Saturday, March 31, 2007

Where are the zombies when you need them?

Sweetbreads.
Also known as the 'ultimate organ meat'.
Also?
Offal.

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Italy, I'm researching a variety of regional specialties to try while I'm gadding about.

Many of the varied areas have special cheeses and breads, or delicious fish dishes (and, mmm, wine) that they hold as their gifts to the world.

Not Rome, though.

In Rome, it's offal.
And I'm just not sure how I feel about this.

I like to think that I shouldn't be squeamish about eating things like brains, pancreas and the innocent sounding thymus gland.
Curiosity about these dishes makes me want to try them, but part of me is already making it's feelings know.
My stomach doesn't seem to care, it's my own brains which are causing the ruckus.

Considering that I like to partake in a plate of liver and onions (and the occasionally kidney has been known to pass these lips) one could argue that I shouldn't have any problem savouring a bit of pan fried brain.
But even casually disguised behind a delicious sounding 'smoked maple-buttermilk puree', I'll know it's still brains.

I know I will have to try them.

I mean, if Anthony Bourdain (my culinary hero) can eat freshly chopped off seal face, surely I can indulge in some delicately cooked, tender morsels of sweetbreads. No?

Hope it's not (oh, forgive me) awful.

Excerpt from: 'The Nasty Bits' - Anthony Bourdain

(If I may just interject here? This following passage is very...uh...juicy. May I suggest NOT eating while reading the following passage? Just, you know, in case.)

I WENT SEAL HUNTING yesterday.
At eight a.m., swaddled in caribou, I climbed into a canoe and headed out onto the freezing waters of the Hudson Bay with my Inuit guides and a camera crew.
By three p.m., I was sitting cross-legged on a plastic-covered kitchen floor listening to Charlie, my host, his family, and a few tribal elders giggling with joy as they sliced and tore into a seal carcass, the raw meat, blubber, and brains of our just-killed catch. Grandma squealed with delight as Charlie cracked open the seal's skull, revealing its brains -- quickly digging into the goo with her fingers. Junior sliced dutifully at a kidney. Mom generously slit open one of the eyeballs (the best part) and showed me how to suck out the interior as if working on an oversize Concord grape.
From all sides, happy family members were busily dissecting the seal from different angles, each pausing intermittently to gobble a particularly tasty morsel. Soon, everyone's faces and hands were smeared with blood. The room was filled with smiles and good cheer in spite of the Night of the Living Dead overtones and the blood (lots of it) running across the plastic.
A Bonanza rerun played silently on the TV set in the normal-looking family room adjacent as Mom cut off a piece of snout and whisker, instructing me to hold it by the thick, strawlike follicles and then suck and gnaw on the tiny kernel of pink buried in the leatherlike flesh. After a thorough sampling of raw seal brain, liver, kidney, rib section, and blubber, an elder crawled across the floor and retrieved a platter of frozen blackberries. She generously rolled a fistful of them around in the wet interior of the carcass, glazing them with blood and fat, before offering them to me. They were delicious.
Words fail me. Again and again.
Or maybe it's me that fails the English language. My depiction of the day's rather extraordinary events is workmanlike enough, I guess…but, typically, I fall short. How to describe the feeling of closeness and intimacy in that otherwise ordinary-looking kitchen? The way the fifteen-year-old daughter and her eighty-five-year-old grandmother faced each other, nearly nose to nose, and began "throat singing," first warming up with simultaneous grunts and rapid breathing patterns, then singing, the tones and words coming from somewhere independent of their mouths, from somewhere…else?
The sheer, unselfconscious glee (and pride) with which they tore apart that seal -- how do I make that beautiful? The sight of Charlie, blood spread all across his face, dripping off his chin…Grandma, her legs splayed, rocking, rocking a crescent-shaped chopper across blubber, peeling off strips of black seal meat…How do I make them as sympathetic, as beautiful, in words as they were in reality?
"Without the seal, we would not be here," said Charlie. "We would not be alive." A true enough statement, but not an explanation. You'd have to have felt the cold up there, have seen it, hundreds and hundreds of miles without a single tree. You'd have to have gone out with Charlie, as I had, out onto that freezing bay, a body of water nearly the size of an ocean, watched him walk across a thin, tilting layer of ice to drag the seal back to the canoe. Heard, as we did, the resigned calls from other hunters over Charlie's radio, stuck out in a blizzard for the night, realizing they would have no shelter and no fire.
You'd have to have been in that room.

From The Nasty Bits. Copyright (c) 2006 by Anthony Bourdain. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury USA.



Top Picture: Sweetbreads with smoked maple-buttermilk puree, smoked grapes, marjoram, caper-mustard chips and ground espresso. (But it's still a bit of brain.)

19 comments:

Janice Thomson said...

I am SOOOO glad I'm vegan...the very thought of brains is enough to get my stomach flip-flopping. But kudos to you girl if you can manage to eat any kind of sweetbreads or headcheese!

Jarod said...

Just got back from Rome/Napoli - I'm about ten pounds heavier with a big, fat smile on my face! That's right - Stuffed like a giant, useless, happy blob. You'll love the food I bet. Not to mention walking in the footsteps of ancient Gods. Eh!

kimber said...

I have eaten brain.

I will not do so again.

It isn't what it was that has turned me from eating brains again -- after all, I went into the meal knowing that a big slab of cerebellum was sliding down my gullet. It just tasted .... well, for lack of a better work, icky.

Maybe it was how they cooked it, or the spices used, but I don't think so. I think I can honestly say I'm not fond of the flavor of brain, and leave it at that.

Maybe Roman brains taste better. I wish so, for you. May your Roman brains be delicious. :)

geewits said...

If you do try all those pieces be sure and tell us all about it. I'm a food wimp myself. I will never try snails, caviar, pate or sushi. I once saw gefilte fish floating in a jar and felt sick. Heck I don't even eat mushrooms just because I know they are fungus! To each his own I guess and if I'm missing out on some great flavors, I'm cool with that. I wish I could join you in Italy, though. I would just stare into my wine glass while you ate that stuff!

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Lately it seems a lot of people seem very happy to be vegan.

When are you going to Italy? How long? Can we peruse the menu? Don't forget to report every culinary experience in detail so that I can copy it and claim that I have eaten sweetbreads!

Big Brother said...

Makes you wonder, it's a little bit like haggis... sounds awful, all the innards cooked with onions and veggies in the animals own stomach. Surprisingly it is rather good if yo can get over the graphic image
Brains on the other hand, not sure. Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease (mad cow) comes from eating infected animals, since it is a disease that attacks the brains of the animals and is long to incubate... I'll let you guess the rest.
I,m sure however that there are many other delicious things to eat in Italy Tai, you better exercise a lot. ;o)

Lori Stewart Weidert said...

Ugh, it creeps me out too, but I'm with you: would have to try it. I just had a plate of whole baby squids in Greektown, Chicago this weekend. No problem with them except that the heads were still on them; they were kind of "scooped out", just hanging there. I had to cut them off and hide them under the parsley.

Eric said...

Maybe if it was cooked, but raw and bloody, straight from the skull?

You are trying to "turn" me aren't you?

Vanne said...

I have tried haggis, head cheese, chicken feet, tongue, and snake. Once each.

I've even eaten worm pancakes (though that was in the name of fourth-grade science)...

But I don't believe I've had brains. With or without a side of fava beans and a light Chianti.

I know, I'll just try some of yours! :)

Jazz said...

I eat snails, and other assorted thing people find nasty - foie gras, delicious as it is is diseased liver after all, but the brains and kidneys and stuff... I'll pass.

This said, I'm sure there are passles of other good stuff to eat in Rome. Let us know how it is when you have it though!

Ian Lidster said...

Well, you just can't beat steak-and-kidney pie in my esteem, and I make a mean one.
And the food in Italy absolutely forgives them for Mussolini.

Ian

Mz.Elle said...

Ooooh ick!
But I admire such bravery!

Jo said...

I'm quite adventuresome when it comes to trying new food, but pancreas? I'll pass. It sounds as if you are going to have a wonderful time, in any case!

Josie

David Amulet said...

Yikes. I've eaten some funny things -- maybe that's fodder for a post soon -- but seal face is NOT on my list.

Yet.

-- david

Scott said...

Brain eh? Well if you can do it good on ya. I think it would be better if people told me after Ihad eaten it.

Pol* said...

Brain is fat and nerves, so I would assume it is greasy and gritty at the same time. Not a pleasant combo in my opinion. Then again I will try any accepted food once. Liver, kidneys, tongue, haggis, escargot, alligator, headcheese, HOT DOGS, squid, sea urchin row, salmon eggs,sushi of all sorts, geoduck.... these all have been tried and some I really like! Nothing beats bologna for scary contents though.

Smalltown RN said...

well i guess if they didn't tell you what you were eating you might be able to enjoy it more...but just the thought of eating some of those organs....well just makes me...cringe....hope you have a fantastic trip...and like someone else said if you do try these delicacies let us know....obtw...thanks for dropping by my blog....it's nice to meet someone from the big rock

Mike said...

Anthony Bourdain has become my culinary hero as well. I love his show on the travel channel (where you can actually watch him eat that seal, instead of just reading about it!)

Anyway, I'll try just about anything once. In fact, I'll try just about anything two or three times. Unless it's Vegemite.

tsduff said...

Tai - man alive girl, why are you going to eat brains? My sweetie and I are going to Italy at the end of next month, and we aren't planning on eating anything at all with brains :-O! Also, lovelovelove Anthony Bourdain - have you got his cookbook? Just because he is a shock cook doesn't mean we all have to eat that stuff!! :-D When is Italy for you?