Posted by Cathy Danh, March 20, 2008 at 2:00 PM
One of the aspects that I appreciate most about Vietnamese cuisine is that nothing goes to waste. From bones to meat to blood and guts, each and every part of an animal is put to good culinary use. Cháo lòng turns piggy odds and ends that most butchers would toss out with the garbage into hearty and soothing rice porridge.
Cháo Lòng is one of the rare offerings in Saigon that is served from morning until evening. The dish is hot, satisfying and easy on the pocket at only 6,000 VND a bowl. Street vendors dishing up cháo lòng can be easily spotted with their giant metal vats and glass display cases filled with piles of offal and stacks of golden fried dough (giò cháo quẩy).
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 22, 2007 at 1:30 PM
As promised, here's the place where you can throw your hat in the ring to win a copy of Fergus Henderson's Beyond Nose to Tail
, which Serious Eater Cathy just weighed in on.
The first recipe from the book will be up in a few minutes, but for now, if you'd like to win a copy, just tell us what your favorite offal dish is.
We'll be giving away ten (10) copies, choosing the winners at random from among the comments below. Commenting will close at noon ET Saturday, October 27. The standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.
Fergus Henderson, is there any animal part you won't eat?: "Not many. I’m not crazy about lung—though we use it in faggots, which works very well. And I suppose a pig’s penis doesn’t really grab me. But the ingredients we use, we use because they’re yummy. Nothing is in the book for shock factor. I don’t search out weird organs for the thrill of it. Everything has to be delicious."
Posted by Robyn Lee, August 28, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Although testicles—euphemistically referred to as "prairie oysters" and "fries" in edible form—are usually served battered and deep-fried, Angela Garbes of The Stranger was underwhelmed by the heavily breaded testicle slices she ate at the 25th Annual Testicle Festival in Clinton, Montana.
She describes her attempt to prepare testicles in a non-deep fried manner in order to fulfill her craving for the overlooked offal. Sadly, the result was not very appetizing.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 1, 2007 at 7:30 PM
A head-to-tail dinner thrown at San Francisco's Incanto by chef Chris Cosentino was documented in glorious multimedia detail on Hungry Magazine by Michael Harlan Turkell. The children of Fergus Henderson (the original head-to-tail chef) are popping up at restaurants all over Europe and the U.S., and, from our vantage point, that is indeed a good thing.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM
OK, so as a visual spectacle of hot pot cooking, nothing beats the world's largest hot pot I posted about last month, but this 1.5 mile-long hot pot table that sat 100,000 people is still pretty amazing, especially when you consider they "ate about 30 tons of tripe and 20 tons of duck intestines."
I do not envy the clean up crew!
Posted by Nathalie Jordi, March 12, 2007 at 7:00 AM
The delicious decisions made by the happy global confrérie of extreme pig lovers preaching the gospel of nose-to-tail pork—Fergus Henderson, Mario Batali, Tony Bourdain, and Chris Cosentino come to mind—have gotten an awful lot of us paying sublime prices for cuts of meat that butchers couldn’t give away even a few years ago. Co-conspirator Martin Picard, the brotherhood’s Canadian affiliate, has been singing offal’s praises for nigh on six years since opening Montreal’s iconoclastic Au Pied de Cochon. After cyclone stints in some of France and Canada’s most impressive, highfalutin' kitchens, Picard threw caution (never a strong suit) to the wind, and began serving up the bouffe that most turns him on—deer tongues preserved in vinegar, brain omelets, and stomachs stuffed with whelks, ground pork, lobster, whatever—to critical acclaim. Everything he makes tastes as good as it sounds disgusting.
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 2, 2007 at 5:35 PM
Chris Cosentino, executive chef of San Francisco's Incanto, is a well-known fan of offal: he serves dishes like pig’s trotter cake and salt-cured pork liver in his restaurant, is working on an offal cookbook, and runs a site called Offal Good, "a guide and informational source for proper handling and cooking techniques for working with these lost cuts of meat. You will find recipes, food porn, and places to buy and eat offal." On April 22, he'll be on Iron Chef battling Mario Batali, offal's most famous proponent and afficionado in America. Ladies and gentlemen, set your TiVos!
Posted by Alaina Browne, December 22, 2006 at 9:45 AM
Offalgood.com is the website and blog of Chris Consentino, Executive Chef at San Francisco's Incanto, where he documents the handling and cooking techniques of offal. For example, Porchetta di Testa:
Let them eat cake, what the hell did marie antoinette know, they cut off her head. My thought is let them eat pigs head in as many ways as possible. Just recently I was trying to put some new cooked meats on the antipasto platter and came up with this one.
Its royal name is: Porchetta Di Testa - Translation a pigs head that is boned out then marinated for 2 days with rosemary and garlic rolled and tied then braised for 14 hours in a sous vide bag at 200 degrees to keep it all together.
Keep reading for Chris' description of the preparation with photos.
