Mondongo

Every time I bring up mondongo to someone who did not grow up in a Latin household, they ask me "Is that like mofungo?" Yes, in that they are both food. The similarities end there. Mondongo is beef tripe stew. 

Still with me? Good.

It's usually served over rice and readily available at lots of Latin restaurants. It's actually quite good, if you're not really sensitive about texture. Luckily, they have it at my local grocery store. This particular variation is Dominican, but lots of countries have their own spin on the dish. I did want to make it myself but it takes forever, requires like a billion ingredients, and (as described in my post on fried tripe) boiling tripe makes the room smell like stomach acid. My apartment mates are my friends, I can't do that to them.

You need:
A can of mondongo
(Optional) Rice

Cost: $1 - $10

Pretty simple, just pour it into a pot and heat until it's boiling. At least, it would have been pretty simple, but the pop tab broke off and I had to try to pry it open with a church key. Unfortunately, you can't just pour it through a small opening because the tripe is too big. I tried using a blunt end of a butter knife to gently push the lid into the can but I did it too hard, resulting in a geyser of mondongo splattering all over the counter and my cloths. Have you ever gotten splattered with tomato-based intestine broth? It's horrifying.

After taking 5 to change my cloths and rethink my life choices, it was pretty simple to pour it into a pot and boil.

Emi was, once again, willing to subject herself to my blog for my entertainment, even though she had no idea what the main ingredient was. She's such a trooper!

The tripe (and I know that's the only part of the soup you care about) tastes like beef fat, only with a stronger flavor. The texture is also similar to beef fat, but more tender and less chewy. Eating it with rice is preferable because the broth is a bit greasy. Many thanks to Emi for being so adventurous. Stay queer!

Terrine au Piment d’Espelette

Yet another (presumably) proper noun, and a word I’ve never seen before. I wonder if Espelette is another type of booze? What with it being the day after St.Patrick’s Day, I kind of hope it isn’t. I'm glad I have a variety of terrines to try, I didn't expect them to be as different as they are. 

Huh, I didn’t expect it to be so pinkish. I suspect that this either means it’s has salmon in it, or it’s spicy. As I have a somewhat masochistic relationship with spicy food and love salmon, I think I’m in for a win-win here.

It is spicy, but just the tiniest bit. It’s more of an aftertaste really.  It’s coarser than the other two terrines. The texture is more like sausage filling than the others, and it’s definitely heavier. The flavor is very subtle, there’s only a hint of liver, but it’s very nuanced. It’s got these little flecks of red, and orange in it. I guess that’s some kind of mild chili peppers. 

Overall quite good. I get the feeling that so far this would be the most popular terrine with Americans so far. Make it spicier, dunk it in cheese, have it with a beer, and you got yourself a hit. Let’s see, apparently, aside from ingredients in common with the other two it has: pepper (I guess what means hot pepper), and Espelette pepper…what the hell does that mean? To the internet! Ok, according to Wikipedia, Espelette peppers are a type of mild pepper grown in France. It has a heat rating of about 4,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). To put that in perspective, jalapenos rate from 2,500 to 5,000 SHU. I’m sorry for the brevity, but the sound of my room mate throwing up is very distracting. Enjoy another French  video. If the blog isn’t gay enough for you as is, this may do the trick. Stay queer!

Terrine de canard a l'Armagnac

Eh, what the hell? Might as well give the others reviews. After translating the ingredients I decided that the video to go with this post should be a bit less toddler-mistaking-mom's-cries-of-ecstasy-for-permission-y and more pretty-French-music-y. 

What better way to acquaint yourself with a melange of organ and who knows what else than with the accompaniment of one of France's most beloved chanteuses? Kind of makes you want to stop listening to that dubstep shit so the rest of us don't have to listen to you blast what sounds like an early 90's dialup connection fucking a synthesizer, right? Anyway:

I know canard means duck, so a bit of the mystery is gone. Not sure what Armagnac is. I guess it's a proper noun, but that's all I got. BTW, just to prove I wasn't lying about it looking like cat food earlier:

This one smells a bit more like tuna. 

The flavor is stronger and less nuanced. It tastes more like regular liverwurst. It’s textured similarly to the last terrine, but slightly more coarse. I think this has more liver in it than the last one. I'm not sure if it has duck liver, duck meat, or both, but it does feel and taste slightly more meaty. It’s a bit more like a meat paste, or sausage filling. Something heavier is in there too, somehow it seems to have a touch more bite than the last one. This one is also quite good. I think people who prefer stronger flavors would like this better than the last terrine. Let’s see. The ingredients are:  lean pork fat, chicken liver, duck, eggs, milk, Armagnac (a type of brandy), salt, and pepper. Ok, so it was brandy. Damn, that's fancy. Stay classy, France and stay queer, readers!

Terrine aux Cepes

Apologies for the lack of accent marks in this post. Feel free to draw them on your computer screen to compensate.

Despite prayer, all of the letters I sent to the French military, and no fewer than 3 separate facebook petitions, my sister (author of Jennyphoria) came back from the Paris for a brief visit. She was kind enough to bring some gifts, presumably as an apology for breaching her containment overseas, among which was a variety pack of terrine.

According to Wikipedia terrine is “a French forcemeat loaf, similar to pate.” You had me at forcemeat loaf. I’m still deciding if I want to review one or several terrines because I don’t know how similar they are. We’ll see I guess. You know, I keep looking on the back to look at the nutrition info, and ingredients despite the facts that 1) there are no nutrition facts, which I have been well aware of since the first time I checked, and 2) the writing on the box requires far more skill with French than I have, which I have also been well aware of since the first time I checked.

Ok, enough fucking about. Let’s get down to business. I’m going to try…

You know, I never thought I'd see fancy French food with a pop tab on it.

Smells a bit like cat food, looks a bit like cat food, has taken the shape of the can in a manner similar to cat food. You're supposed to eat it on crackers or toast points. At this point in my life, I know better than to turn my nose up at something simply because it reminds me a bit of cat food. I realize that that previous sentence must have raised a few eyebrows, so I’d like to clarify that if something looks and smells a bit like cat food, it probably has liver in it.

Wikipedia was accurate, the texture is similar to pate, only less smooth. It tastes moderately like liver, and its got a hint of black pepper, and cheese, even though I don’t see fromage anywhere on the ingredients list. The flavor is a bit mild, but that works just fine, as it allows the spices to shine through more. There’s something more I can’t quite place, but it’s familiar, and flavorful. There’s also a slight hint of…bacon? Let’s see. According to google translate, this is made of lean pork fat (explains the bacon), chicken liver, eggs, milk, mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Mushrooms! That’s what it was. This was tasty. French food is generally pretty awesome. Also, they make way better condom commercials there.

Stay queer!

Fried Chicken Hearts

I find myself increasingly open to trying organ meats. I was hesitant about the tripe, I was slightly apprehensive about the tongue, and when I saw a package of chicken hearts I excitedly purchased it without a second thought.

Really, who could resist?

Since this is something I’ve never cooked before, I’ll go to my old standby and fry them up.

You need:

Scallions

Garlic

Chicken Hearts

Oil

Total: $1 - $10

Coarsely chop as many scallions and garlic cloves you’d like. I used three of each.

Sautee them in oil until the scallions and garlic start to brown slightly.

Add the hearts. Stir occasionally, to turn the hearts and keep the veggies from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  You want the hearts to turn dark brown.

It’s like a fatty piece of dark meat, only it’s a bit hard to bite through. Cardiovascular muscle is pretty dense and these feel almost like they have a sausage casing over them. It's not half bad, especially if you like dark meat. I even made a sandwich with it.  There is the slight disadvantage of my girlfriend refusing to kiss me, but that shouldn’t affect you because I’d punch you if you kissed her anyway. Despite devouring the hearts of an entire farm of chickens, I'm not sure if I absorbed any of their power. Hopefully I’ll gain their strength and courage in addition to what I have already, and not as a complete substitution. Stay queer!

Lengua

Lengua is a Mexican beef dish.  Wanna see what part of the cow it uses?

That pan is about 10 inches across.

You know, I had tongue once before.  I visited my best friend in Philly recently and she was kind enough to buy me a quarter pound of sliced beef tongue from a deli. It smelled like a mix of pastrami and cat food.  Tasted alright though.

Unfortunately, girlfriend is not currently available to be traumatized. Luckily, my good friend Emi, who is also a vegetarian, has opted to be present during the bulk of its preparation. Lucky thing too. Half of the fun of this blog is inflicting it on others.  Of course, this is one of MY friends we’re talking about here.  They don't horrify easily and they tend to bounce back quickly. As I began prep we bantered about how the cow probably wanted to be an actress when she grew up, and had a loving family, and was going to go to college before it was all tragically cut short. Naturally, I held it in front of my mouth while standing very close to Emi as she was looking at something else and made a loud, throaty “BLULULULUAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG” sound when she noticed me. You know, the usual stuff people do when cooking. You know, I can't help but notice that the taste buds are pretty prominent.  You could feel them through the packaging.  By the way, if you’re a tongue aficionado and the color of the tongue seems a bit off, it’s because it was pre-smoked, not raw.

You need:

Beef tongue

5 Green chilis: I used serrano peppers

2 cans of corn

4 roma tomatoes

A small white or yellow onion

4 cloves of garlic

Total cost: $20 - $30 

Before you do anything else, you have to boil the tongue for 40-50 minutes per pound.  Why?  Because you need to skin it, of course!  Who ever heard of eating the skin on a cow tongue?  That would just be gross. By the way Emi noted that it smells like hot dogs.  As it boiled the smell became more and more prominent, until it filled every inch of my tiny, studio apartment.  Infer from that what you will. When it's done, set the tongue aside to cool for a few minutes.

Now skin it.  I thought this would be difficult, but you can actually just peel it off with your fingers.  It comes off very easily.

Now thinly slice the tongue.  The meat is very tender and easy to cut, so this only takes a minute.  You can chop it more finely if your skillet isn’t big enough. 

Now get your veggies ready!  In a skillet, roast the peppers over medium heat until the sides are charred.  The more charred it is, the easier it is to skin them.  Take them off of the heat, let them cool off a bit and rub the skin off.  If you’re using very hot peppers, or doubt your manual dexterity you should wear gloves to keep oil from getting under your nails because that shit is ridiculously painful. I once got datil pepper oil under my thumb nail and I thought it was going to melt off. Now cut off the tops and coarsely chop the peppers.  If you want your lengua to be spicier, leave the seeds in.  Now thinly slice the onion, mince the garlic, and coarsely shop the tomatoes.  Get your cans of corn ready as well.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Transfer the peppers, garlic, and onion into the pan. Cook until the onions are translucent.

Add the beef tongue.  Cook for an additional 10 minutes to brown the meat.

Add the tomatoes, and cook them until they’re soft.  5 minutes should do it.

Finally, add drain and add the corn.  Cook for another 5 minutes or so to heat it. My skillet was not nearly big enough for this.

It tastes a bit like bland beef, but the fat gives it a hint of sweetness that's a bit like pork.  The slight heat from the peppers is quite nice and the firm texture of the corn compliments the tenderness of the beef. All of the meat and veggies absorbed some of the oil from the hot peppers, so the heat is nice and even, without being too strong.  All of the ingredients complement each other very nicely. This is really excellent.  I’m sure your average American meat-eater would love this as long as you don’t tell them it has tongue in it. That apparently works for hot dogs.  Stay queer!

A couple of big ol' faggots nestled in a pile of rainbows.

Seriously.  Happy NY pride everyone!  The name of the dish "faggot" comes from “fegato” which is Italian for liver.  Basically it’s a big wad of liver, as you may have guessed.  Faggots are often made with bacon and some of the more less commonly used organs of various livestock. This is a basic faggot recipe because I couldn’t get my hands on any venison heart or pork belly or anything of that nature.  Not for lack of trying. Let's just say I livened up a few butcher's days. So enjoy these basic faggots any old time.  Hell, bring ‘em around at Thanksgiving.  Nothing says family fun like a baker's dozen of faggots at the dinner table.  I hear your grandfather loves them.  Anyway, you need:

1 lb of veal liver

Sage

Bread crumbs

A medium yellow onion

White rice (not parboiled, it makes the color less vibrant)

Food coloring

Beef stock

Total cost: $10 - $20

Bring some water to a boil and add however much rice you feel like making. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stir, remove from heat, and set aside.

Chop about a cup of onion as coarsely or finely as you’d like.  Mix with 6 oz of bread crumbs and set aside.

Savor this step.  The hurt is coming.

Set the liver on a clean cutting surface.

You need to get this minced.  Liver is a BITCH to chop.  To make it easier, you have to peel off the membrane on the liver.  Trust me, its gross but it’s worth it.

I don’t have a mincer.  If you do just use that.  If you don’t you can mince it with a sharp knife while pretending that you’re in a happy place.  Start by chopping it into strips.  Remove any veins you find. Trust me, you will know them when you find them. On the plus side, after the initial chopping is done, the liver itself is soft enough to rip and knead by hand to make it into small pieces.  I would like to take the time to mention that this process is making me look back on the tripe recipe with fondness.  I have to wash my hands every time I want to use the camera or handle anything and it smells like cat food.  It also looks like cat food.

As my friend pointed out, that’s to be expected from an organ that filters toxins out of the blood.  I honestly felt kind of sick a few times and it made my friend lose her appetite at one point.  I don’t wanna put you off of all the joys that faggots have to offer, I’m just giving you a heads up.

Dump the liver into the bread crumbs, add 4 tsp of sage and mix it all together.  Kneading it by hand worked better for me than a spoon.

Roll the mixture into 8 small balls and place in an oven safe dish.

Pour a can of beef stock in the dish and put a pat of butter on top of each faggot.

Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes at 350.  Afterwards, take the foil off and bake another 15 minutes.

While that’s cooking you can make the rainbow rice.

Put a bit of rice into a resealable bag and put some food coloring on it.   

Mush the rice inside of the bag to distribute to the food coloring.   

I'm sure I don't have to tell you how to make orange and purple from your standard red, yellow, green, blue food coloring pack.

When the faggots are done, serve them on the rice and spoon some of the broth over them.

I think this is the best picture I've taken so far.

It’s like a liver meat ball.  The onion adds a nice extra bit of texture to it.  If you like liverwurst, as I do, you’ll definitely like this. I’m reminded a bit of pate.  I don’t know if rice was the right choice of side dish, I think mashed potatoes might have been better.  Not because they taste bad together, but the gravy doesn’t absorb into the rice as it would with potatoes.  All in all, these faggots were a nice addition to my day.  By the way, the more you let them marinate, the better they taste and they're good with spaghetti sauce.

Well, I’m off to the city today to see the parade and meet some friends.  If any of you are planning to join the festivities remember to stay on the charming side of drunk and the right side of the law.  Happy pride, huzzah for NY legalizing gay marriage and stay queer!

Fried Tripe

I’ve decided to dive head first into the wide world of offal and I sincerely hope you pictured that in your head.  Tripe is eaten pretty much everywhere in the world, so it must be at least palatable.  I’m hesitant to try it, but I've enjoyed liver and pate in the past so I guess it’s not so different…aside from the attached stigma I mean.  If nothing else, you can’t say tripe isn’t versatile.  There are a billion different recipes for it.  Between my own laziness, and the fact that I recently inherited what can only be described as an irresponsible amount of bread crumbs from my old roomies, I think a simple fry recipe would be good.  

You need

Beef tripe: Tripe is inexpensive to the point of being worrying.

Flour

Bread crumbs: Seriously, they gave me 3 full canisters of bread crumbs.  

Total cost:$1 - $10

This smells kinda like cat shit.  I'm not kidding.

Now the hell of it, aside from smelling like cat shit, is that you have to boil tripe for a long ass time to tenderize it.  Tripe is really tough and hard to digest so people with digestive disorders and gout should steer clear of this.  Prior to cooking, it also has to be cleaned.  I got mine from a store and I'm sure it was cleaned before it was packaged, but better safe than sorry.  Improperly prepared tripe is terrible for you and dangerous to eat.  Submerge the tripe in cold water and let it soak overnight.  Change the water frequently and scrub off any stuff clinging to the tripe.  Again, there weren’t any nasty things on mine and the color was fine, I’m just being cautious.  

Anyway, once that’s done, toss it into a big pot of water and bring it to a low boil.  You can spice it if you want.  Toss in a bay leaf or some nutmeg or whatever.  Apparently you can make good stock out of tripe, but frankly I just don’t want to.  Cover it and let it boil until the tripe is tender.  Depending on the type of tripe and how big the pieces are this can take between 1 and 6 hours.  Mine was honeycomb tripe cut into thin strips so this took me about 2 hours.  

This smells a bit like someone vomited stomach acid into a bowl of warm saltwater.  Again, I'm not kidding.

 It’s tender enough when you can easily cut it with a kitchen knife.  Cut the tripe into strips if it isn’t already.  Mine are about the size of a finger.  I rubbed the stripes down with black pepper and salt.  Feel free to experiment with different spices, those two just seemed like the safest choices.

  

Using flour and water, make a thin paste to coat the strips.  Dip the strips in that and roll them in bread crumbs.  

Heat some oil in a skillet over medium heat.  If you’re not sure when it’s ready, put a drop of batter in the pan.  If it’s hot enough, the oil around it will start to bubble.

Fry each strip until both sides are golden brown, about 2 minutes per side.  Transport the finished strips onto some paper towels to drain.

Be honest, would you be able to recognize this as tripe?  Also it doesn't smell bad anymore.

Ok, I swear this is true:  it’s kind of like a cross between fried calamari and a mozzarella cheese stick.  Like calamari, it’s chewy and the meat itself has little flavor, but like the cheese it’s kinda ropey and soft.  By itself it’s fine, if a little boring.  Some Dijon mustard livens it up nicely.  Honestly, I could see this fitting in at a pub or grill quite nicely, provided that the name was changed or the locals were just really ok with tripe.  I'd like to experiment with more spices and maybe some different batters. This really surprised me.  Stay queer!