So … what do you call poultry giblets? No, don’t tell me. “Cake bits”?
If you want to sound fancy, in classical French cooking the browned bits in the pan are called sucs, and a sauce made with them is a fond. Americans got a bit mixed up on their trip over on the Mayflower and call the browned bits fond and the sauce, creatively, sauce. In professional (and not so professional) kitchens, they are called anything from gunk to brown s**t to meat candy, but hardly ever, for some reason, browned bits.
Some of those innards can be pretty tasty! I had some delicious duck hearts recently, done in a sort of thai style, and duck gizzards are amazing (I’ve referred to them as meat candy before!). A favorite gastropub I used to go to had an “Offal of the Day” and options included things like preparations of chicken hearts, sweetbreads, and (one of my favorites) buffalo-style chicken livers. So good!
Yeah, I’ve only ever let other people cook them for me, so far anyway. The only organs I have absolutely no interests in ever trying are brains (just seems like a bad idea what with prions floating around and all) and kidneys. An adventurous friend of mine cooked some kidneys (beef I think?) as part of a bet, and described them as tasting like pee-meat.
Ohhhh, nasty!!! I only eat food not cooked by me at a small number of places, so I’ve never had the opportunity to eat anything prepped by someone else, either!
Oh dear, not beef kidneys. Bad call. You might give veal kidneys a try. Much milder – sort of like the difference between calves’ liver and pork liver. No civilized person eats pork liver twice. I insist on veal kidneys with Christmas morning English fry-up, and though I am sometimes asked to cook just one portion for myself, this is not grounds for divorce.
And I’m sad that chicken livers are vanishing from markets, deemed to be cat food, just like good suet (from veal kidneys!) is deemed bird food. They’re very cheap and very tasty. Deviled in a mustard sauce and served on toast. Fried with sage and white wine and served over Parmesan mashed potatoes (Marcella Hazan). Wrapped in bacon and broiled (retro rumaki, I think better without the water chestnut). Sweetbreads, wrapped in prosciutto and quickly deep-fried, salty and crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside. Stop me, stop me.
Thought tonight after trick or treating - well, at least I don’t have to be tempted to dip into my daughter’s stash and wreck my BG, because I can’t eat any of it.
Thought after that thought - she can’t eat half of it, either, so I should go to the store tomorrow and get safe candy for, erm, her.
Hahaha, nice! Hubby usually gets a lot of the gluten stuff as we’re a gf household and, well, toddlers = gluten everywhere. Tonight was just a lot of harder to chew/hard candies, which she can’t do yet. I had to take more than half of her (kind of small - only went to a few houses) stash away, so I’m going to replace it. I’ll be better prepared next year - this was our first time!
Just wait until you screw up the tooth fairy business, you will tie yourself in knots trying to explain why the tooth fairy didn’t come, or why the money is there and so is the tooth. Fun times!
Next time, instead of the nice note with the tooth, there was a horribly threatening note with promise of dire consequences if proper instructions/procedures were not followed !!!
I periodically confit chicken livers in duck fat then eat them with toasted french baguette slices and slightly sweet fig jam–delicious (although nutritionally horrible)!
