I [heart] Heart!

ZZZZOMG. Hearts are really good. Different, but as good as spleen. It's definitely muscle. They tell you to cook it for 2 hours in liquid so it will be tender, so I was expecting some sort of overworked meat. Wrong. It was tender, really flavorful, and made me want to try the heart of an older animal that may have a more gamy flavor to it. So. My recipe, loosely adapted from my 1970s=era Women's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery recipe for Danish stuffed (veal) hearts.

Before I start, while the recipe called for water, I made an unsalted stock out of 4 beef bones (two fresh and two leftover marrow bones from Christmas dinner), a stalk of celery, 2 carrots, and some peppercorns and bay. After I strained the stock I blended the veggies and added 2T buttermilk, and that became our vegetable course for the meal (see the picture of the finished result at the end of the post.)

Braised Lamb Hearts
Serves 2

2 lamb hearts
1 c water or stock
1 md onion
3 sprigs curly or straight parsley
1 small carrot
1/2 rib celery
6 black peppercorns
1t salt
1T fat (can use the fat trimmings from the heart)
1/4 c heavy cream

Clean the lamb hearts by trimming off excess fat, the flap at the top (if there is one) and any obvous veins or other things. Run your fingers through the ventricles and pull out any clotted blood, etc. It may help to do this under running tap water. The hearts I had were pretty well cleaned. The picture below shows my untrimmed heart on the left and my trimmed heart on the right.Dice the carrot and celery and put aside.

Slice the onion into thin slices. Chop 1/2 of the slices. Finely chop the parsley. Mix the parsley and the chopped onions together. Stuff them into the heart. Warning!! If you are sensitive to onions, be prepared to stick your head under the sink during this process! Use skewers to "sew" the top of the heart back together.

The picture above shows the hearts, ready to go.

Using an appropriately sized heavy stock pot (for 2 hearts I used my 2-quart le Creuset sauce pot), melt 1T fat. I took a few minutes extra and rendered the fat I'd trimmed from the heart. It was perfect and I had no need to add any extra fat. Brown the heart all around. I had to do this one heart at a time so there was enough room to turn the hearts and be sure they browned properly.

Add the veggies and the water or stock (and the hearts, if you removed them after browning). Simmer for 2 hours.

Remove the hearts to the serving dishes. Strain the stock into a bowl. Add the cream. pour over the hearts. Serve immediately. As you can see from the picture below, this made a heart in a sort of light cream soup. The recipe said I would have a "sauce" which clearly was not the case, and I'm not sure why. I will say that the what I had was outrageously good and I don't think it would have been a good idea to try to reduce it.

Serve hot and enjoy.