Another recipe from English Food that appeared at my pop-up restaurant last month.
These kidneys were served alongside fried sweetbreads as an accompaniment to a
roast saddle of lamb. The idea here being a way of introducing some offal into
the meal, but making it an optional extra so that anyone that was squeamish did
not have try it. I must say that they went down very well, with most of the
guests opting to ‘excavate’ their own pink kidneys from their crispy fat. A
brave lot they indeed were.
This recipe is close to Jane’s heart:
‘[A]lmost the first dish I learnt to cook on arriving in Wiltshire…[it] was a
particular favourite of my husband’s.’
This is a very simple recipe. Ask your
butcher for kidneys still covered in their suet, when you arrive home trim away
any big chunks so that the kidneys are covered with about half an inch of fat.
It won’t completely encase them, so when it comes to roasting them, make sure
any bare kidney faces downwards, or use the fatty trimmings and cocktail sticks
to cover the gaps.
Arrange the kidneys on a wire rack over a roasting tin and
bake them in a hot oven - 230⁰C - for 20 to 30 minutes. Check them after 15 though.
The perfect kidney will be hot and pink, so if still a little too red and
bloody, leave for a few more minutes. For some stupid reason, I forgot to take in picture of the pink kidneys within. Sorry folks!
Serve the kidneys straight away with roast
lamb, or as a first course with brown bread and mustard.
#379 Kidneys
in their Fat. As an offal fan, I was really looking forward to this one.
When done perperly, the kidneys are mild, sweet and juicy, it is only when
overcooked that they take on that mealy texture and overly-metallic tang. The
trouble is that there is such a tiny window between cooked to perfection to
overdone. If you get it on the button, however, they are a simple and delicious
treat 8.5/10
2 comments:
Hi there,
I found this blog a while ago, lost it, and am delighted to have found it again! Delightful reading, and fascinating to compare your JG experiences with my own - there are a few recipes I'll tackle now I know there are no hidden gremlins...unless gremlins appear on the ingredient list. Not outside the bounds of possibility in some of the Northumbrian recipes.
Gan canny,
Jon
Hi John
I'm glad you found me again! I have quite a back-log of posts to write which I'll be writing up in the next week or so (I hope)
There have been a couple of hidden gremlins on the way, but they have been few and far between...
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