The largely unknown city of Compiegne, France, has the distinction of being the site of one of Louis XV’s most extravagant homes away from home. Under him, the Chateau de Compiegne became one of three distinctly opulent seats of government alongside Versailles and Fontainbleau. The latter French monarchs were hardly known for their desire to live simply as visitors to either of those other palaces can attest, and Compiegne is no exception, taking more than 35 years to complete with Louis constantly tinkering at the design to aggrandize it to his tastes. When finished it made the perfect departure point for forays into the nearby Forest of Compiegne, ancestral hunting grounds of French royalty, for some bracing sport. However, Louis was not into taking chances on returning with his game bag empty, and it is said that the forest was so well-stocked that a blind marksman could still expect to feast on wild meats.

Of course, it’s well-known that the rest of the French population were not eating in quite such grand style at that time, and it wasn’t until after the revolution and the rise of the bourgeois class that the French institution with which many of us are most familiar came into being, namely, the restaurant. Happily for us, upon visiting Compiegne in early 2010, we found that these days the city is much more egalitarian in its approach and makes abundant gastronomic accommodation for a range of economic classes. Indeed, the night we arrived, we dined somewhat opulently on escargot ravioli and kir royal before joining the sans culottes at the other end of the social spectrum the following evening with a carafe of vin ordinaire to wash down a marvelously flavorful jarret de porc, poached pig’s hock, a humble dish that was almost certainly never prepared for residents of the Chateau. Served with some whipped potatoes together with its poaching broth that would have been almost as good without the hock itself, le jarret was juicy, incredibly rich and porky, and meltingly tender.

The porcine counterpart to the famed veal osso buco of Milan, the hock is the lower portion of the animal’s shin bone ending just above the trotter, and is consequently tough and full of connective tissues. As with all such parts of the beast, slow cooking is necessary to get the best out of it, and in the case of the hock, poaching tenderizes it perfectly, but ignores the magic of the skin and underlying fat, comparable with the cheeks in terms of porky flavor. To solve this problem, and improve upon the jarret of Compiegne, we roasted it in a hot oven that performed three special functions: 1) it rendered out some of the fat, 2) crisped the skin into some amazing crackling, and 3) transformed the connective tissue into sticky, almost sweet, gelatin. We then deglazed the roasting pan with some of the strained poaching liquid and reduced the mixture into an almost clear gravy, that combined with a squeeze or two of lemon juice to cut the richness, came together on its own with the pig gelatin.

Unfortunately, and this is why we took until the start of fall 2011 to make this dish, unsmoked pork hocks are rather difficult hard to obtain in America even from reputable butchers where their smoked counterparts are ever present, and it was only last week that we managed to get our hands on some, in, of all places, a regular suburban supermarket. Our freezer is now half-filled with pork hocks which will be dropped into Sunday gravy in the near future, and may well also feature in a special attempt at home-making aspic jelly should we run out of inspiration or suffer from pork overload in the interim. We would encourage you to seek out this humble cut of meat too, you won’t be dining royally but it might help you feel wealthy when you check your bank balance.

As Odysseus was nearly drawn to his destruction on the rocks by the enchanting song of the sirens, so your hardy WANF voyagers were almost powerless to resist breaking themselves on the plentiful tables of Uruguay. However, unlike Homer’s hero, for whom women were the main weakness throughout his epic peregrinations, during our recent travels in South America, we found that grilled organs, specifically sweetbreads, are the likely source of our eventual ruin.

A comparatively short (by Odysseian standards) three-hour Buquebus ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the Mar del Plata – the enormously wide and constantly brown estuary of the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) – lies Uruguay’s capital and largest city, Montevideo. Arriving by water feels delightfully old-fashioned, and it allows the visitor to get a sense of the lie of the land in a way that a plane ride cannot. Rather than the confusing meander through a city’s outskirts on the way in from the airport, the city slowly revealed itself to us as we approached it by sea, face-first, so that we could see the way it had been built, outwards from the port.

Centered on the port is Montevideo’s cuidad vieja (old town), which with its faded colonial glory and salty night-time reputation, is immediately charming to the visitor. Only the giant ultra-modern cruise ship towering over everything prevented us from wondering if the ferry hadn’t also been a time machine. The hub of the old town is the Mercado del Puerto, a magnificent Victorian-era market with a skylit roof supported by wrought iron pillars, where the air is thick with the thwack of cleaver on meat, the cries of competing vendors and the sooty warblings of its resident pigeons. It no longer serves as a venue for trading fresh produce, a fact that might be sad if it weren’t now a giant parilla (grill/barbecue) serving all manner of traditional Uruguayan meaty preparations.

More accurately, there are actually a bunch of different parillas within the mercado all in friendly and typically laid-back Uruguayan-style competition with one another for the title of best in the city. We spent a good fifteen minutes cagily circling the mercado trying to figure out some way of discerning which might be leading this contest. After inspecting rack upon similar rack of sizzling meats, we decided to let demographics be our guide and plumped for Estancia del Puerto, the place with the fewest available seats (2), and the most drunken dudes with guitars serenading the patrons (1).

We had left Buenos Aires on a very early morning ferry and, having eaten nothing on the journey, arrived in Montevideo in a terrible, bleary-eyed state of hunger. The only way out of which seemed to be robust servings of charred beast. Happily then, the menu was the most extensive of its kind we have ever seen, containing more than eight choices of steak, five of sausage, 3 or 4 matambres (stuffed beef rolls), chicken, pork, and an intimidating selection of organ meats, not to mention a full range of pasta, salads and sides, in both full or half portions. Understanding, by this point in our carnivorous odyssey, that servings tended to be of a generous nature in this part of the world, we ordered half portions of mollejones (sweetbreads), morcilla (blood sausage), lechon (suckling pig), the potentially gruesome chotos/chinchulines (guts), and a bottle of typically Uruguayan tannat (red wine), in the hope that this might save room for further sampling of the menu.

Since, like all good grills, only certain sections of this parilla were used to actually cook meat, with others functioning as warming areas for ready-to-serve meats, we were presented with our choices within seconds, and what a presentation! No garnish, no sides of vegetables, no wasted real estate at all, just meat on plates and silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, with deep, communal tubs of chimichurri and salsa criolla scattered around the bar. We dived in recklessly.

The star of the show was the lechon, or milk-fed baby pig, which was heavenly. So good in fact, that were it not for the perfectly crispy skin overlying a thin-layer of incredibly sweet fat, and the moist, almost milky-tasting, flesh of unweaned piglet, it would truly be a barbaric dish. But our pause for reflection on the plight of young pork was brief as we tore into the golden beauty of the sweetbreads, the complex spices of the morcilla, and the (surprisingly) wonderful crunchy texture and minerally-tasting joy of the chinchulines. It all tasted to us like no meat had before, even the condiments had a singular tang and freshness to them that we found a step-up from those we’d had earlier in the week. And it seems we were not alone in this.

Glancing up at our surroundings and fellow diners as we approached fullness, it was comforting to see that everyone else was head-down and going full-bore into their lunches too. And who could blame them? Like the irresistible song of the sirens, the evocative combination of wood-smokey atmosphere, beautiful Victorian architecture, and the surround-sound effect of wall-to-wall sizzling would surely stir the soul of any meat-lover and be ruinous to the anti-meat resolve of even the most hardcore vegetarian.

Mercado del Puerto
Rambla 25 Agosto de 1825 y Perez Castellano,
Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay
Mercado del Puerto online

This dish was so easy, I could have cried as I cut my onions. I had a hankering for fresh crab and, because it was a weeknight, I saved time and energy by purchasing already shelled crab (not to ever be confused with something that makes me want to gag called krab).   This dish actually raised my mood from not-too-hot (about a 3 on a scale from 1 to 10) to feeling incredibly good (a good 9/9.5).  Sometimes a good dinner can just do that.  The lemon brightened the finished product up, the fennel gave it a bit of crunch and sweetness.  Crab and fresh cherry tomatoes always remind me of warm summer days which, naturally, make me smile.

If we had any leftovers I would’ve loved to have tasted it cold. I actually think it could make a great may0-less pasta salad.  You could also chop up some sauteed softshell crabs and use them instead of the fresh crab.  Maybe I’ll wait for a real summer day to give that a try.  Until then, I urge you to give this a try!

Picture this, if you will: A warm, humid day in Argentina’s early autumn; the last rays of sun slanting sharply through the browning leaves of mature plane trees; myriad dog-walkers rustling quietly by in the litter of those already fallen. In the lee of a giant ficus planted for sidewalk shade, two travelers recline in the canvas-backed chairs of a cafe, unwinding the combined corporeal kinks of a 10 hour overnight flight and a 6 hour stroll around Buenos Aires. As they sit, calm descends over our road-weary protagonists – of the kind unknown and almost unfathomable in their highly caffeinated daily lives up North, yes, a beautiful serenity indeed, interrupted only by a raging thirst.

To repeat the lunchtime libation of a world-class Malbec/Syrah blend seems somehow tyrannous to our relaxed travelers, and the option of the Argentine national drink, the Fernet-Coca, somehow dischordant with the peaceful ambiance. Instead, the distinctly un-Argentine, yet surely appropriate, and broadly contextual, selection of a pair of chilled pisco sours has great appeal.

Made from a tangy combination of lemon or lime juice, pisco, simple syrup, regional bitters, and egg whites, the pisco sour is the national drink of both Peru and Chile, and its origins lie in 16th century Peru, where grapes first planted by Spanish colonialists were distilled into brandy because the Crown, seeking to protect it’s export trade, banned local wine production.

Although it shares its name with a Peruvian coastal town – a title derived from the Quechua word “pisqu”, meaning a variety of “little bird” native to the towns’ surrounding region of Ica – it wasn’t until the 18th century that brandy from Pisco, – having been known previously as simply aguardiente (firewater) or orujo, became synonymous with its home port, as sailors transporting it between the colonies and Spain began to refer to it in that way.

Indeed, it was among sailors and other “ruffians” well-known for being partial to strong liquor that pisco first gained popularity, with the loftier classes generally shunning it as the drink of the unstable and unsavory. And, even when the ban on wine exporting from the colonies was repealed, this down-at-heel reputation did not stop it far exceeding wine in quantity sold.

Today, pisco is still widely exported from both Peru and Chile, and is drunk by all classes both within those countries and across the world. In it’s native lands it is often sipped neat, and aged varieties – in the same way as aged brandies the world over – command high prices due to their complexity and mellow flavors. The “Quebranta” on the front of our bottle of pisco refers to the typical Peruvian grape varietal it’s made from, which is but one of many used in the distillation of pisco. [For more on these grape varieties and distillation techniques click here.] However, the bulk of exported pisco is clear, aged for only the minimum three months (usually in stainless steel), and destined for the cocktail shaker.

The most famous of these cocktails is, of course, the pisco sour. As with many mixed drinks, it’s unclear exactly where and when it was first “invented”, as records of drinks named “punche” containing pisco diluted with lemon or lime juice date from the 18th century, and at the turn of the 20th century the Bank Exchange Bar in San Francisco became famous for its Pisco punch which contained pisco, lemon and pineapple juices. The consensus is though, that in the 1870s an English sailor by the name of Eliot Stubb opened a bar in the Peruvian city of Iquique where he began to experiment with a Latin American version of his favorite cocktail the, then very new, whiskey sour. Quite why he included the egg white in his recipe has been lost in the hazy annals of alcoholic history, but as these pictures amply demonstrate, it gives the otherwise rather ordinary-looking drink a real sense of drama.

Now, rejoining our two travelers, who, having been served, now sip contentedly on their pisco sours over frothy upper-lips as the sun, as if sharing their relaxed ambiance, slips lazily below the horizon giving-up a magnificently pink dusk sky…

Why not make yourself a couple of pisco sours this evening and raise a toast to (arguably) the most famous of Argentines, Eva Peron, aka Evita, who would be 90 years old today.

So, lately we’ve been experiencing a certain degree of apathy with regard to food. Maybe it’s the time of year or the grind of work, either way, it’s not a great place to be for us, and hopefully somewhere we will leave soon. Nonetheless, sometimes inspiration can strike, and delicious, seasonal citrus fruit can be the spark.

Now, I use the word inspiration somewhat liberally here because really, all this dish is, is lightly fried monkfish medallions over a mix of Israeli and regular couscous. The “inspired bit”, if you will, is the sauce, an olive oil, tangerine, and Marcona almond emulsion.

Fried Monkfish Medallions with Mixed Couscous & Almond Sauce

Ingredients

• 1lb monkfish tail, sliced into 1 inch (2.5cm) medallions
• 3oz Israeli couscous
• 3oz regular (or flavored) couscous
• 1 large bunch white chard or escarole (chicory)
• 2tbsp golden raisins
• 6 tbsp whole marcona or other whole large almonds (1 tbsp chopped)
• 3oz your best extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tangerine, supremed, and juiced
• 1 handful good black, or kalamata, olives
• 3tbsp flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 12 oz vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4tbsp plain flour
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Recipe

1. Cook couscous with stock according to directions on package, or eyeball it if you’re feeling fancy.
2. In a blender grind all but 1 tbsp almonds, before drizzling in olive oil and tangerine juice. Taste and correct seasoning accordingly.
3. When couscous is cooked, stir in parsley, olives and remaining lemon juice. Correct seasoning if necessary.
4. Heat a frying pan to medium-high and add 2 tbsp regular olive oil
5. Sprinkle with salt and a squeeze of lemon juice, before dredging monkfish medallions in flour and egg.
6. Gently fry monkfish until golden brown on all sides, and remove to a cooling rack.
7. Add another tbsp olive oil to pan and add chard. Sweat until limp before adding golden raisins, tangerine segments and the chopped almonds.
8. Arrange all these delicious elements artfully on a plate before wolfing it down with a chilled Albarino.

When you’re a busy modern executive, web-based home-delivery services like FreshDirect can help you save those precious minutes it takes to race around a supermarket and snatch a few items off the shelves. When you’re into food, web-based home-delivery services like FreshDirect can be like, well…, like the daily temptation faced by a Frenchman living next door to a brothel.

So, everytime a flyer comes through our door informing us that a $50 purchase means an additional $25 worth for free, we are briefly gallant in our efforts to fight the urge, before capitulating and ordering all manner of products on the spur of the moment. Amongst our knee-jerk purchases just prior to Christmas were four quails, six soft-shell crabs, an immodest hunk of jamon serrano, and three large octopii – none of which were called for by our festive menu.

Consequently, because we had exceeded the capacity of our scant storage space, we were obliged to prioritize our consumption of said victuals based on what could fit in the freezer. I know we have your sympathy when I tell you that this forced us, quite literally, to gorge ourselves on quail and jamon one desperate night. The anguish. Happily, octopus not only freezes well, but freezing actually helps to tenderize it, so in to the ice-chest went our three 8-legged friends.

So recently, when the time came, and after having followed our tried and tested octopus boiling method on one of the ‘puses, we found ourselves reminiscing about a wonderful, crisp octopus salad we ate in the famed town of Alba in Italy’s Piemonte region two summers ago. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a restaurant specializing in Albanese specialties (truffles, mushrooms, game, and hearty red wines), but appropriate for the conditions, the salad was similar, if not identical, to the kind of insalati di polipo typically found in Puglia. Perfect as a first-course for lunch on a scorching summer’s day, the crunchy, yet tender, octopus worked beautifully with crunchy and fibrous celery in a lively dressing of lemon juice and an almost unbelievably bright unfiltered olive oil.

Now, here in New York the conditions of late have not exactly mirrored those of July in Alba, but, reasoning that there was no better cure for seasonal affective disorder than a big plate of crunchy, zesty tentacles and the memory of the sun-heated flagstones under our bare feet, we went right ahead and made this magnificent salad all the same. Indeed, because sunshine is so scarce at this time of year, you should treat yourself to some liquid sunshine – the year’s new olive oils are becoming available – and this is a salad that really benefits from the best extra virgin oil you can afford.

Insalata di Polipo alla Pugliese (Puglian-Style Octopus & Celery Salad)

Ingredients

1 octopus (allowed to cool after being boiled and prepared in the traditional way), grilled on a grill, griddle pan, flat top or skillet and chopped into bite-sized chunks

2 large celery stalks, chopped roughly

1 plum tomato, chopped roughly

1/2 red onion, chopped roughly

3 tbsp flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

1 clove garlic, smashed & chopped finely

3 tbsp your best olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

pinch of salt & black pepper (substituting hot red pepper flakes for the black pepper works nicely)

Recipe

Combine all ingredients together in a bowl. Mix well to ensure oil and lemon juice coat all components. Enjoy with thoughts of summer.

Even though mulled wine should remind me of being in the church choir as a cherub-faced youngster and singing Christmas carols with frosty breath overlooking a seasonally-decorated nave and a sea of pink-cheeked parishoners, it doesn’t. In spite of this being the way I was introduced to this most famous Yuletide beverage, my abiding memories of it from childhood (before I ever got to drink any, I should mention) are of a warm cinnamon-scented aroma spiked sharply with the acrid tang of disinfectant and the musty odor of old people. And this, perhaps unsurprisingly, had put me off it until comparatively recently.

You see, as part of the church’s annual carol-singing calendar, we choristers had to visit all the hospitals, hospices and senior citizens homes in town, and my sensitive smell-o-memory was scarred for many years by this revolting combination of smells. That was, until I visited a friend in the French city of Lyon around Christmastime a few years back.

As an icy mistral wind blew down the Rhône valley, vin chaud or hot wine was being served out of a deep cauldron to chilled shoppers perusing the seasonal wares of Lyon’s famed Christmas market in Place Carnot. And I found the atmosphere of seasonal bonhomie, red noses, black tobacco, and warm, spicy alcohol irresistible. I’m not sure whether it was the cold, the booze, or the giant cans of duck confit and cassoulet on sale that so moved me, but from that moment on, I have been hooked on mulled wine.

A Brief History of Mulling

In days gone by, wine went bad pretty quickly due to poor bottling techniques, so during the Renaissance period, spices began to be added – as they were to virtually everything else in that time – to both delay spoilage and make spoiled products taste less nasty. And since young wines were commonly bottled during the early fall, mulling (which originally only meant to ruminate or ponder lengthily) was necessary by Yuletide as some were beginning to turn to the dark side, and hence how the consumption of “mulled wine” became a holiday tradition.

The exact combination of spices varies from country to country and person to person, but, on the whole, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and bay are mixed into claret or another Bordeaux to form the basis of flavors. Variations (and there are many) include the addition of mace, juniper, black pepper, dry citrus peel or vanilla, and substitutions include honey or molasses for the sugar, cardamom for the cloves, and brandy, sherry, acquavit, brenivin, fruit wine or vodka for the red wine.

Mulled wine, aka vin chaud, gluhwein, glögg, vin fiert, vin brulé, quentão, is drunk in most European countries in some form or another around Christmas, but it is particularly associated with German and Nordic traditions where so-called “glogg” parties are a holiday season staple. At these shin-digs, the spiced wine is typically drunk with other Yule specialties including gingerbread, blue cheese and, perhaps rather curiously, rice-pudding.

In my house growing up, however, we only ever had mulled wine when we were expecting company because my father, who has something of an intolerant nose for anything strongly perfumed, can’t abide the stuff, and, it being during the early 1980s, it was accompanied by cheese and pineapple cubes on toothpicks, cocktail weenies (chipolatas), factory-made mince pies, and potted shrimp. All of which is perhaps another reason why I didn’t really catch on to the subtle flavors and myriad charms of mulled wine until I’d left home.

But, of course, now that I have, I’m almost obsessed with making it every year, and so impassioned am I about it, that I’ll frequently pour myself a large glass and then go and stand outside in the cold to drink it to try to recreate the Lyonnaise atmosphere of years ago. Of course, it doesn’t work that well, but it beats the shit out of taking my glass and hymn book to a seniors center and evoking older memories…

Happy Boozy Holidays to you all!

Jonny’s Holiday Mulled Wine (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles of red wine
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 star anise
• 4 sticks of cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of orange juice
• peel of 1 orange
• peel of 1 lemon
• 1 orange sliced in 1/4 inch rounds

What to do:

1. Optional: Tie all spices in a piece of cheesecloth using kitchen twine. You can skip this if you’d prefer to laugh at guests with cloves stuck in their teeth.
2. Heat wine in pot gently with spices/sachet and peel until aromas fill the room (at least 15 minutes). Do not boil, only simmer very, very gently.
3. Stir in sugar and orange juice. Taste for sweetness and adjust if necessary.
4. Place orange rounds in mugs and ladle in wine.
5. Stir and serve with a cinnamon stick and enjoy!

A month or so ago we bought a package of veal liver at our local grocery store telling ourselves that we going to cook them, but not really having any idea how. We’ve made veal kidneys before without relying on a recipe so we were convinced we could do the same with the beast’s liver, but when we got home we found ourselves bereft of inspiration, and we put them the freezer and they there stayed until recently when we realized that we must figure out something to do with them.

Inspiration is overrated, so we abandoned our search for it, opting instead for a simple breading and pan-frying approach. You’ll notice that this dish kind of resembles a veal milanese in appearance, and it does, just don’t pound the livers or they’ll split and become purple goo. Because of this resemblance, as I was making it I was thinking of the great breaded sweetbreads we ate at Prune, and at the same time, I imagined this dish would be the perfect kind of thing to have for lunch on a cold, foggy day after a brisk walk in the rolling hills of Piemonte, and washed down with a gentle nebbiolo. And that might be the case, but it was just as good with a cold beer after a miserable rainy day trawling around Manhattan in search of baby gifts.

Veal Liver “alla Milanese” with Garlicky Mushrooms

Ingredients

• 6oz veal liver, cleaned
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4oz plain flour
• 3 slices stale country bread, crumbed
• 3oz olive oil
• 1 large portobello mushroom
• 1-2 medium cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 2 sprigs thyme, leaves removed and rubbed
• salt and black pepper

Recipe

• Put egg, flour and breadcrumbs into separate bowls
• Slice liver into thin rounds and sprinkle with salt and pepper
• Heat oil in a saute pan to medium heat
• Chop mushroom roughly into chunks and saute with garlic until soft but still al dente.
• Sprinkle with thyme and remove to a warm plate.
• Dredge liver slices first in flour, then in egg, and finally in breadcrumbs before placing gently in pan
• Fry liver for 2 minutes each side or until coating is golden brown
• Drain briefly on paper towels before serving immediately with mushrooms
• Garnish with lemon slices and good balsamic vinegar. Enjoy!

So I know what you’re already thinking (if you’ve even dared to read this post at all!) – tongue?! WHA-WHA-WHAT!? I think i just threw up a little. Nasty. Or, maybe you’re thinking, “interesting… I’d give it a try… I trust these two.” And possibly you’ve been lucky enough to have tried tongue before and can honestly understand why we’re pressuring all of you out there to give this cheap cut of offal a try. Seriously, folks, trust us on this one. It’s cheap and it’s tasty. There’s one catch – as it is often with certain cuts of offal, tongue (both beef and veal) is high in saturated fat. But remember, tongue is to be eaten as a special dish – this is not a cut you’re going to eat twice a week.Many of you may have eaten beef tongue before as it is a popular cut of offal to eat in many types of cuisines such as Mexican, Jewish, German, Philippino, Vietnamese, Spanish Russian and Persian cuisine. One of the most popular ways of eating beef tongue is in beef tongue stew. But when I saw a nice piece of veal tongue for only $2 in my grocery store, I knew I had to pick it up and cook it at home. But how to do it? And then I thought about all the ways I have eaten tongue in the past and remembered my absolute favorite way to eat it – grilled like I’ve had it at my favorite Korean (Korean BBQ) and Japanese (Yakiniku) restaurant. So with that in mind, we cut the skin off our tongue, sliced it as thinly as possible, grilled it on high heat for about 15 to 25 seconds on each side ate it two ways: basted with sesame oil/sea salt and topped with a squeeze of fresh lemon and topped with the delicious Korean scallion salad (Pa Muchim) with a side of Miso dipping sauce. It was fun to eat and absolutely delicious.

Just as a note, getting the skin off of tongue seems like a daunting task to some. Often, people will buy it already cooked or smoked so the skin is already removed. Many times it is cooked in water at a very, very low temperature (UNDER a boil) as to not over-cook it and supposedly the skin comes right off. We decided to not take the amount of time it should take to make traditional Japanese grilled tongue which should be soaked in water for hours, cooked in water slowly and then salted for 24 hours before it is finally grilled or braised. We took a sharp knife and hacked that skin off ourselves. It really wasn’t as difficult to do as we thought – plus we don’t always have to go for perfect-looking food.

I hope you all won’t be scared to give some tongue a try. Tongue on tongue action is a flavor sensation.  Also, check our Nuria’s version of Veal Tongue in a Vinaigrette Sauce - she’s got an awesome picture of the tongue before it’s been cut!  We forgot to take that picture!

GRILLED VEAL TONGUE WITH LEMON, PA MUCHIN AND MISO DIPPING SAUCE - serves 2 to 4 as a starter

Ingredients:

• 1 Veal Tongue
• 3 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 lemon cut in segments
• 1 batch of Pa Muchim (Korean Scallion Salad)
• an indoor stovetop grill or ourdoor grill
• a very sharp knife

What to do:

1. Take the skin off your tongue and then slice into very, very thin slices – as thin as you can get them.  Heat your grill up smoking hot. 
2. Make your Pa Muchim and allow to marinate.
3. In a small bowl, combine the sesame oil and sea salt.  When grill is hot, brush one side of the thinly sliced tongue with sesame oil/salt mixture and put that side down on the grill.  Brush the other side with the mixture and after 15 to 30 seconds, flip over and grill on other side.  Do this with half of your veal tongue slices.
4. With the other slices, brush a bit of your miso sauce (see below) on each piece before if you’d like and grill for 15 to 30 seconds.  Brush a bit of miso sauce on other side and grill again.
5. Serve the first set of grilled tongue with a squeeze of lemon and the other topped with Pa Muchim.  Dip both in miso sauce if you’d like.  Enjoy!

MISO DIPPING SAUCE (Make another batch to brush on tongue before grilling if you’d like)

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon of miso paste
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 4 teaspoons of soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 1 small clove of garlic, minced

What to do:

1. Add all ingredients together and stir all together.
2. Marvel to yourself at how freaking easy that was.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• VEAL KIDNEYS WITH MUSHROOMS AND COGNAC
• GREEK-INSPIRED GRILLED LAMB SHOULDER CHOP WITH THICK HERB YOGURT
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)
• CACIO E PEPE: SPAGHETTI WITH PECORINO AND BLACK PEPPER ROMAN-STYLE
• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Pork Roll and Scrapple – The Dirty Culinary Pride of South Jersey/Philly

Jeffrey Steingarten famously declares in It Must Have Been Something I Ate that every time he is bored, he roasts a chicken. Calculating that he gets bored approximately once a week, this translates into 52 roast chickens a year and more than one thousand since he began as food critic at Vogue. That’s a lot of chicken, but it’s also a lot of practice in the art of roasting. Now, Steingarten goes on to say that roasting a chicken in the oven is little more than baking it, and that real roasting can only be done on a spit over a flame, which is perhaps true, but in the absence of a spit and fire, I think oven-roasting (baking) can produce a perfectly delicious roast chicken, and would refer you to the recent post “How to Spatchcock a Chicken” for a quick step-by-step.

Indeed, to my mind, (and to disagree with Mr. Steingarten, for once) there is one distinct advantage to oven-roasting vs. spit-roasting, namely, drippings, and drippings, like the crumbles in the corner of a bag of chips (crisps), are where the flavor is at. These drippings, you see, can be made into one of the most sublime of all cooking by-products, the gravy.

So, after washing and patting dry my bird, I stuffed its cavity with carrots, celery, onions, garlic, thyme, and lemon, before giving it a good rub all over with olive oil and a healthy sprinkling of salt. I then placed said bird in a dutch oven (le creuset) and leaving the lid off, put it in a 420F oven for forty minutes. After forty minutes, and with the bird looking perfectly golden and crispy, I turned the heat down to more placid 350F and let it roast for another hour before removing it and letting it rest a while out of the oven.

Before carving it, I removed the bird from the pot and took out the stuffing from the cavity, then drained all the juices out of the cavity into the pot where they mixed with roasting juices. Adding the cavity stuffing to the juices, along with about a pint of tap water, I turned up the heat and scraped the burnt bits off the bottom of the pan. I let the liquid reduce by about a third, stirring occasionally and crushing some of the vegetables a bit with my wooden spoon.

Nicely brown and beautifully redolent of chicken, thyme, lemon and the sweetness of roasted carrots, I strained the gravy and then pushed the solids through a sieve to add some body and flavor back in to it. Seasoning only slightly with salt and fresh pepper, I was proud to have made an absolutely fantastic, honest-to-goodness chicken gravy without recourse to stock, bouillon cubes or thickeners like corn starch. It was a moment in which I realized that just by following my instincts I had recreated the kind of gravy you’d commonly find at a good English restaurant or pub, or indeed, a good country French restaurant.

It was really quite an ordinary dinner – roast chicken, dauphinoise potatoes and a warm asparagus salad with fennel and celery tops, but with this gravy it became extraordinary — exactly the kind of restorative elixir that my body needed. “They” say that chicken soup contains something that makes you better when you’re sick, and I am sure that this chicken gravy had some of that goodness in it too. It was freshly made, flavorful and, well, chicken-y in a way that only chicken can really taste like chicken, and it made me feel wholesome without resorting to wheat germ, lentils and colonic irrigation.

Another interesting by-product of this dinner was a rather toothsome recipe for a potato and fennel gratin that I’m also inordinately proud of, perhaps because I didn’t work from a recipe, perhaps because I’m an asshole. Anyway, here’s how to do it:

Potato & Fennel Gratin
Ingredients

• 2 large or 3 medium waxy potatoes (yukon gold are best here) peeled, but left whole
• 1 large fennel bulb with tops trimmed and reserved for fennel salad
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup milk
• 2-3oz low moisture mozzarella, sliced thinly
• salt & pepper to taste

Recipe

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Using a mandolin on the middle thickness setting, slice your potatoes and fennel.
• Lay out potatoes overlapping one another by about 3/4 slice (see photo below) in a layer in a baking dish.
• Then do the same thing with your fennel slices. This second layer will probably not be as neat as the first one, but that doesn’t really matter.
• Pour the milk over the vegetables but make sure milk does not cover them. Depending on the size of your dish, you may need a bit more or a bit less milk, but it should only come up to the bottom of the upper-most layer of vegetables.
• Season with salt and pepper.

• Cover dish with foil and place in oven for about half an hour.
• After this time, remove from oven and lay your mozzarella slices on top. Do not add too much cheese – be a little sparing.
• Return to oven and allow to bake for another twenty minutes or so, until cheese begins to puff and brown.
• Remove and allow to cool a bit before serving (cutting is easier when vegetables and cheese have firmed up a little).
• Serve with roast chicken on a Sunday night and calm the weekly apprehension at your impending return to work.

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• BRAISED PORK CHOPS WITH LIME AND OLIVES
• ENSALADA DE CABRALES (Thin Sliced Apple and Cabrales Cheese Salad w/ Vinaigrette)
• AUTHENTIC THIN-CRUST PIZZA
• BLACK, RED OR PINTO BEANS WITH CHORIZO AND CUMIN
• VEAL KIDNEYS WITH MUSHROOMS AND COGNAC
• CREAMY LEMON PASTA
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)