Offal Good

Chicago lifts foie gras ban!!!

“Mayor Richard Daley has repeatedly called the ban “silly” and said it made Chicago “the laughingstock of the nation” but was, until now, unable to convince council members to repeal the ban.”

That says it all!!

Congrats Chicago you won.

Forbes Traveler on offal

Forbes traveler wrote a piece called:

Deluxe Nose-to-Tail Meals

Joshua M. Bernstein 2008-05-12 11:30:52.0

© Heath Robbins Photography

LAUNCH SLIDESHOW
Offal-y good ox hearts, lamb spleen and more

Colin Alevras, chef at New York City’s Tasting Room, recently unveiled a luxury burger that blew diners’ minds. While the $23 price tag is chump change compared to the $75 foie gras-stuffed, black-truffle-topped burger at NYC’s DB Bistro Moderne, what sets Alevras’ meaty masterpiece apart is not decadent toppings but the meat itself.

The Old MacDonald burger, as Alevras dubs it, blends a grass-fed cow’s heart, liver, bone marrow, tongue, flatiron, brisket, shank and clod. It’s topped with raw cow’s-milk cheese and “mushroom ketchup,” and it’s served on a beer-bread bun. Fries are, incidentally, extra.

“I haven’t seen anybody reconsider the burger from the cow up. We don’t hide behind its casualness. We are remaking the world’s most overlooked food,” the chef recently told NYmag.com’s food blog, Grub Street.

Is Alevras’ creative hamburger a weirdo anomaly? No way. Nowadays, chefs are branching out beyond meaty ribs or tender filet mignon to embrace a nose-to-tail eating ethos.

“If you’re going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing,” British chef Fergus Henderson famously wrote in his book “The Whole Beast,” which touted the tastiness of tripe, trotters and internal organs. While many diners prefer to forget their flank steak was carved from a mooing creature, high-end dining now features a new face. Plus some hearts. And, occasionally, intestines.

“Organ meats don’t have to mean Mom’s overcooked liver,” explains Andy Nusser, head chef at New York City’s Casa Mono. The tapas-style small-plates eatery, which is owned partly by Mario Batali, offers unusual cuts—such as lamb’s tongue, duck hearts and cock’s combs. The latter is the fleshy red cap atop a rooster’s head; at Casa Mono, it’s simmered with red wine and porcini mushrooms until fork-tender.

“We’re returning to using the whole animal,” says Nusser, who has taken to sourcing entire organic pigs. “You’re not just picking up a phone and ordering parts. This makes you want to use every last bit. You don’t want to throw anything out.”

Especially not the noggin. “I really enjoy cooking a pig head,” Nusser says. “I like slowly simmering it and pulling the meat off the head, then taking the liquid it was cooked in and turning it into gelatin. It’s a journey to look at an ugly pig’s head and turn it into a beautiful terrine.”

Nusser’s adoration of long-overlooked animal parts has company. At Portland’s Le Pigeon, diners can opt for “foot and tail” croquettes or duck-duck-pigeon—roast squab with duck confit salad and duck-liver vinaigrette. Boston’s KO Prime slings sautéed calves brains and bone marrow with oxtail marmalade. Philadelphia’s Ansell Food + Wine fashions a fine, crispy lamb’s tongue served with mint.

But perhaps America’s most adventurous nose-to-tail restaurant is San Francisco’s rustic-Italian Incanto. On offer are lamb’s necks, pig trotters and a five-course nose-to-tail tasting menu perhaps including venison kidneys and chocolate-blood panna cotta. For executive chef Chris Cosentino (who also runs www.offalgood.com), it’s not about Fear Factor-style extreme eating. “It’s about viable cuts of meat that we have thrown into the trashcan for years. There’s been lots of talk about sustainable eating, and offal is sustainable eating. If you buy leeks, do you just throw away the tops? Or do you use them to make broth? When it comes to food, we’re very wasteful.”

Historically speaking, America wasn’t always so wasteful. During World War II, thrifty cooks stretched their ration stamps by buying cuts of tongue. In the South, pig’s hooves, fried pork skin and chitterlings (a fancy word for pig intestines) have long been integral to Mason-Dixon Line cuisine.

“We’ve gone away from our history,” Cosentino says. “Years ago, a slaughter was a neighborhood affair. One guy would come around and slaughter one or two pigs, then someone would make blood sausage. And the casing was made from the pig’s intestines. People always ask me, ‘Why do you serve poor people’s food?’ That’s really disrespectful to the animal.”

For squeamish eaters, Cosentino suggests a “gateway” meat: beef hearts. “It’s a muscle, not a filter”—like liver or kidneys—“so it’s very rich and has lots of minerals. It changes people’s perceptions.”

Harder to alter are USDA guidelines. The government bans numerous victuals like lungs that Cosentino would love to toss into a skillet. “Cow’s udder is absolutely delicious—it’s a shame I can’t serve it,” he says. “Flavor-wise, it’s a mammary gland, so it’s very rich and fatty.”

Such is the crux of whole-animal eating: Creating luxury where it’s least expected. For this reason, “cooking nose to tail isn’t a fad; it’s never going to go away,” says Casa Mono’s Nusser. “The bottom line is that people that are trying hearts and organs are surprised to find that they’re delicious. Anyone can cook it. To cook a pig’s head, you just need a big pot. Just go to a butcher and ask them to split the pig head in half, then you’re halfway there.”

PETA loves meat

It seems from a recent article in the NY times that was brought to my attention by serious eats, that PETA wants there to be meat, but only if it’s grown in a petri dish in a lab by doctors to feed the masses by 2012. And the best part is that they are going to pay one million dollars to the person who can produce it in viable commercial amounts.

Now isn’t this how we got into the factory farming problem that they are fighting against now, or is it just a way for them to get the bacon they all truly crave and can’t admit to eating. It is a sad day when we would rather cut down whole rain forests to produce soy beans, and waste precious dollars on fake meat production. I almost feel like we are stepping into a star trek scenario, and the next thing we know, we will only need to push a button and our whole meal will magically appear on a plate produced by scientists in a lab. Personally I would like my food to come from the farm, whether it be animal or vegetable. To me this is just a bullshit hoax for them to draw some needed attention to themselves.

For some interesting information on how fucked this process is listen to NPR Science Fridays show on the subject. Its like working with monsanto chemically altered food using artifical flavors and chemicals to make meat, yum I cant wait.
My 2 cents: take the money and spend it on stopping factory farming together with chefs that can help make that happen.

James Beard nominates offal

This past year has been a bit of fun, but when Meredith Arthur and Eric Slatkin came from Chow to film a video about obsessives they were all ears and, as usual, I was all mouth. Luckily, they caught every last bit of it on film. To my surprise, the video: Obsessives : Innards Working has been nominated by The James Beard Foundation in the webcast section under the Television Food Show, Local and National Category. Congratulations to Meredith and Eric for putting together a great video! As I wait with baited breath until June 6th-8th for winners to be revealed, I am honored that this has happened. Thanks to Chow for giving me a soap box to stand on and an outlet for the offal cause to be distributed worldwide. My voice may be loud, but I think we all know by now that the internet is louder.

Offal eaters rejoice…our voice is being heard.