Because it’s Offaly Good
May 6, 2008 St. Louis, general food, offal watch, restaurants
Last night, in telling my mother and sister about some of the better things I’ve eaten recently, the looks of horror on their faces, while not entirely unexpected, were a bit stronger than anticipated as I spoke of offal like tongue, and testicles, and cheek.
My sister did not understand why I would want to eat such things. A married mother of three, she rarely has the opportunity to go out for a nice meal, and when she does, she and my brother in law are interested in going to a place they like to have precisely what it is they liked about it in the first place. They don’t want anything new and they don’t want anything they would consider weird.
This contrasted slightly with my mom’s response which was more along the lines of Midwestern people simply not having the same tastes as other parts of the country.
But so too are Chicago, Kansas City and Milwaukee, and each of these cities have taught their clientèle to be slightly more daring than the average meat and potato diner of St. Louis.
Recently, however, there has been an adventurous trend towards the types of eating many of us like to do in St. Louis. Some chefs and restaurateurs have slowly worked their guests towards these foods, and they have done so
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More Modern Marvels
Apr 26, 2008 Television, offal watch
Last night the episode of Modern Marvels was titled “The Pig.”
Although I braced myself for a biased portrayal of the pork industry as it shifted from the lard type breeds of old to the lean “white” meat of the 80’s and 90’s; and they were a bit generous with their praise regarding the genetic engineering of hogs and made it sound almost like a good thing that you need to take showers before going into a CAFO operation; they did swing it around at the end showing an organic farm that raises Berkshire hogs and even fattens some of them on acorns in their final days.
Still, it was after showing some medcal uses for pig genetics like insulin and tissue repair that the episode steered into a direction I didn’t see coming: Chris Cosentino was on cooking offal at Incanto.
He cracked open a pigs head, poached the brain, and then sautéed it with mushrooms and capers.
The listing on The History Channel’s website also shows that Missouri’s Burger’s Smokehouse was also in the episode, but I missed the first ten minutes and it must have been in that segment as I didn’t see it.
It will air again May 7, and here’s the rundown on upcoming episodes of food-related interest:
- Whiskey – April 26
- Corn – May 5
- Farming Technology – May 6
- The Pig – May 7
Tags: Berkshire, Burger's Smokehouse, Chris Cosentino, hogs, modern marvels, offal, pigs, pork
That is so Offal
Apr 14, 2008 chefs, general food
In this video Chris Cosentino chats about offal and mentions a cookbook he’s been working on for four or five years stating that “nobody has the balls to put it out.”
(a) funny choice of words considering the topic
(b) book publishers are in the business of making money and a book about offal cookery for the American market is still–sorry to say–way ahead of it’s time.
(c) How much of what Cosentino does is to shock people? He seems to relish in freaking people out more and more, and while he’s doing a killer job raising awareness about where meat comes from, and I’m still eager to eat in his restaurant if I find myself in San Francisco, he’s starting to come off a bit condescending towards people that just don’t want to eat the nasty bits.
And how about this shot from Gourmet Magazine about a month back?
Apparently they have gotten a healthy dose of hate mail for this picture and have thrown up a poll on gourmet.com to get a consensus on how people feel about. I would link you to the poll except for the fact that I can no longer find it but, it pretty much boiled down to something along the lines of: “provocative or gross?”
While I don’t think it’s particularly gross it does strike me as being disrespectful in some way because the pig did die so that someone could consume it. It could have been used for something like the porchetta di testa Josh Galliano posted about a while back instead of just going into the dumpster.
I wonder if Saw got any royalty checks for this?
Tags: Chris Cosentino, gourmet magazine, Joshua Galliano, offal
3 Things I Learned Last Night
Feb 29, 2008 chefs, offal watch, restaurants
We had a great meal at An American Place last night, and although I will comment on it further when I have recovered, I wanted to make three quick comments.
- Duck Testicles are really not a big deal. They have the texture of a soft sausage with its casing removed, and they are wonderfully delicate. If you didn’t tell someone what they were, they would devour them with glee.
- Cockscombs I don’t quite get. It doesn’t really taste like much, and has a rubbery texture that I likened to soft liccorice before our server rolled in with the win and called it gummy-bear-like. Yes, yes it was.
- Tripe. I hate tripe. I loved Josh’s tripe.. It was the best of the offal we ate last night. I was in utter disbelief.
They’re cooking up some great food at An American Place and it’s sad there were so many available seats on a Thursday.
I have no room to talk on that point, as we’d only eaten there four times previously, but we’ll definitley be doing our best to go a little more frequently than before.
And man, that is such a beautiful restaurant.
Tags: An American Place, Joshua Galliano, offal
In regards to the forum, you were right!
Feb 2, 2008 chefs, offal watch, restaurants
So, um, yeah, I had no idea the forum would take off like that.
In basically three weeks 47 people have posted 835 articles, and while a nice chunk are from only four of us (and you know who you are), we have everything from magazine editors, to a wine rep, to local chefs.
This morning, one of them who we will call Josh Galliano, walked away with the award for greatest post (by about twenty fold) in this thread about offal. One of Josh’s tasting menus at the moment is completely comprised of offal like cockscombs and honeycomb tripe, and he took pictures of a lot of it to not only explain to us what he’s up to, but show us as well.
The pic above is actually beef hearts from American Grass Fed Beef, and it’s An American Place’s amuse for the weekend. I don’t know which I like more, that they’re getting away with serving beef heart, or the fact that he titled the pic “two hearts” and I can’t stop laughing because of that goofy eighties song.
So thank you everyone for posting and showing me that there is a core group of people in St. Louis that get it. I’ve never been more proud to live in St. Louis.
Tags: American Grass Fed Beef, An American Place, beef heart, beef hearts, cockscombs, grass fed beef, honeycomb tripe, Joshua Galliano, offal
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