Courtney's Ersatz Bopis

I am honestly a bit tired of seeing apologetic recipes for pig parts. As with the pork kidneys the recipes for hearts almost uniformly praised lamb and veal (and even ox!) parts and said well, if you can't get anything else, pig would probably do. So when I defrosted the pig heart I had on hand (see first post pic), I was determined to find a recipe that called, initially and with pride, for a pig heart.

Fortunately, Filipino recipes embrace the pig, and the whole pig. So I found several basic recipes for Bopis, which can be made with heart or with heart and lungs combined. I had nowhere near all the traditional ingredients, so I adapted it to fit my suburban American kitchen. The result was fabulous.

Recipe:
(serves 2)
1 pig heart (ours was just over a pound)
4 large garlic cloves
1 medium-large onion
1/2 bell pepper
1 hot pepper (I used a jalapeno)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1T turmeric
1 t ground black pepper
salt or patis (Filipino fermented fish sauce; I used salt) to taste
2T coconut oil or lard for frying

Trim the pig heart of excess fat, obvious valves, and the muscly flaps that cover it. Rinse it out well. Boil 30 - 45 min or until a fork poked into the heart comes out easily. Remove the heart and cube it.

Mince the garlic and cube the onion and bell pepper.

In a frying pan or wok, heat the fat and saute the garlic until just brown. Add the onion and pork and saute 2 or 3 minutes more. Add the turmeric, pepper, and salt/patis and stir until coated and fragrant. Add the vinegar and set to medium heat. Boil 5 min without stirring. Add the peppers and stir gently (picture below shows everything added into the frypan).
Boil 8 - 10 minutes more until sauce is melded and vinegar no longer tastes sharp. Serve.Eating Notes: This was excellent sweet and sour in its own right. I think it works very well with heart, but for the squeamish another cut would probably do. We were surprised because aside from the onion and bell pepper there was nothing "sweet" in it. I would definitely make it again and now I'm curious to track down all the Filipino ingredients and do it right.

Update: The reason I didn't link through to the "ur" recipe is because I cribbed this from 5 or 6 different sources. I've added a link above to the Wikipedia article on bopis for those who would like to learn more about the dish.

Lamb Hearts Tartare

The lamb (sadly) still hasn't come, but (gladly) I still have some left from before. So!! For tonight, lamb hearts tartare. This completes my lamb heart cycle from slow-cooked to quick-cooked to raw. Easy and incredibly good. From the raw heart (shown above):
Instructions:

Mince the heart (above shows it done) with a cleaver. Per heart, add: 1 1/4" slice onion minced fine; 1t Worchestershire; 1/2t English mustard (I used Coleman's), and salt and pepper to taste. Picture below shows everything ready to be mixed. Blend well. Shape into balls and roll in pecan meal.

Picture below shows it plated. Each of us got 6 heart rolls, with a medium-sized caper pressed into the top of each one. I completed the plating with 10 smoked scallops I had left over from before, plus some pecan halves.
Eating Notes: We've now had lamb hearts raw, cooked lightly, and braised for a long time. We have really liked them each way. We (Phil and I) now firmly believe that people who don't like organs grew up in a culture that cooked them like bacon, which is about the only way they can't taste really good.

Also, while there was some difference in texture between the minced lamb and the chicken hearts tartare I did a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't all that pronounced. For a single large heart mincing was easier, and if I did have wild bird I'd probably mince, but if you're doing a large quantity, mincing it through the meat grinder with a 4mm die is fine.

Chicken Hearts Tartare

Lots of discussion over tonight's offal offerings. Chicken Hearts Tartare, thanks in large part to Hunter Angler Gardener's recipe for wild duck hearts tartare. I'm not a hunter, I'm one of those inept people who get fed by hunters. But I recognize that and appreciate and applaud (and crave the results of) their efforts.That said, I thought, well, are chickens all that much different from wonderful wild fowl brought down in their prime? Yah, ok, I answered that question. So I re-adjusted my expectations and said, I have chicken hearts. What can I do with them?
Answer: Chicken Hearts Tartare

Recipe:
Serves 2 (can be doubled)

1 lb chicken hearts
2 garlic cloves
1 1/4" slice onion
1 radish
2 garlic-stuffed olives
4 t small capers
2 t lemon juice
dash lemon oil
1 t olive oil + to fry in + to drizzle
1/4 t mint bitters
1/4 t Tabasco
1/2 t dried tarragon
salt and pepper to taste
romaine lettuce leaves for service

Trim off the tops of the hearts with the fat and valves coming off. Clean out overtly coagulated blood, but no need to be obsessive about it. First picture (after the one of kitchen goddess Nadja with her tithe) shows the bag of hearts; the second shows the hearts after I've trimmed off the offending parts. There probably is something I could do with those, but I couldn't think what...

Mince the hearts into a bowl. I used a meat grinder, and then I minced what was left in the grinder by hand. You also could easily do the whole job by hand using a chef's knife.
Mince the onion, olives, and radish. Combine lemon juice, lemon oil, mint bitters and 1t olive oil. Picture shows the mint bitters, oil and lemon juice/oil, plus the capers and minced onion, radish, and olives. Stir the minced bits and the capers into the heart. Chill if needed (should be a bit cool). Gently stir in the juice, oil and mint bitters. Add the Tabasco and tarragon and salt and pepper and gently mix.

Finely slice the garlic. Saute in a generous amount of olive oil until toasted. Drain on paper towels.

Spread a couple of romaine lettuce leaves on each plate. Spoon the heart mixture over. Make a slight indentation and drizzle 1t olive oil over each serving. Sprinkle the toasted garlic bits over. Serve and sigh.

Eating Notes:

Another success. Use the leaves as a wrapper to pick up the heart tartare and resort to the fork only after you've run out of greenery.
If you had told me I'd ever take a bunch of raw chicken hearts, shove them through a meat grinder, mix them with a bunch of stuff and eat them just like that, I'd have said you were nuts. But here it was and it was really good. More tender than the best steak tartare I have ever had. Fortunately, nobody wants this stuff. Otherwise, how would I have been able to convert basically the heart output of a small slaughter into one really good dinner for two?

Lamb Hearts with Baked Creamed Broccoli and Carrots

To have a nice, carb-free feast, we defrosted 2 lamb hearts and had them scallopini style, with a broccoli-carrot casserole on the side.

Pictures of how the hearts look trimmed and untrimmed can be found here .

Recipes:

Courtney's Lamb Heart Scallopini
Serves 2

2T fat (I used some leftover chicken fat, plus the excess fat from the hearts)
2 lamb hearts
2-3 T chopped onion or shallot (I used onion)
1 lg clove garlic
1/8 t undiluted beef bouillon
1/2 c tawny port (you could also use broth or stock)
2T celery leaves (you could also use parsley)

Finely chop the garlic and the celery leaves.

Trim the lamb hearts of any excess fat, ligaments, or blood vessels. Slice approximately 1/8" thick.Heat the fat in a heavy skillet. Add the heart and stir-fry 2-3 minutes. Remove the hearts to a platter and keep warm. Picture below shows the hearts keeping warm, next to the finished broccoli-carrot casserole, which is also keeping warm.

Return the pan to the heat. Add the onion and saute 1 min.

Remove from heat and add the garlic, bouillon, port or stock, and celery/parsley. Set heat to medium, return the pan to the heat, and add the heart. Saute another 1 min. Remove the heart and plate. If necessary, reduce the sauce over medium-high and pour over the hearts. Serve hot.

Picture below shows the finished dish. Again, my plating could use some help...




...and for the side...

Courtney's Creamed Broccoli-Carrot Casserole
Serves 4 as a side
(note that all ingredients reflect what I had on hand. Feel free to adjust!)

6 oz broccoli (approx; any combination of florets and stems is fine)
1 md carrot
1 2" round, 1/4" thick slice of onion
1T ghee
1T flour (I used regular wheat flour)
1/2 c milk
1/4 t paprika
1/4 t garlic powder
1/8 t salt
1 - 2 T pecan meal
1 - 2 T shred/grated hard cheese
dash cayenne

Cut broccoli into florets and/or 1/2" pieces. Cut carrots into 1/2" dice. Finely chop onion.

Steam broccoli and carrots until just starting to get tender, approx. 5 - 8 min. Drain and rinse with cold water. Chop fine by hand or in a food processor. You can also puree it if you want a different texture.Make a roux by heating the ghee, sauteing the flour until just bubbly, and slowly adding the milk, paprika, garlic powder and salt. Stir in the broccoli-carrot mix. Keep stirring until it bubbles again and is light. Turn out into a baking dish. Picture above shows it done and ready to turn out.

Cover with pecan meal, shred cheese, and a dusting of cayenne.

(At this point you can continue, or just leave it and go away for a while)

Cook in a 425F oven until the cheese browns (see picture). Serve hot.



Eating Notes:
This time I quick-cooked the heart instead of braising it. It was a little more chewy, but just as good - full of flavor. Really, deeply satisfying.

Phil commented that while we still like pot pie and corn pudding, this type of food has become our comfort food. Somehow, over the past year we have switched from craving carb-rich stuffings and the like to breathing our happiest food-sighs over offal and veggies. And we've lost weight and gained health in the process.

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.