Time to leave the kiddie pool. I have to jump into the deep end of culinary adventure. Hopefully, not the really deep end. Eating the whole beast, really?
Offal: Noun:
1 : the waste or by-product of a process: as a : trimmings of a hide b : the by-products of milling used especially for stock feeds c : the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal removed in dressing. 2 Rubbish.
Back story: Oral surgery and ice cream
A good friend J. has carefully cultivated his image as a tough guy. We know better – inside he’s a softie who likes cookies and milk, and is really a very generous, sweet guy. Now, some time ago he was dismissing his impending oral surgery and I realized he had failed to anticipate the shape he’d be in after it was over. Tough guys like us, don’t need help, right?
Our insistence on driving him to and from the appointment enabled us to meet his delightful mother. While we got acquainted in the dentist’s waiting room, she cheerfully chatted up other patients, explaining through her experience of having worked in this very same office, what they could expect after their “procedures.” (eeuw)
One young woman asked about what she might eat later in the day. I heard J's mother reply “awful, awful.” I thought, “Wow, this poor girl! Why didn’t she soften the blow a little. Was she really explaining how awful the girl was going to feel?”
Turns out the local ice cream shop has a thick shake or frappe they’ve named the “Awful, Awful.”
Which brings us to: Offal
The phrase “awful offal” came to mind repeatedly as I heard my husband read a couple of recipes from the book “Nose to Tail Eating” by Fergus Henderson, demi-god among people to whom I listen. The book, you may have guessed by now, is not about ice cream. It’s about eating every possible part of various animals that end up on our plates.
On the recommendation of Anthony Bourdain and others, I recently purchased this book. I was thrilled with the forward/introduction and have been excited to start the book. The night it arrived, my husband began reading excerpts to me. Instructions for things like how to singe hair off pigs’ ears or reminders to leave the windpipe of your sheep’s pluck hanging outside the pot so as to conveniently drain any unexpected material expelled from its lungs during cooking…Well, let’s just say these passages do leave me wondering about my pursuit of offal.
I’m still just beginning the book, and I keep hearing the phrase “awful offal” in my head. I am afraid I may have had a surprising epiphany about cooking and eating. Have I been mistaken about my adventurous and enlightened pursuit of both? Could it be that while true food lovers are BASE jumping off into, well offal - I’m like the wimp on the kiddie carousel?
Then unexpectedly, you find gentle and alluring comforts in the writing (he doesn’t have the heart to kill the snails for one recipe) and I’m hooked again…Stay tuned.
In the meantime, catch Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" show - the episode on Namibia. Or, read about it here.
