Inspired by Offal: Fine Dining, Sustainability and Offal on the menu in the Bay Area
Offal is everywhere. Brains, tongue, liver, tripe, gizzard and other "parts", while interesting, tasty, and a good use of the entire animal, is disdained by my generation. We consider it a waste product and not worth eating. My parents, who as children in Europe suffered the food shortages during and after WWII, ate and still eat offal and I, in my trend-spotting way, see offal on menus at chic restaurants all over the country. I can even find organic offal in the butcher section of the hippest gourmet shops. Where did this trend come from? Who in the Bay Area is driving the “offal movement”?
Much has already been written about the rise of “industrial” food in the second half of the twentieth century and is not my intent to add any insight to this well-documented issue. I will consider the backlash of parts of the food community to this societal shift in our approach to food.
It is this backlash and an interest in history that drives a new movement to re-define cuisine as seasonal, sustainable, and American at is core. Three respected chefs in the Bay Area explain why: Chris Cosentino of Incanto, San Francisco; Paul Canales of Oliveto, Oakland; and Michael Dotson of Evvia Estiatorio, Palo Alto. All offer offal on their menus and believe it is a vital part of a complete culinary repertoire.
But first, the social background:
I am a child of the 70s but more than that, I grew up in suburban New Jersey with 3 brothers and 2 émigré parents. Our small town had two butcher shops, a bakery, a green grocer, and a five-and-dime store. My mother easily found suelze (German for head cheese), oxenschwanz (ox tail) and Zunge (tongue) and other parts at the competing butchers and these cuts made affordable meals for our large family. Mom put dinner on the table every day for under $1 using the principles of sustainability so in fashion today - we ate a lot of offal and a lot of root vegetables. Our food was nutrient-dense and slow cooked. It all smelled and tasted wonderful. I, however, can do no such thing.
Yes, I learned to cook with my mother. And her mother. Afraid of nothing, my grandmother could mix blood sausage with lobster and serve it on toast points to great effect. Did I mention she was blind? In their day, meals were built around their cost – the less expensive and nutritious for the least amount of money, the better. This approach to food and cuisine necessitated that the food on the table was also sustainable; we ate almost every part of the animal, head to toe, and every part of the vegetable, root to stem.
As a nation in the 70’s, Americans were slowly emerging from a food cocoon. Julia Child helped of course, but so did our trade and immigration policies. By the early 80’s, such niceties as brie were replacing the more parochial Velveeta and decent wines were being made in California. Alice Waters opened her restaurant in Berkeley and launched a movement in the process. A nation of immigrants, we lived within our food niche (in my case, German with a heavy dose of Eastern European) or knew ethnic food only as any cuisine other than the food you grew up eating. These habits and others were about to change.
My generation, Generation X, (how I wish we “Xers” had another moniker!), might have learned how to cook from mom. Or not. But, who really wanted to eat pig’s ear or snout when you could have steak? Offal was for the previous generations. We had money. We could afford giant cabernets and 20-ounce prime ribs. Away with this poverty food.
Supporting us in our move away from the kitchen was a change in how we as a nation shopped for food. The two butcher shops in my hometown disappeared one after the other in ‘82 and ‘85, driven out by the new “supermarket.” Ditto the green grocer and the 5&10. No one had time to shop at three stores and really, as mom once said: “With four kids, who has time for all that shopping when you had the convenience of a single shop?”
The chefs do. They are searching out vendors who can supply them with great-tasting meats as well as offal. “Sustainability is a viable food model” says Canales. As a chef, you always search for the best flavor and the best tasting offal comes from well-raised animals. Dotson spoke of the renewed interest in seasonal foods. “Butchery, like vegetables, has seasons,” he says. During the memorable spring ‘06 rains, the pigs were not eating. Thus, there was little pork on the menu at Evvia. “There used to be a connection between the farm and the consumer: the butcher,” said Cosentino. “You can still get offal at the supermarket, but a lot of it is crap and tastes bad. The connection has been lost. The base of every culture uses the whole animal in food preparation. Those days are gone.” These chefs are working to re-build the connections to the farmers.
Canales and Cosentino work with Niman Ranch for all meats and offal. Other ranches, such as Prather Ranch, Knee Deep Cattle Company and Anderson Ranch are also widely used by Bay Area chefs for their grass-fed, certified organic and humane farming practices. The Niman Ranch brand label encompasses over 500 family farmers who must meet strict traceability and taste standards set by the original Niman Ranch.
Canales often buys “locker beef” and “locker pork” or one-half of an entire animal. “No ‘chef’ orders pre-fabbed meat” he says. Dotson, chef at a Greek/Mediterranean restaurant, is adamant about organic, grass-fed meats. “You find offal in many of the traditional dishes and the sweetbreads from the Knee Deep Cattle Company offer a better flavor and texture,” he says.
With all of this great-tasting meat and offal coming through the backdoor, how do you sell it to the people coming through the front door? The chefs have to keep people interested in their menus and keep themselves interested in their work. That means some very interesting and tasty things are bound to happen. Chicken liver finds its way into ravioli dressed up with fresh favas and a glazed chianti reduction. Marinated coxcomb sits alongside braised hen and dandelion greens. Lamb tongue is grilled, sliced and layered on top of roasted tomatoes. The chefs each bring their style and the style of their restaurant to the menus.
Chef Canales cites the tongue sandwiches he ate as a child as an influence in his chef-style. Growing up in the melting pot of the central valley, Canales found himself exposed to a huge range of foodstuffs. Tongue sandwiches at the family table were not uncommon and the Eastside Fresno Farmers Market was a vast resource of “throw-away” food. As a classically trained chef, his interest was piqued by this tasty and now unique food of his childhood as well as the usefulness of sustainability – how could he use the whole animal in his menu? Whole foods means using everything from head to tail: snout to hoof. At Oliveto, Canales has the audience and the managerial support to make this concept thrive, but it is the offal - the parts - that keep his chef’s creativity juiced.
“Offal easily works its way into an Italian menu” he says. And because it requires chefs to be creative, it keeps chefs interested. “Who wants to cook a million lamb loins in a row?” he sas. It was a familiar refrain.
But the offal concept does not translate across the board. No one wants to eat ‘your grandmother’s dishes’ at the prices of a fine dining establishment. At Evvia in Palo Alto, Dotson spoke of the need to find balance between the tastes of his customer and interesting menu items that sell. Even though he personally loves lamb tongue and prepares it when not at work, he has only a handful of clients who ask for it regularly and it is seldom on the menu. “To eat offal, it really depends how you were raised,” he sys. Some customers understand offal and are willing to chew their food – they want that great flavor. But selling tripe is difficult – it’s a “hard texture to sell” he says. Sweetbreads work as do patés of any kind, such as rabbit, pork, or lamb. The goal is trial.
Cosentino, already established at Incanto, can sell offal of any kind day in and day out. Lambs necks, coxcomb, duck testicles – he can sell it all. “People are tired of being the same. As you age, you look for more flavor and texture, and you have done more traveling and have world accessibility.” If he could get fish offal, he could sell it, Cosentino says.
At the ‘traditional Italian’ Oliveto in Oakland, Canales sells more oxtail, tongue, and liver than anything else. These items are “more accessible” he says, but offal works its way into every aspect of the menu. “If it [offal] is prepared right, not too chewy but perfectly juicy and creamy, I can serve it.”
Please, go and try the variety meats and offal at these restaurants and others. Push your palate. Make requests of the kitchen. Challenge the chef. Buy a cookbook with “traditional” recipes. Do not let offal fade into history.
Side Bar: The Butcher’s Perspective
Unlike the restaurant movement towards offal, butcher’s are seeing the opposite – fewer people are asking for offal. I spoke with David Samiljan at his Alameda butcher shop, Baron’s Meat and Poultry. “There’s no trend”, he says firmly. “Only about 5% of the clientele wants offal, mostly chicken and beef liver and kidneys. He referred to the current interest in offal as merley a “fad”. “These meats are unique,” he said, “and they have such intense flavor. The days when people would put in the effort to enjoy these cuts of meat are long gone. We’re in a fast food culture these days … and in such a culture, no food can be too challenging to eat, even with the increased sophistication of the U.S. palate.” As I gloomily record his words, he adds, “this is especially true for children.”
Notes and Resources
For more information about Michael Dotson and Evvia, check their website: http://www.evvia.net/
Both Oliveto and Incanto offer “whole beast” dinners. Check their websites for more information: http://www.incanto.biz/index.html; http://www.oliveto.com/index.html
Cosentino also hosts a website on cooking with offal: http://www.offalgood.com/
Chef Fergus Henderson and his restaurant St. John, in London, started it all: http://www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk/
The Knee Deep Cattle Company: http://www.kneedeepcattlecompany.com/
Baron’s Meat and Poultry – 1650 Park Street, Alameda. (510) 864-1915 and inside Star Grocery – 3068 Claremont Avenue, Berkeley. (510) 652-2490
Recipe
Offal is widely available in the winter months in local and organic groceries and butcher shops. If you do not see offal meats in the butcher case, please ask for these cuts.
Women of my grandmother’s generation did not write recipes with specific measurements. The intention is to build your own recipe and use the written version only as a guide. Please consider the recipes here as an outline and fill in the blanks for your own version.
Ellen’s Sülze (head cheese)
When preparing offal, organic and grass-fed animals offer the best taste.
2 pig tails
1 calf tail
1 pig shank
1 pig tongue
vegetable flakes
mustard seeds
onions
pickling spices
Boil everything for 3-4 hours, let cool. Remove fat and cut meat into small pieces. Add 2 or 3 small dill pickles, 2 hard-boiled eggs, 1 packet of gelatine. Prepare a large form, add wine, Maggi, and dill pickle vinegar to taste.Labels: bay area restaurants, offal