Hi everyone, welcome to potluck food talks. I'm here with Phil and today we're going to talk about, I don't know, animal bodies. Animal bodies. Animal body parts. You couldn't have said that more like a psychopath. Pieces of edible dead animals. No, no. Shall I start again? No, no. This is great. This is perfect. This is just for people to tune in for. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about nose to tail cooking, no?
Yeah. And because there's so much to talk about, you know, we kind of thought that we'd talk about upper parts, you know, sort of like what, waist up? Yeah, like we could start with the head. Yeah. You remember that one time where we bought a pig's head and we cooked it at home? Yeah. I remember that. It was really cool. It was really, I don't even remember where we got it from. We had to pre-order it.
Yeah, it was like a super specific butchery in Berlin, but I also forgot the name of the place. I remember we braised it with like a little bit of beer and it ended up being super delicious. Yeah. I remember apple juice also and lots of vegetables. That's what I remember. I remember we were with a friend of yours and he kept talking about how the gums were like a delicacy. Do you remember that? Ah, yeah. Yeah, I've also heard about that. Which I've never encountered afterwards.
Nobody ever said that. No, and I think it's bullshit, honestly. I think he was full of shit in a lot of things that he said actually looking back. Yeah. So, but also we could break the whole head into many different parts. If we talk about Nolster Tail cooking, I mean, first thing that comes to my mind is the pig's ear that has become like a thing here in Spain and specifically in the Basque Country. It's true, it has become a thing, hasn't it?
Yeah. You think Bordelberry is partially responsible for the pig's ear craze? I don't know. Maybe. No idea. Yeah. There is a lot of like of Nolster Tail culture here in Spain. That's true. Yeah, and there are restaurants that specializes in these kind of things. Yeah. And the pig, you know, the pig is really a very wonderful animal, especially, you know, like really full grown pigs. I mean, they're massive. There's so much to them.
And it's such a noble pursuit to use every single part of the animal, you know, for a sustainability point of view, obviously, and out of respect for the sacrifice of the animal giving its life so that you can eat pork crackling. But it's also really fun, I think, you know. Like it's, you know, it's such a diversity. I mean, like you said, just in the head, you know, you have the cheeks, you have loads of like meat regions over the forehead and the temple. You have the snout, which is amazing.
You have the ears. Brain, tongue. The jaw is an amazing part of the animal, you know, which is just down at the jawline. Yeah. And like you said, brain, tongue. That's amazing. Have you cooked brains? I have never cooked pig's brain, to be honest. Pig's brains? Not so much. Veal brains? Yes. Pig's brains are a little bit funkier and like you can make like a spread out of them, which is, you know, which can be quite nice, but usually it's not something that I use. But veal brains are very nice.
There used to be a time where they were really sort of like people were raving about brains in Paris. There was this dish everywhere of like poached, sauteed veal brains with like a lemon butter sauce. I'm sure you saw that. I had that at Le Baguettean. Yeah, it was super nice. What is it? Is that veal brain? Yeah, right. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah, because I remember it was just, they would say brain. Yeah. But yeah, I remember it was amazing. And that place is really nice.
That place is super nice, yeah. Tongue is also, I mean, tongue is amazing. I like more cow's tongue, to be honest. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's like a nice cut. For sure. I mean, in Mexico, that was amazing. You know, like I love the tacos de cabeza where you have all the different pieces, you know, the cheeks and you know, the tongue, especially for me, were the two main ones, the cheeks like super gelatinous and kind of sticky almost and just really falling apart.
And the tongue, yeah, I mean, tongue, when it's cooked nicely is, you know, is one of my favorite cuts for sure. It's super nice. Yeah, for me too. Yeah. A pig's head, also one of my favorite things. I think a pig's head is so wonderful and so underrated. Just half a pig's head, braised down really nicely. You know, they had this, what I really like to do with pig's head is make them into croquettes, you know?
Yeah. And then you pick off, once it's super, super cooked down, you take off all the meat and shred it and then you take the fat sections and dice it really finely.
You mix that together and then you take a little bit of the liquid which has a lot of the like gelatin from the pig's head and then I season it with a fair amount of like white vinegar to cut through the fat and give it like, you know, like a real spike and loads of like fresh herbs and like a little bit of mustard and then I let it set and out of that I make little croquettes and just like pan it in with deep fry them and it's super delicious. It's really, really nice.
I remember in Margaux, they had this, they call it croquettes but it was like this French version and it was like made like with different very gelatinous cuts of meat and they were built into like with this serine and this was then fried. So, it was a really nice chacrouterie and old school French braising sauces and these kind of things. Yeah, I remember we used to make this out of calf's heads.
We used to poach them and make like a like a terrine out of a calf's head because it also has so much gelatin that if you take the poaching liquid and season the meat with it, it just kind of sets by itself and I remember, I don't really remember what we were serving it with but I remember this terrine very well because we used to have lots of offcuts and for staff meal, often we used to make a risotto and then put all the calf's head offcuts
into the risotto which would turn into this very sticky rich risotto that was like very delicious in the beginning for like the first like three, four bites but then as it cooled down, it would like get so rich and like it would like start sticking your lips together while you were eating it and it's just like really looking back at it, it's kind of like the worst thing you can eat before cooking like a very busy service in a fine dining restaurant just like calf's head risotto.
It's like a block of gelatin. Yeah, great. What about sweetbreads? That's one of my favorite like strange, so to say strange cuts because it's not something that you find in any butchery, not at all. Yeah, not at all. You really don't find it anywhere. You don't even find it on menus anymore either. I wonder why because sweetbreads are very nice. The thing is that I don't think a lot of people know how to prepare them properly, you know? And also it's not probably not as commercial.
It's more like a problem than you know, there's not such a high demand for sure. Yeah. But it's one of my favorite cuts and it has to be in my top five for sure. It's really, really nice. Yeah. I don't even remember when the last time was that I ate sweetbreads or that I worked with sweetbreads.
But actually it should be something that should make a comeback because sweetbreads, you know, properly prepared, you know, probably cleaned and then, you know, cooked just right so that they're like nicely pink all the way through, not overcooked but not like sometimes I hate it when... This is also the thing, it's like it's really easy to fuck sweetbreads up, you know? People are too scared to overcook them and so they'll really undercook them and then it's disgusting.
I feel like you have like a really, it's kind of like fish, like really delicate fish. You have a really small window where it's really delicious and if you'd miss that window, it's disgusting. Exactly. Like you don't want your fish to be fishy or smelly, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. For me, they have to be like completely juicy on the inside and however you make them, they have to be crispy on the outside.
For me, that's like the perfect way and it's millions of ways to do that, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. With a starch, with, you know, grilling it, like frying them. Yeah, I remember I used to have to grill sweetbreads in Mugarets and they would always... Grilling sweetbreads is not really like a very great idea because they're so delicate and they just like stick to whatever you're putting them on so easily, you know? That it was just always a nightmare, you know?
You'd put this like little column there on the coals and throw the sweetbreads in and try to get them off. It was horrible. When I think of sweetbreads, I always have to think of this story that my friend Kevin told me of this French chef that he used to work for and they'd have sweetbreads on the menu which were sort of like crispy fried and then glazed in the sauce and he would like shout at himself like, all right, give me the sweetbreads, I want them crispy and glazed.
Which is like a paradox, you know? Because they can't be crispy and glazed at the same time. Exactly, yeah. And Kevin was sort of like, oh well chef, that's impossible, you know? Like how? That's impossible. And he would just be like, just give it to me crispy and glazed. There is this culture of like fried chicken glazed in some sauce which I don't like served like that. You don't like that? No, I like my fried chicken crispy, not glazed.
Yeah, the thing is the Koreans actually make it in a way where it's still crispy somehow. Okay. It's some sort of fucking sorcery, you know? I don't know, I have this like, I have this very strong sense of admiration and also kind of anger towards them because I think it's really amazing how they make their fried chicken but I can't really replicate it very well. So they feel kind of torn. You know, what about heart? I think that that's like a very non-commercial cut.
I think if you put heart on a menu, you won't sell it. And I know this by, that's what, you know, in Peru and Bolivia you have anticochos, which is usually like a brochette with hearts. And they never say it's hard on the menu because people won't order it. Really?
I mean, you know, I experienced something else because, you know, I spent a lot of time, well, a few years living in London where obviously, you know, the famous and wonderful restaurant Saint John resides with one of the, you know, the pioneers of real nosetel cooking, Fergus Hauber, who also wrote the Nosentel cookbook, you know, super, super influential chef, really wonderful cooking. And in his restaurant, you know, you can find all sorts of cuts from all sorts of animals.
But one thing that I always saw on the menu and which is an absolute favorite of mine is ox heart. And basically for people who have never tried ox heart, it is just like very, very tasty steak. It's just super delicious. And the way that they do it is kind of like they take the heart, they clean it, and then they freeze it, and then they cut it into thin slices, and then they just sear it super hard, right? Super, super hard, really quickly.
And in his restaurant, it's usually served with like watercress salad, you know, just like seared hard watercress in like a nice dressing. And it's so good. It's so delicious. And it kind of makes you wonder why more people don't eat that, you know. It's just an association with it being awful. Yeah, I've experienced it many times in different contexts and tables where someone has a problem with having heart. Or stories from chefs that have put heart on a menu.
And also, like, I think it's a very relatively common thing to see in students to put that on experimental menus and having someone having a problem with it. Yeah, you need to be careful how you sell it. But you know, I like it when people are brave and, you know, do this also. It's the same like sweetbreads, you know, I mean, it was like... There was this movie, I think it's like a cliche of like chefs putting sweetbreads on the menu and nobody ordering it, you know.
There was this scene in the movie Chef with... What's his name? You know where he goes and makes Cubano sandwiches? No, I haven't seen that. Yeah. In the beginning, you know, he has like an argument with the restaurant owner and the restaurant owner, oh, is this another sweetbread situation? Chef is like, oh, he gets all ashamed about it, you know, because apparently he put sweetbread on the menu and nobody ordered it. And everybody's supposed to know that.
Yeah. But I think the culture is changing though a little bit, you know, like, I mean, even here in Berlin, you know, where the food, like the knowledge of food and the like general public is not that, you know, it's not like Paris, you know, where a lot of people know a lot about food. And just a few months ago, I put on a special, which was like a duck offal toast.
So we had these really, really nice ducks and we collected all the offal from them, the hearts, the stomachs, the livers, super, super exceptional quality. And we made like a little toast that we soaked in duck jus and made a little like anticucho skewer of all the offal, grilled it, glazed it with like this tasty thing, like Szechuan pepper from our garden and put this on top of this toast. Super simple, but like really, really tasty.
And I was like, okay, well, first date, I was like, I'm going to prepare, you know, six, seven portions because, you know, we'll see how it sells. First 20 minutes sold out. And I was like, okay, that's great. Next day I'm going to prepare a little bit more because obviously more people ordered than I thought, you know. So I was like, I'll make 15. First seating, everything sold in like the first hour, you know.
And pretty much everybody was like, you know, if you're brave enough, you know, and the quality of the cuts is good enough, you know, it's sort of like people are really, really interested in it. So sometimes you just need to be a little bit brave and kind of think about how you approach people with it, you know. I think Bolivian Anticuchos are like a highlight of hard cooking. Like, I don't know exactly how it's made. Like the hardest, like marinated in a super, you know, strong base.
And then it's grilled on fire. And then it has like a, like a peanut sauce on top with the aji amarillo. And that's it. You know, like, and you have millions of versions, but that is something that's different from the Peruvian one. I've seen Peruvians going like, what is this? Bolivian Anticuchos, you know, like being like really surprised about it. And this is what a friend was trying to cook like in Barcelona. And he was, you know, just serving it and calling it Anticuchos.
And someone else like, yeah, that was really good. And he said, yeah, I made it with the heart, you know, and he put it. And it's just like. You know, what's also really nice and also underrated is liver. Yeah. And it's also something like hard to cook nice. It's not easy to cook like a nice liver. Absolutely.
And it has to be really good quality, you know, if it's something that is sort of like, if you don't have top quality liver, it's like, for example, in this, you know, from these stocks that we used to get, we used to get some of them where the liver was almost like a foie gras, you know, just like because they were feeding so well that the liver was almost white. It's super, super nice.
And once you like just skewered it, just a little bit of salt and pepper and grilled it really nicely, it would get so plump and juicy. And it's like melt in your mouth. No sort of taste of awful or like, you know, blood or anything. Just really, really delicious. Yeah. That liver is the best liver for me for sure. What about rabbit? It also has like, what is the common thing to make at the Rino de Allende? It's kidneys. Kidneys, yeah. Yeah. And that's also really nice. Really particular.
Kidneys are also really nice. Kidneys are also really, really difficult to make properly. Sure. Because they'll just taste of urine if you're not, if you don't really know what to do with it, you know. But when they're made nicely, they're very, very nice. They're not my favorite, to be honest with you, you know. Then again, in St. John, I had really, really nice kidneys. But they really, you know, Fergus is a big fan of deviled kidneys. What are deviled kidneys?
Deviled kidneys, they're like in a sort of like spicy sort of sauce. Wow, what's in it? Let me quickly do a very cheap, quick Google to pretend like I know what I'm talking about. It's like a thick sort of sauce that they're sauteed in. It's made from like tomato puree and mustard and Worcestershire sauce. You know that sauce, the famous sauce Worcestershire sauce? I just learned how to pronounce it properly like two days ago. I was all my life pronouncing it completely wrong.
How were you pronouncing it? The way you read it like Worcestershire. Worcestershire. How is it properly? Worcestershire. Worcestershire, yeah. Worcestershire sauce. More or less, I guess. I don't know, I can't claim that I know exactly what it's pronounced. Man, yeah, I couldn't see for two days. Yeah, because I love that sauce. It's really good. Really, really good. What about tendon? How do you say tendon? Tendon. Tendon. Yeah, I remember there was a dish with tendon and mugaritz.
Yeah, they did a lot with tendon. You would get like this, you know, rectangle stripes of like a gum in a gelatinous thing. Yeah. That's a particular cut. Yeah, and it's amazing, I think. You know, I spent a short time living in Hong Kong and they have, you know, when you go eat certain like noodle soups there, you can like, you get a choice of sort of like what meat you ordered with.
And it's like very popular, it's like beef brisket, you know, just like very cooked down brisket and sort of like curry style. But in the same shops, very, very popular is beef tendon. So like beef tendons that are cooked in the sauce for a really, really long time until they're just like melt in your mouth, tender, delicious, gelatinous, and it's super, super nice. It's a really particular, really particular, very rich texture. I'm also remembering another dish in Mugari, it's lamb feet.
Yeah, it was lamb feet, completely deboned. You know, tenderly cooked, deboned, and then it was glazed in a savory, like a salty toffee. Oh yeah. Super nice. That's like a killer dish, man. Yeah, that's really nice. I mean, I love trotters.
I mean, trotters classic, you know, the Pierre Kaufmann trotter is a classic, you know, it's so, anybody who hasn't watched it should go on YouTube and watch the old Marco Pierre White show where he makes the Pierre Kaufmann trotter and serves it to Raymond Blanc. Have you seen it? So organized. And he's just like, and Raymond is like, trying to be super polite. And Marco's just taking the piss out of him the whole time.
And you know, Raymond is just kind of like, you know, he'll start eating and he'll be like, well, Marco, this is really delicious. And Marco will be sort of like, it's all right, chef, you don't have to lie for the cameras, you know, like. And then there's one point where Raymond goes sort of like, well, Marco, thank you very much. And he raises his glass and he's like, to the peak. And Marco's like, what did you just call me? I don't remember that. I'll have to watch that again.
Yeah, you have to watch it. I remember having watched all of those Harvey's videos at some point. That's so good. Super nice documentaries. Well, we're kind of moving down the animal anyway. But after you mentioned trophies and stuff, you know, also this is actually a dark horse. And I don't think that anybody I've only ever seen it twice. Nobody really uses this. And it's a super nice cut from the pig. And it's the rabbitos, the tail. Oh, yeah. Well, it's relatively common in Spain.
Here in Spain. Yeah. I've not seen it anywhere else. Anywhere. I've learned a lot of technique. Like, I mean, I learned the technique of how to make them in Mugarritz. And since then, I've not seen it anywhere. But it's really, really nice. Like the ones that are pigs, pig tails, that's something I've only seen in Mugarritz. But like ox tail is relatively common all over Spain. Ah, yeah. No, no, no. That of course. But I mean the pig's tails specifically.
Yeah. Yeah. So feed them, poach them until they're very tender, cut them open when they're still hot and take out all those little bones off the spinal cord. And then lay them flat and press them down so that you have one layer of skin and one layer of like thin meat. And then you can just very slowly sear them until the skin is super crispy and the meat is super, super tender. And it's so delicious. We had, I remember, man, what's that restaurant called in Donosti next to the church?
I think it's Naru. Yeah, Naru, Naru. You're talking about Naru. They also have, was it Pigs' Ear? Yeah, I think they have like a super nice Pigs' Ear with carabineros. Oh, I had it, I think I had it with pig's tail. That's why, that's exactly what I was going to say. But yeah, they did it, they had a dish with this, you know, crispy fatty pork and a carabinero. And I think it was like a, almost like a sort of, was it jus or like a really intense sauce to go with it.
This very intense, like gelatinous, meaty broth. And it's like, for me, that's real gourmet cooking, you know, like old school gourmet cooking, crispy fatty pork. That restaurant is super nice. It really, they do it well. They do it really well. It's one of my favorite restaurants there in the area, for sure. Yeah, I agree. Well, I mean, you know, we're talking about tails, we can talk about oxtail also, you know. Oxtail croquetas are really nice. Oxtail croquetas are amazing.
Oxtail is one of the things that I actually cook at home with the most, you know. It's like when I'll see it in a shop, then I'll just buy pretty much all they have and just like make a big brace, you know, just like red wine and nice mirepoix and you know, a little bit of tomato and just shred that and then just kind of freeze what I'm not using and just have like an oxtail base.
And whenever then I don't have anything to eat at home, I can just take out a little bit of oxtail ragu, just heat it up, cook some pasta, throw it in and it's like super easy, super delicious and really kind of feel good cooking, you know. That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks. If you like what we're doing, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also find us on Instagram and TikTok as potluck food talks. The show airs every Monday.