’t knead it very much. They take ten minutes to bake. The whole process is forty minutes – what’s not to love? Mine are all yellow because I used canola oil in the batter, which is orange to look at! I think they look sunshiney, or jaundiced, depending on your outlook on the world.

Whilst my rolls were getting doggy (?) in the oven, I made my filling. I took the now dwindling bowl of cold oxtail out of the fridge and added it along with some sliced peppers to a pan and gave them a good frying. The peppers and the oxtail go all sticky in the pan together.

Once it all looks suitably delicious, turn the heat off and if ten minutes have gone by since you put your rolls in, get them out too. Then either wait and fill your rolls once they’ve cooled, or don’t wait, get indigestion from hot bread and eat straight away. I put some cheese on top and grilled them.

I should point out, my grill is very fierce and you probs shouldn’t actually burn them. However, this was a lovely snack, made from stuff I had already (using up ends of peppers). This was probably the fifth meal from my oxtail, which is pretty good going considering I was working with pure meat and stock.

I would definitely make these again – I would even cook an oxtail especially for these – Halloween here I come!

 

*That is also a clue. And it is the Katherine Hepburn portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the Aviator, not any other KH – in case you were confused and couldn’t remember her saying that in the African Queen.

Yorkshire Tasting Menu, Dough Restaurant

20 Sep

If you haven’t been to Dough in Leeds, then you should because it’s really amazing. Luke (who is clearly a totally awesome chef) creates beautiful dishes. He is also very helpful and supportive to offaltarians like me who don’t know what to do with trotters.

The idea of the Yorkshire Tasting Menu was/is (I believe it happens every year) to appreciate the beautiful bounty of Yorkshire, my adopted county. (A Lincolnshire tasting menu would be haslet and/or chine and/or sausages, Brussel Sprouts and Margaret Thatcher’s toenail-clippings.* I am glad the last prime minister to be born in Yorkshire was Asquith and he was Liberal.) At £58 for seven courses, including booze , I a) got a right bargain and b) was pickled by the end of the evening.

I loved eating here and can’t recommend it enough. I’ll be visiting again as soon as I can. The food was beautiful and I got some lovely ideas for combinations to try at home. The picture is followed by the dish and the accompanying alcoholic/non-alcoholic drinks. We really liked how much attention was given to the booze-free boozes (though a little explanation of why the flavours were chosen, like what happened for the boozes wouldn’t have gone amiss). There’s nothing much else to say, other than to reiterate that it was EXCEPTIONAL and repeat the menu with some increasingly fuzzy bad phone pictures.**

Canapes – hot dog, sausage roll, pork pie, chorizo – porkalicious!

(Leeds sparkling rhubarb Prosecco/Rhubarb lemonade)

Leeds yellow tomato Bloody Mary gazpacho with Artisan bakery olive bread

This was amazing. I don’t like tomatoes and would have NEVER chosen this. It was probably my personal highlight in a night of amazing food. This proves that Luke can clearly make everything delicious – so if you visit don’t let your previous tastes inform your choices.

Whitby crab cake – tartar sauce – pea puree – garlic chunky chip

(Ilkley Brewery Mary Jane/Sparkling apple and elderflower)

Faggots in Leventhorpe red wine – piccalilli – Yorkshire blue – celeriac puree

(Black Sheep Yorkshire Square/Red grape juice)

Allotment blackcurrant and gin sorbet

East coast mackerel – cauliflower and cheese cake – Roundhay rhubarb coulis – feathering late asparagus

(Leventhorpe Seyval Blanc 2009/Orange and cherry lemonade)

Confit of Thirsk lamb leg chepher’s pie – wrapped in filo pastry – Fountain’s Gold cheddar – yoghurt and mint sauce – beetroot salsa

(York Brewery Yorkshire Terrier/Strawberry and kiwi juice)

Warm Yorkshire parkin – Yorkshire tea ice cream – dark chocolate crisp – cherry sauce

I accidentally ate all of mine before thinking that I should take a picture. Yorkshire tea ice cream is BOSS!

(Homemade Vodka iced cherry tea/Homemade ginger beer)

*This is sheer flippancy. Lincolnshire grows and produces loads of lovely food. Don’t be put off visiting – no one has cannibalised Maggie (yet)! Also, I am not a Tory and do not think by eating any part of Margaret Thatcher that I will become one. I’m civilised. I know I’d have to eat her brain, not her toenails.

**This is no reflection on the restaurant and more on my crap phone and unsteady hands.

Review: Energex Plus

19 Sep

A slightly anomylous post I know, but a while ago I was sent some Energex Plus capsules to try and review. I wanted to try them because as well as be interested in all of the meat, I am also interested in all of the herbs, supplements and healthy eating things. I might not follow them all the time, but I do find it all FASCINATING.

The Energex Plus capsules appear to basically be a herbal ProPlus. They are however sugar-free and as well as providing a caffeine hit, they also act as a supplement for 100% of your RDA of B vitamins. I was very intrigued as to what would supply the caffeine hit – I should have guessed it would be guarana. I think they are vegetarian, but you should double check that if its a crucial factor for you.

At the time that I received these in the post, I was going through a caffeine-free period, so didn’t take them. I was very run down and because caffeine (along with many other things) can inhibit your immune system, I put the coffee and tea away for a while.

However, now I have a dissertation to write, an overdue academic article and lots of other things to write, concentration is at a premium. I want to get it all done, but sometimes the voices start singing and the last thing you want to do is sit at a desk and do thinking and typing.


They are very big though … it’s the size of a finger joint. Having swallowed one, I can see how easy it would be to swallow a bit of finger!

To the verdict: having tried it on several occassions I can say that it does work and it does pep you up, but it is not for me. The first time I used it I was volunteering and inputting infomation to a database. I felt a bit blocked, so took a capsule hoping for a ‘lift’. I did have more energy, but very little attention-span. Not to be deterred, I tried it again whilst working at my desk and a similar thing occurred – my internet-distraction-ometer went through the roof!

I gave the issue some consideration. I think they key issue is that I’m probably not as tolerant of caffeine as I used to be, so a whole tablet is simply too large a dose for me. I put this hypothesis to the test and took a capsule at work (I am a shop assistant amongst other things) and the physical aspect of standing and moving seemed to counter-act the jitters.

Luckily there’s a neat line you can break, so you only take a half. Interesting that the inside isn’t green but pale brown, isn’t it? Green is a ‘friendlier’ colour.

To sum up, if you’re active and used to caffeine, these will probably make a great alternative to espresso/Red Bull/ProPlus or whatever else it is you use to keep awake and focussed. I think they are more effective than the caffeine tablets I took when I was studying for my finals. From a health perspective, I wouldn’t take them if you’re ill (you don’t want to go over the edge) and I’d think closely about how much caffeine you consume regularly before taking a whole one. All in all a good product that I think will work well for lots of people. You can buy it here for £8.95.

The versatility of Cold Oxtail – part 2

18 Sep

In the part the first, we saw an ox tail ramen soup made purely from the ox tail stock. You can find that post here. It was of course concerned with the stock. Now we turn our salivating attention to the meat. Lovely, sticky, cardomanny, tamarindy meat.

The reson I decided to cook an ox tail and eat it cold was due to the paucity of cold offal snacks available to your average offaltarian. Do you ever see kidney sandwiches in the supermarket? No. Is there a liver salad waiting to be dressed in the chilled cabinet? No. I work. Sometimes I get tired of cheese sandwiches. Or tongue sandwiches (also packets of cold pressed tongue are phenomenally expensive – 75p per slice – I’m not Midas). Anyway you don’t get pre-made tongue sandwiches in Leeds.

So, to cold lunches. Salad. And ox tail. Ox tail salad. Lordy lordy! I was well addicted to ox tail salad for a while.

Here is one salad I made. I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by telling you how to make a salad. This one was based around spinach, broad beans, oxtail and a stale packet of mixed nuts.

Here is a tupperware salad, made of spinach, coleslaw mix and ox tail.

The secret behind these salad is of course the dressing. This I will tell you about, at length and naturally in excruciating detail, for my laws on salad dressing are Gospel.

The joke is, my dressings are pretty easy. Oil (I use Neals Yard Beauty Oil) which is a blend of hemp, avocado, flax seed, pumpkin seed and evening primrose oils. I think it tastes really nice. Then I use usually either lemon or lime juice. And I’ll add maybe some garlic, or some harissa, maybe mustard!

This summer I got well into flavouring my own vinegars! The idea first came to me on the old herb course as vinegars are another traditional way to preserve the qualities of medicinal herbs. I didn’t make any medicine-grade vinegars, but I did make strawberry vinegar, thyme vinegar and honeysuckle vinegar. Now I’m adept at the vinegar-making, I’m going to make some Autumn vinegars too – bramble and elderberry are on the list.

Again, it’s another fancy thing that’s really simple to do. For the strawberry vinegar, you add some strawberries to some cider vinegar, leave it on the windowsill for a week then strain. For the honeysuckle a couple of weeks. For the thyme one month. Strain and bottle.

Ox tail salads, in their infinite variety, are IMMENSE. Next time you buy one, reserve some meat and eat it cold. Yumyumyum!

Mentioned in the Observer

17 Sep

Yesterday the Observer A to Z of food, I was mentioned. In a nice way. So that’s very lovely.

I’m very grateful to my fame in the Sun, otherwise the Observer wouldn’t have heard about my blog (chicken and egg situation). If you’d like to read it online, the link is here. Am I a food trend now?

Thank you for visiting, I might make some changes this week, so do keep popping back.