November 27, 2009
Posted by Chichi Wang, November 24, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
I have a lot to be thankful for this year. Next to my health and my loved ones, I have my Nasty Bits column. Writing about offal has filled my days with much adventure and the camaraderie of like-minded folks. I've trekked to the bustling communities of Queens and Brooklyn in search of tongues and tails, stomachs and snouts. Each week, friends come to eat the plunder. I like watching as they gnaw on the nubby bits, going that extra step to retrieve the marrow and tendon. And of course, I'm thankful for the community of nasty bits lovers. It gives me a great deal of comfort knowing that as I'm slipping my gizzards into a big pot of fat, maybe, just maybe, someone across the country is doing the same.
Compared to chicken, turkey gizzards are gargantuan. One turkey gizzard fits snugly in the palm of my hand. Around Thanksgiving, most stray gizzards are marshaled into the gravy. But being a nasty bits lover, I'd rather eat the components of giblet gravy than the gravy itself. Turkey necks are meaty and succulent, and the gizzards? While not as gamey as those of duck or goose, the sheer size of a turkey gizzard confers its own culinary benefits.
Without further ado, I present three options for the preparation of turkey gizzards, none of which dismiss this organ to the lowly ranks of gravy-dom.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM
"It always feels so rewarding to add another type of neck to one's repertoire of necks."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang, unless otherwise noted]
I like to cook stews. I have a penchant for storied, time-consuming stews with a higher-than-average rate of failure. I realized this late into the evening, as I stood guard over my gumbo. The night was quiet and cold; the kitchen smelled of toasted flour and chili powder. Quite often, fat and solitude beget moments of clarity. When the turkey necks were fork-tender and the chunks of andouille sausage so plump and juicy, I wondered how I'd lived the first 25 years of my life without making Turkey Neck Gumbo for Thanksgiving.
Gumbo is a hallowed stew, a murky, dirty, deep concoction from Cajun Country down in Louisiana. Is dirty an appropriate word to describe a dish? To me, dirty connotes profound flavor, the concentration of hours of browning, deglazing, and stewing. The process for cooking such a dish is dirty—the scraping of the pot, getting each bit of caramelized meat to incorporate into the larger whole, skimming the fat that rises to the surface—this is the sort of labor in the kitchen that brings with it the satisfaction of sweat and grease.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Pig's stomach and beef tripe are fairly common finds in ethnic markets, but it's not everyday that I come across lamb tripe. Sitting next to an assortment of livers, the packages of lamb tripe were neatly stacked and as usual, dirt-cheap. Without knowing exactly what I'd make of it, I claimed a pack of the tripe and rushed home in anticipation. Unfurled on my cutting board, the organ was a sight to behold.
Though we often refer to ruminants as possessing four stomachs, each stomach is actually a section of the larger whole. Beef tripe is sold as such: honeycomb and omasum, for instance, are packaged separately. Since lamb is much smaller in size, all the discrete sections of its stomach—the tender, succulent honeycomb tripe, the spongy, furry rumen, and the flatter omasum—appear in one continuous swath.
To celebrate an innard I'd never eaten before, I embarked on a recipe I've never tried. For months now, I've been obsessed with the idea of sealing my pots with dough, an age-old method for low and slow cooking. Molded just to fit the shape of the cooking vessel, a rope of dough provides a formidable seal to preserve the moisture of a stew.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 3, 2009 at 9:30 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
If beef tongue is something of a monstrosity, then pork tongue is the smaller, subtler of the two. Even so, at five or more inches in length, the tongue of a pig is not to be sneezed at. Floppy like the sole of an old shoe, a pork tongue possesses the look and feel of any mammalian tongue. An arched, dorsal base, dotted with papillae, curves slightly into an elongated tip. On the underside, the flesh of the muscle peers out from pockets of gristly fat. As with most mammalian tongues suitable for eating (i.e., beef, lamb, and calves), pork tongues need a lengthy cooking time to become tender.
Confiting the tongues confirmed my unalterable faith in the power of fat. Is there anything that can't be improved with a good stewing in fat? The procedure for confiting the pork tongues was no different than that of duck or goose: an initial salting, following by stewing and storage in fat or lard. Like duck and goose, pork tongue takes on a silky texture when treated with fat; unlike poultry, the entire organ is pure meat without any of those fussy bones to eat around.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 27, 2009 at 9:15 AM
[Photos: Greg Takayama]
To those who claim there's nothing better than a juicy steak, I offer the stomach as this week's counter-argument. Nose-to-tail eating affords a whole range of enticing textures. We often judge food by its taste, but texture is equally significant.
Chewy, stringy, mushy, spongy: though nothing one would want in a steak, these adjectives take on positive connotations for offal. Consider tripe, which is meant to be chewy and spongy in a tender, slowly-stewed kind of way. Tendon, another underappreciated part, turns soft and mushy after many hours of cooking.
Charred on a cast iron or hot griddle, the different layers of pork stomach become soft, chewy, and crisp all at once. It's the most powerful argument we have for offal: to seek a novel culinary experience, we can turn towards the non-fleshy parts of the animal.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 20, 2009 at 12:30 PM
"Stewing the pig's ears affords a precious by-product: a pot of flavorful stock."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
The Fergus Henderson meal I shared with my Serious Eats comrades on Friday night had me hankering for more pig. That evening I left the restaurant carrying a giant foil package with the half pig's head we ordered, skull and all. Still, there was one part I wished we'd had in a pair: the ears. Roasted with the rest of the head, the tip of the ear was as hardy as a dog treat; the inner canal offered more chewable cartilage. I'd gnawed contentedly on that singular ear, but it left me craving my favorite preparation for pig's ears: deep-fried, crisp and irresistible.
I use pig's ears like some cooks treat pancetta. Slivers of fried pig ears are the perfect garnish to a bowl of freshly made pasta or dry spaghetti; plopped over poached egg, ears are an unbeatable topping for frisée aux lardon–style salad. Crisp, slightly chewy, and delicately crunchy with a layer of cartilage, this is one nasty bit that has it all.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 13, 2009 at 10:45 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
"Duck tongue?" my housemate asked with her eyebrows furled. "I didn't know ducks had tongues!"
For duck-tongue novices, the nature of the organ can elicit both confusion and curiosity. Why do ducks even possess tongues? Do they need them to quack?
For lovers of the delicacy, the question as to what makes the organ so prized is a no-brainer. Surrounded by a faint hint of meat and papery thin layers of cartilage, duck tongue is predominately a vehicle for juicy pockets of fat. At barely two inches in length, the tongue is small and flimsy, yet its taste is intensely ducklike. When freshly fried, duck tongues are positively addicting with a crisp surface and a creamy, slightly fatty interior that melts in your mouth. Like potato chips or pork cracklings, one tongue is never enough.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM
[Photograph: Chichi Wang]
This week, The Nasty Bits leaves the world of bones and innards and treks to the other side of nasty. Generally, this series chronicles the unconventional parts of conventionally eaten animals, but what if we examined entire animals that are just plain ugly? There are too many to name comprehensively, but a few candidates come to mind: furry guinea pigs, scaly alligators, armored armadillos, slithery snakes and eels, tiny birds like ortolan, twitchy squirrels, wart-covered sea cucumbers, and grasshoppers and other insects.
Whereas we may fondly gaze at the pig and think of bacon, or look at a cow and anticipate a steak, there's nothing ostensibly appetizing about the majority of the meat and seafood we eat. As Jared Diamond has argued, only a few animals on the planet (something like fourteen out of one hundred and forty-eight possible candidates) are suitable creatures for domestication. These are the animals that, over centuries of breeding and manipulation, have come to look like things we'd want to put in our mouths. On the other hand, the rest of what's edible in the animal kingdom is often unseemly and feral in appearance.
Eels are sly, wild creatures that look distinctly out of place in the kitchen. Nevertheless, their delicate meat, akin to a flaky and lean fish, is worth seeking out. I almost never turn down a chance to work with eel, so when I spied a water tank filled with the slithering creatures, I knew that dinner would involve some wrestling.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, September 29, 2009 at 9:30 AM
"The ghoulish shade of its skin, so unlike the golden-brown hue that we associate with a perfectly roasted bird, appeared more macabre than appetizing."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
I learned to speak English by watching a lot of old movies. Carey Grant and Gregory Peck made for excellent speech coaches; their flowing cadence and precise diction were plenty instructive for a first grader. By the time I was in second grade, I had covered most of Alfred Hitchcock's films, save for one: The Birds, that 1963 classic in which a coastal village is assailed by droves of murderous, eye-pecking birds. Maybe I should have waited to watch that particular movie because it left an indelible mark on my impressionable 6-year-old brain. Decades later, I'd like to say that I can stroll down the street without cringing at a group of pecking pigeons, but that would be a lie. I will walk blocks just to avoid them, and birds of any kind with sharp beaks are even worse.
In culinary terms, my bird phobia comes with fairly mild repercussions. Whole ducks and geese are therapeutic to work with; their rounded beaks, like the elegant curves of a ship's hull, sport complacent smiles. On the other hand, chicken heads have always frightened me. In Chinese markets I forgo the birds with their sharp, beady heads and their fiery red combs, instead making a beeline for the trotters and tails.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, September 22, 2009 at 9:30 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
When we think of eating organs, we imagine the red, glossy innards of various beasts and fowl. The skin, however, the largest organ of them all, is a boon for the cook and meat lover. When stewed, skin adds body and gelatin to the stock; when baked or fried, its crisp qualities are incomparable.
I'd never worked before with such a large section of pig skin; usually my forays into skin involve some kind of poultry. The swath of pig skin I purchased was at least three feet in length and a foot across. With just a thin layer of fat attached, the skin was supple and white with a pale-pink suggestion of meat on its underside. I was struck with the strangest inclination to wrap it around myself like a shawl.
Instead, I salted the skin and left it to cure in the refrigerator for five days, following directions for "Pork Scratchings" in Fergus Henderson's Beyond Nose to Tail. With his typical flair, Henderson pronounces the crisped pieces of skin to be "a most steadying nibble." Salted, soaked, and stewed in fat, the skin puffed up in the oven to a golden-brown hue. Crisper and chewier than typical pork cracklings or chicharrones, the skin was an addictive snack as well as a meaty topping for potatoes and soup--a steadying nibble, indeed.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, September 15, 2009 at 9:30 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
To make a stew, there must be gelatin and bone. To find the highest concentration of the two, look no further than tail. I've written before on the perfection of pigs' tails, but bovine tails make for exceptionally good eating and, quite frequently, are more accessible at the butcher's counter. Yielding the most tender and full-bodied stews, oxtail is a fail-proof solution to stringy meat and thin broth. Each segment of the tail is a little hub from which spokes of meat, bone, and gelatin radiate. Fancy restaurants may serve braised oxtail that has been deboned already, but this seems silly given all the delicious gelatinous material sticking to the bones. In the comfort of your own kitchen, you can gnaw away with true gusto.
Veal oxtail is the tenderer, more delicately flavored counterpart to mature oxtail. With just a hint of beefiness, the tails of veal are subtler and sweeter. For years I ate very little veal out of ethical concerns, but I was prompted to look further into the matter when I read the River Cottage Meat Book, an encyclopedic venture on all meat-related topics. With great precision, author Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall details the intimate relationship between the dairy and beef industries, explaining how calves and young cows figure into the subject.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, September 8, 2009 at 8:30 AM
"There is nothing quite like them--that feral taste combined with a mouthfeel not quite as tender and fatty as liver, nor as chewy as gizzards."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Of all the nasty bits on earth, liver and kidneys must be some of the nastiest. Their function--to process and disperse toxins from the diet--makes for a risky undertaking for the offal cook. Truly foul, these organs are a real treat when you can find them fresh.
Given the nature of their function, livers and kidneys are a direct reflection of the life of the animal, a tell-tale sign of its diet and treatment. Naturally exposed to toxins, livers and kidneys are far more likely than muscle tissue to develop stress and disease-related damage such as cysts and tumors. This is especially so for the kidneys, which filter the animal's urine.
The kidneys' main function is to purify the blood by removing nitrogen-rich waste and funneling the waste into the urine. At their worst, kidneys possess an "off" taste, the likes of which I could never quite identify until I learned the nature of the organ. If you've ever worked with less than impeccable kidneys, you've probably smelled them before you've tasted them--that acrid, pungent scent of animal waste.
Look for kidneys from a butcher who will leave the natural layer of fat around the organs. Keeping kidneys intact will almost always be better than buying the cut-up alternative.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, September 1, 2009 at 8:30 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
It only took a few months of writing this series, and I think I've found my all-time favorite Nasty Bits. I want to make the case that pigs' tails contain everything desirable in the pig, and in exactly the right proportions. Unlike oxtail, the tails of pigs come with the skin intact so that each segment is a perfect cross-section of skin, fat, tendon, and meat. Fried or roasted, the skin of the tail is chewy and crisp, with a gelatinous layer underneath. Tail flesh is fork-tender like that of the neck bones, but meatier in composition than trotters. There's a modest amount of tendon around each bony hub--just enough to make the gnawing enjoyable, but not so much as to distract from the whole. All in all, a tail is a little porky universe unto itself, a powerful reminder that the discarded cuts of the animal are often the most delicious.
I first encountered pigs' tails in a class led by New York City chef Ryan Skeen, and was instantly intrigued with the idea of eating the whole tail of a beast. Oxtails, as befitting their owners, are so large as to lose their resemblance to our average conception of the tail. Pigs' tails, on the other hand, have a familiar, endearing quality. Like the curly stems of watermelons or the ringed shapes of pasta, the rosy corkscrew image we hold of the pig's tail resembles that which appears on actual pigs. For my purposes, I sought out tails greater in size, presumably from larger breeds. Like the tails I ate in Skeen's class, the tails I brought home from my Hispanic butcher were wider, longer, and cut into segments for more convenient use.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, August 25, 2009 at 8:30 AM
In this salad of greens made with lard and bacon, the richness of the fat complements the sharpness of the vinegar; only mustard is needed to bind the two. [Photographs: Chichi Wang]
If I were ever to get a tattoo, it would say "Fat is flavor." This statement is something that I believe with such conviction that I'd be willing to live with it for a very long time. Flavor can be developed in myriad ways, but fat is almost always involved in adding depth and complexity. Vegetables are sautéed in fat before going into a braise; food is fried in it for ultimate flavor and crispness. Without fat, meat in general would be insipid in taste.
But what about fat is nasty? The Nasty Bits confronts the common perception that offal is nasty to look at, nasty to touch, or just plain nasty in taste. Fat is neither patently repugnant nor unpalatable, yet offal broadly defined includes the bony bits, the humble cuts, and anything else that is undesirable at the meat counter. Fat certainly belongs in the third category. Often butchers will give away fat for a pittance because there's so much of it left after they've fabricated the pork loins and chicken breasts that consumers are eager to buy. And quite frequently, cuts that possess a large proportion of fat, such as pork butt, will be sold at a much lower price.
There's another sense in which fat can be understood as nasty. These days, many people are grossed out by the mere sight of fat. My neighbor recoils from the fat that graces my kitchen. Once, when offered an assortment of duck dishes, she grimaced as she watched me dribble duck fat into garlic spread. (The garlic head, which is confited alongside the legs and wings, can be made into a creamy, intensely ducky paste with the help of the fat.)
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Posted by Chichi Wang, August 18, 2009 at 10:00 AM
"Searing the ear in my skillet was the most fun I've had with cast iron in a long time."
Photographs by Chichi Wang
One of the greatest things about working with offal is that you and your butcher will never have to worry about miscommunication. Don't know the Spanish or Chinese word for cheeks? Just puff out your own and point to it. Having trouble recollecting the term for tail? Wiggle your index finger an appropriate distance behind your back, and someone will get the picture. Usually, combining such gestures with an oink or a moo can get you further than relying on the English names alone.
On Sunday, a quick tug of my earlobe sufficed at the meat department of a large Hispanic market. Two minutes later, the head butcher appeared and signaled for me to follow him into the chilly depths of the stockroom, where they had just received a new shipment of pig ears. Going into the unseen parts of markets is one of my favorite activities. There in the backrooms, you can find out for yourself if your meat is being safely fabricated or if your produce is being kept at the right temperature. Once I poked my head into the chaotic kitchen of a large Cantonese restaurant and stared in awe at their medicinal cabinets full of shark's fin, dried scallops, and all manner of herbs and roots. Weaving through bins of carrots and lettuce, I felt the same tingle of fascination as I trailed the butcher to the doors of the meat locker.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, August 11, 2009 at 9:00 AM
"You can never be surrounded by too many gizzards."
More commonly sold than duck gizzards, chicken gizzards are dirt-cheap and wholly delicious. I was first introduced to the glory of Southern fried chicken gizzards at Roscoe's, a chain of chicken-and-waffle houses in California. Roscoe's is a classy joint. It's a place where you'll never have to worry about running out of the whipped butter that accompanies not only the waffles but just about everything else on the menu. Pats of butter always go on top of the grits, which accompany their platter of gizzards, deep-fried to perfection in a thin and crisp batter.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, August 4, 2009 at 8:40 AM
"These morsels of skin and bones are a unique combination of textures--the wrinkled, puffed skin on the surface and the soft, gelatinous tendons within."
It's been months since my last dim sum meal. The commingling smells of pork ribs with black bean sauce, egg custard tarts, and sweet ginger tofu linger in my memory. Most of all, I miss the chicken feet. These morsels of skin and bones are a unique combination of textures: the wrinkled, puffed up skin on the surface and the soft, gelatinous tendons within. In dim sum restaurants across the country, chicken feet are a staple—always reliably good and due to their humble beginnings, always cheap.
I'm fond of all poultry feet. Goose and duck feet have ample amounts of webbing; when stewed, they are delicate and tender with a hint of chewiness that resembles the texture of simmered sheets of bean curd. While goose and duck feet are more prized in Chinese cuisine, I prefer the meatiness of a chicken's foot. In restaurants, I've always wondered why the feet (and the meat in pork buns, for that matter) are a hue of red like the lacquer of Chinese wooden furniture. Still, the showy color of the chicken feet mirrors the feel of a dim sum meal: flamboyant and pleasurably excessive.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, July 28, 2009 at 9:00 AM
"In too many cookbooks I've seen tripe described as bland--this is unfair."
Honeycomb tripe
Here is a list, off the top of my head, of textures that many eaters dislike: gooey, slimy, rubbery, and gelatinous.
A gooey consistency may be prized in the center of a molten chocolate cake, but in the context of beef tendon that has been braised until it is soft and sticky, this texture appeals to a much smaller audience. For slimy, consider birds' nest soup. Slivers of nest, essentially made from the birds' saliva, are mucilaginous when suspended in a starch-thickened broth. Rubbery foods, like jellyfish, are somewhat resilient or elastic to the bite. Gelatinous textures are abundant: well-stewed pig's foot, any form of aspic, and Jell-o are all common and range in popularity. And lastly, some foods are combinations of the textures: sea cucumber, for instance, is both gelatinous and rubbery, with a kind of crispness on the surface.
Tripe is another item that defies exact categorization. Describing it is even more complicated by the discrete textures of the cow's four stomach chambers. "Chewy" or "rubbery" may be the first adjectives that come to mind, yet these words could just as well apply to a Tootsie Roll or piece of taffy.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, July 21, 2009 at 8:00 PM
"My duck routine is always carried out for the sake of confit, an illustrious ritual that begins and ends with fat."
When I need a bit of fun and relaxation after a long day's work, I'll buy a few ducks. It's best if they still have their heads and feet still attached, but as long as they're fatty and plump, I'm happy. Being a bit of a control freak, I thrive on well-established routines and when it comes to ducks, I have a duck routine.
In the kitchen with my birds in tow, I turn on the radio to NPR, put on my apron, and get out my knives. On the dining room table, I set up my cutting board as well as five stainless prep steel bowls. Laying the ducks on their backs, I remove their neck skin. The skins, though thin and sometimes sinewy, have a bit of fat on them so they'll be tossed into bowl number one, reserved for fat. Whole birds are like plump Christmas stockings; with unbounded enthusiasm, I like to reach into the cavity of the birds and dig around for whatever may be lying in the depths of the duck. Bowl number two is used to house the results of these excavations.
To remove the wishbones, I flip the birds over and carefully cut around the v-shaped curves, outlining the bone until I reach the joints at each end. Pulling ever so slightly, the wishbones snap out of place and I'll toss them into bowl number three, which holds scraps reserved for stock.
Then I move onto the wings.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, July 14, 2009 at 7:30 PM
"I sought a dish that used not only the feet but also the hocks, which are some of the most succulent and tender bits on the animal."
How often are you alone in your kitchen with a pair of pigs' feet? If you did happen to have trotters on your chopping block, would you rinse and send them straightaway to the stockpot? Or, would you observe a moment of silence for the noble animal that produced such fine feet? Maybe you'd just oink several times, as I did, if you happened to be in the privacy of your own home.
Perhaps it's because I've been buoyed by the hopes of an entire community of nasty bits lovers, but just looking at the pigs' feet before me, I felt a childish, positively ebullient excitement. Though the hooves had been removed, the outlines of the feet were patently porcine and the appendages, so tan and bony, ended in that signature piggy cleft. It was, in short, quite thrilling.
It's fairly easy to feel detached from a loin or a shoulder because the cuts appear anatomically vague. Looking down at a Styrofoam-packed, plastic-wrapped chunk of meat, it's hard to tell exactly where it belongs on the pig's body. A pork chop is merely one portion of a large animal and judging from the chop, there's very little sense of the pig itself. A whole foot, on the other hand, is a different matter.
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