On Saturday, I brought some amazing food home from the market. A big sack o' tomatoes that became tomato juice (and pizza sauce), the last of the asparagus, a beef heart, some pemiento padrón peppers, a dozen oysters, and a beef tongue.
What? Beef heart? Yup. Highland Oak Farm had a big, ol' beef heart with my
name on it.
I've never played with heart (at least not beef heart) before so I turned to the Interweb.
Ruhlman to be precise. He had a nice photo or two and a short video on how to clean the thing.
I didn't feel like looking at TV on the computer so I attacked it the way I would address short ribs or anything with silver skin. With a very sharp flexible boning knife, a good steel, and common sense.
"Cut away anything that feels tough or nasty," I told myself. It was remarkably easy to butcher. The outer fatty layer came off with a little bit of careful cutting. I expected it
to be tough so I attacked it like it was heavy silver skin. It's not. So instead of a nice, clean swipe with the boning knife, I mangled it a little. Not a lot, just a little.
Once cleaned, it was easy to play with. I had one slab that's thin, about 1/2 inch thick. I trimmed that off and froze it. The rest I marinated.
It weighed 2.8 pounds, roughly 2 pounds, 12 ounces. Of that, I threw away just six ounces.
I rendered the fat layer, and saved the cracklings. The rest of the trim went into Belmont's food dish. I'm pretty sure the cracklings will be her supper tonight. They taste good but not crazy good like pork cracklings.
I cut the two remaining pieces and marinated them in white wine, thyme, garlic, olive oil and salt.
I wanted to make a salad with seared and chilled, rare heart so I adapted a r ecipe from Offal Good. I served the meat over roasted yellow beets (roasted in white wine, thyme and orange juice) and arugula with a white balsamic, orange juice and horseradish vinagrette. I grated fresh horseradish and used some as a garnish.
OMG it was wonderful. I turned the meal into a picnic and ate with Handsome & Brave.
A worthy cut of meat. Next time, I'll treat it like a chicken, stuff it and roast it.
You'd heart-ly know it wasn't steak.
Bon Appetit!
What I Had For Breakfast
