It's tender. It's trendy. It's tongue.
As befits boneless tissue jam-packed with nerves, it's soft. It's also super-rich -- a single serving can have well over 50 grams of fat. That's why our Paleolithic ancestors craved it.
Now it's cool again. It's part of the offal movement that's sweeping the nation. The contestants on an episode of Top Chef last month sang an ode to beef tongue, which is now available as a ringtone.
Sampling tidbits crafted by noted Bay Area chefs last Friday night at the gala grand-opening reception of the three-month Berkeley Wine Festival, I happened upon paper-thin slices of smoked beef tongue prepared by Rick DeBeaord, executive chef of Berkeley's Café Rouge. The café has its own meat market, where DeBeaord and his staff smoke their own meats, cure their own sausages, and sell such offal-escent faves as caul fat, blood sausage, and head cheese.
DeBeaord's beef tongue was sunset pink and meltingly delicate. I ate it without at first realizing what it was. When he told me, I recoiled, remembering the blubbery tongue-and-white-bread sandwiches my mother used to pack in my school lunchbox. Tubules and papillae textured that gray flesh. The kids at school laughed till they cried.
But this --
"I haven't eaten tongue since I was twelve years old," I told DeBeaord.
He smiled. Winked.
"Welcome back."
Also at the reception, and also offalesque, chef de cuisine Alicia Jenish of Berkeley's Revival Bar & Kitchen was serving the cherry-blossom pink, delicately spiced, surprisingly light and ebulliently juicy rabbit sausages whose recipe she developed from a classic chicken-sausage recipe.
"I like eating rabbit," she told me, "so I thought: Why not?"
As for those who might lament the idea of putting bunnies into meat grinders, then boiling and eating the results, Jenish said:
"Don't be scared. And they're not that cute."
Butchery is back. And offal is back on the scene just as a cash-strapped America needs ideas for cheap meals. The stewed gizzards and scrambled brains that helped our forebears survive the Great Depression are getting a new lease on life, not only in the kitchens of the unemployed but even in high-end restaurants. Whatever goes around comes around -- and that counts for tripe.
"Lengua, the food that tastes you back!"
http://newyorkknowsbest.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/real-mexican-food-at-real-mexican-prices/
New York finally found a place with authentic Mexican food to speak to the stomach and soothe the soul :)
Interestingly enough, tongue used to be considered throw-away but the processing shops that processed meat. You might take one cow to slaughter and end up with 3 or 4 tongues in your batch if you wanted it. With a rise in hispanic population and culture I've watched the price of tongue rise in the grocery stores and since many Americans are afraid of eating it, the processing shops have taken to different tactics. Now if you take a cow to slaughter you have to make sure you ask for the tongue, otherwise they will quietly just keep it so they can resell it.
- Go to a delicatessen and order a tongue sandwich (on rye, of course), maybe with some cole slaw on it. That's a pretty standard and tasty way to try it.
- Another tasty way to eat tongue is head cheese (unfortunate name, perhaps), especially if you can get it from a good German pork store or delicatessan. It's tongue in aspic, and is sliced as a cold cut. Quite tasty.
Hearts are great, too. Ox hearts are huge and make a great roast; lambs hearts are smaller and a little fattier. Both are very tender with a great flavor. I buy head cheese on occasion, (though I prefer "brawn" from back home, (head cheese - peppers)) and can even get black pudding and haggis in this part of Ohio, too! Kidneys are delish either pan fried, (esp. as part of a British fry up), or in a steak & kidney pie. There's chitlin's too, (appears to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic). Never got on real well with tripe or liver, though...
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And as far as most kosher (or kosher-style) delicatessens are concernted, beef tongue has never gone away; in fact, last week I had a very yummy tongue sandwich on rye for lunch!