Of Pork Bellies and Lardon

I am an avid watcher of Anthony Bourdain  on the travel channel (Update...1/27/14...He's now on CNN). He amazes me by what he eats. He had a wrap up show not too long ago where he asked viewers to send in questions in print or in video form about his culinary adventures. One viewer asked," what is the one thing you ate that made you really really sick?" If you saw one of his trips to Africa, I think it was Namibia, he goes out with cow herders and they cook, well there's no other way to describe it, a cow's ass in ashes. He said he got a bacterial infection of the intestine that left him sick for a long time. 

Now, I'm a somewhat adventurous eater. I've eaten a 100 year old egg in the "new territories" outside of Hong Kong, drank squid ink in Tokyo, eaten with dismay the Venetian speciality of cuttle fish (leaves your mouth black), and fried grasshoppers in  London. So, when I sit down and look at a menu, I try to look at it with an open mind. My daughter and I decided to treat ourselves to a post shopping lunch at Tom Colicchio's Craftbar. If you're a follower of Top Chef then you know of Tom Colicchio. If not, he is one of the top restaurateurs in the US with a minimum of 8 restaurants throughout the country. Plus, he's the top judge on Top Chef. By watching Top Chef and Bourdain you become very familiar with edibles you normally wouldn't touch. Now, I grew up on a ranch in south Texas (I probably already mentioned that) and when my dad killed a calf, it was butchered, then different cuts separately wrapped and frozen. We'd eat the whole thing. Except my mom didn't cook up some beef cheeks or roast up some bones so we could suck out the bone marrow. And that is what you eat at today's top restaurants. So, me being me, here's what I ordered: roasted bone marrow with grilled olive oil brushed peasant bread, then pork belly, apple, curry, maple syrup and served with pickled veggies and a beautiful golden beet/red beet pear salad with blue cheese. My daughter played it safer with an arugula, Parmesan, pine nut salad in a lemon vinaigrette, grilled oysters, herb butter, bacon, and spinach and a wonderful Tuscan inspired white beans, prosciutto, and cabbage soup. OK, you might ask, what is bone marrow and as you ask you might add an oh yuck. It is literally a bone that has been roasted with the "marrow" left in side (it is the flexible tissue inside the bone). You put it on bread like butter. It's served with a teeny tiny spoon to extract the marrow. Bourdain sucks it right out. Would I order it again? No. There wasn't enough there to get a really good sense of the flavor. What is a "pork belly", Hairball? It literally is the belly of a pig. It's the part of the pig, at least here in the US, where we get our bacon. It was fried girls and boys. You have a layer of pork and then a layer of fat, pork, fat, pork, fat. Oh my goodness. I heard my arteries clog. One big fat piece of bacon. Fried. We didn't stop there, oh gentle readers. We had 'smores and butterscotch pudding. And, of course, wine was imbibed (only one glass, I was driving). It was a delicious meal but mine was so rich. I'd order the pork belly again if someone would share it with me. The oysters were delicious. The beets I'd eat forever. Everything was incredible. It set me back a few $$$ but was well worth the adventure.

Oh, and about lardo, it's Mario Batali's favorite ingredient.  It's the layer of fat found between the skin of the pig and the meat. Cholesterol check anyone? Oh, and if there's ever "beef cheeks" on the menu, order them. They are so succulent and moist. On to pig cheeks and fish cheeks and....

Would It Be So Awful If I Offaled You Ofal? (Oh, No, Puns!)

If you've ever watched the bad boy of cooking, Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations, then you know he'll eat anything. It's hard for me to believe he actually likes most of what he eats. I was recently watching the one episode where he eats a goat's rectum that has been cooked in ashes. Hey, Anthony, do you carry a portable "throne" with you? Now, wow, that was one piece of good ass. We could go off on some good one liners with that. But Anthony, was the offal really not so awful? If you note, oh great foodies, that offal is showing up on many restaurant menus as a way to keep things interesting. For those of you who aren't in the know, like me, offal is the entrails and internal organs of butchered animals. No Peta and vegetarians allowed with this post! According to Wikepedia, the origin of the word "offal" is probably Germanic , "abfall", and means "garbage". Germans really have a way with words, don't they. Let me just share a little bit of the the bitchy gourmet's personal history. I was raised on a working ranch in South Texas. When my Dad butchered a calf for our consumption, everything that came from that steer was for our consumption. Sweetbeards, tongue, liver, heart, brains, and tripe. I grew up eating that stuff. So for me, these big city chefs aren't cooking anything new. But my mother never would have made brined pork belly or cold lamb's brain on toast. She'd never put that with toast! Anyway, I've had the pleasure of eating at Mario Batali's fine NYC eatery, Babbo, and Mario offers nothing so tempting as goat rectum, but sweetbeards, tongue, and calf's liver. He has "offered "Testa", which is a sausage made by boiling the head of a pig, skimming off the bits of brain, gristle, and other effluvia that bubble to the surface, and turning it into salami."* Thomas Keller of the French Laundry offers an explanation to all of this offal stuff: "It's easy to cook a filet mignon, or to saute a piece of trout, serve it with browned butter a la meuniere, and call yourself a chef. But that's not real cooking. That's heating. Preparing tripe, however, is a transcendental act."*

Here is a fun list of offals that are offaled around the world. Enjoy them as you travel the great globe:

Scotland: Haggis, sheep stomach stuffed with a boiled mix of liver, heart, lungs, rolled oats and other ingredients (that scares me if they won't list them) 

Greece: Kokoretsi, pieces of lamb offal (liver, heart, spleen, kidney, fat) are pierced on a spit and covered by washed intestine wound around in a tube like fashion

Italy: Trippa, boiled intestines, often served with tomato sauce or "pani ca meusa", bread with spleen and caciocavallo cheese

Spain: Criadillas, bull testicles, reminds of a very old joke about the guy who goes to a restaurant and sees a parade of waiters bringing in a big tray, placing it in front of a guy, and with a huge flourish, unveils two huge grilled bull testicles. The guy watching wants in on the act. Asks the waiters to put him on the list to possibly eat the testicles of the bull who lost that day in the bull ring. Finally, his big day comes and they unveil the tray with a flourish and there are these two small grilled testicles. What happened, he cries? Oh, senior, sometimes, the bull, he wins. Drum roll please.

And finally Asia: Wu Gen Chang Wang, a spicy stew with preserved mustard, tofu, pork intestine slices and congealed pork blood cubes

I think I'll have a bowl of cornflakes, thank you very much.

*Taken from a Slate article by Patrick Keefe, Offal Good, 4/22/04