With Thanksgiving just past and apple season petering off a
bit it might be tough to get excited for the next few months of cooking. However
right when my mind was wandering off to Christmas recipes and a running
catalogue of soups with which to occupy myself I was hit with a surprise
reminder that it’s still Autumn; a bloody grocery bag full of moose offal.
My dear
cousin Julie, great huntress that she is, recently picked a critter off up
North and hauled the beast down, in doing so she was kind enough to share some
bits of it with me in the process. This gooey sack of moose bits was a kind
reminder that Fall isn’t all harvesting apples and herbs or Thanksgiving
turkeys on buckling tables, it’s also traditionally a time to hunt. Now I’m not
unfamiliar with offal, I’ve cooked up veal sweetbreads and made liver pâté from
a wide range of critters, last Fall I even dealt with an offal emergency as we
searched for ways to cook and preserve a big fresh liver from the deer that my
brother Joe shot with his bow (the solution? Pâté, pâté and more pâté…oh and some
fried liver too.)
But here we have a different situation; hunted offal is best
served fresh, storing it is seen by many as a sin as offal is said to lose its
flavour and texture at alarming rates. In my case I was faced with three
baggies of three very different kinds of organs that were all meant to be
consumed as fresh as possible…you might see why this put me in a bit of a
conundrum. To make things worse, these are not easy bits of meat to cook, so in
the name of stomach science I decided to experiment, with no promises that this
produced anything tasty I invite you to join me in a bit of an offal adventure.
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| From left to right: Heart, kidney, liver |
1. Heart tends to
be feared for its toughness, braising it whole, long and at low temperature is
often described as the best solution to cooking it. Sounds simple enough right?
Well, in my case the heart was pre-sliced when it got to me…uh oh there goes
the long, slow and whole approach.
My method: Considering that the meat is famously tough I
decided to take something of an obvious route; marinating. I started off with
the juice of a lime and a lemon, some salt and pepper but was a tad
hesitant…would this do the trick? I mean heart can be really tough, what if this
wasn’t enough? I couldn’t help but recall a time where I roasted some heart and
chewed on it until my jaw was sore… it didn’t take long before it became dog
food.
As I pondered the toughness issue
a bit of musing in front of an open fridge sparked a eureka moment as I spotted
some pineapple I had cut up earlier in the day. I remembered the aching tongue
that I’d experienced a time or two from overindulging in the prickly fruit and
how a few articles I had read described how the bromelain in pineapples breaks
down proteins, essentially allowing the pineapple to bite you right back as chew
on it. With this in mind and inspired by the thought of tacos al pastor, I
threw a few chunks of pineapple into the blender with a dried chili and some
vinegar and poured it over the bits of heart before letting it marinate.
Result: Tasty! Seared on the grill on high heat with some
more pineapple and then served with a fresh salsa I was surprised by how much I
enjoyed it, definitely a potential taco filling for the future!
2. Kidney Not
exactly the most appetizing organ, it is rather well-known for smelling (and
tasting!) mildly of pee, this is not at all coincidental as it plays a key role
in the body in excreting the stuff.
Approach: Soak it in milk, pray that is sucks out the pee
flavour. Backup plan? Smothering it in fresh horseradish and a cubic tonne of
mustard.
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| Kidney and liver soaking in milk |
Result: Fried up, the kidney had a consistency reminiscent
of hotdog, of course hot dogs and sausages have long served as a home for offal
so I guess this wasn’t terribly surprising. It was a bit strange straight up so
I treated it as a hotdog by throwing it on a slice of homebaked sourdough and
adding some toppings. All things considered, not bad but I think this would
have been better off soaking a tad longer as some pieces tasted a tad funky. I
can see why this bit tends to find its way into pies and sausages, I think I’d
prefer it mixed, mind you the fresh moose kidney tasted substantially better
than what I’ve had in steak and kidney pie.
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| See that doesn't look so bad does it? |
3. Finally we’re
left with liver, probably the
easiest to cook and most familiar of the trio. Now I’ve never been a huge liver
fan, lest it be in the pâté I won’t stop mentioning. Liver for those of you who
might not have come into contact with it at its worst, can be very metallic
tasting, kind of like dragging your tongue against a mixture of blood and iron
shavings. However, it can be made to be quite decent with some tender loving
care.
Approach: Determined not to take the easy way out (pâté) I
decided to cook it traditionally. I soaked it like the kidney then patted it
dry, dredged it in flour and fried it in browned butter.
Result: Did not taste terribly like iron but still was
strong enough to be a tad off-putting to me, I guess it could have used more
soaking. A liver loving friend enjoyed it enough that she had the leftovers
with eggs for breakfast, ultimately, not quite my cup of tea but tasty enough
for a connoisseur. In my case? I think I’ll stick to pâté…
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| Night time photography: bad lighting is not helping this chunk of liver one bit |
Should you ever feel like giving heart a try, here’s a rough
outline of my recipe:
Marinated Moose Heart with Pineapple Salsa
Ingredients:
-A few slices of heart, maybe 200g or so?
Marinade:
-2 cloves garlic
-1 tbsp white vinegar
-3-4 pieces pineapple
-Salt/pepper
-1 chilli pepper
-A pinch of roasted ground cumin would probably also be good
Salsa:
-1 small tomato
-A few mint leaves, finely chopped, I would have preferred
coriander or a combination of the two but alas there was none around.
-About ¼ of a red onion, shaved
-A few pieces of grilled pineapple
-A touch of olive oil
-Chili pepper to taste
1.
Combine marinade ingredients in a blender until liquefied.
2.
Pour marinade onto heart pieces, refrigerate
overnight.
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| I swear, things will get better from this point on |
3.
The next day grill heart and the chunks of
pineapple over high heat on the bbq, cook quickly until grill marks appear,
flip and grill again, maybe 3 minutes total.
4.
As the heart rests dice salsa ingredients and
combine. Serve thinly sliced; in tortillas with chipotle mayo, on a salad or alone as an appetizer as pictured below.
