Posted on 11/20/2008 10:10:13 PM PST by bruinbirdman
By 6am the trotters had almost all been snapped up and only two trays of brains and a handful of livers remained on the shelf.
The blood had been washed away, and Jean-Jacques Arnoult stood in a white coat and cap surveying his stand at the wholesale food market in Rungis, near Paris, with satisfaction.
For this French offal merchant, the good times are rolling again. His tripe, tongues, sweetbreads, oxtails, kidneys and hearts have been propelled back into culinary fashion by the global financial meltdown, with diners turning to cheap traditional dishes.
The French offal industry, which produces 230,000 tonnes of food a year, has witnessed a 15 per cent rise in sales since the investment bank Lehman Brothers went out of business. French butchers have seen a 2.6 per cent fall in beef sales.
“It’s not that people have become a lot poorer in this country, but they think they’re poorer because of all the talk of the crisis,” said Mr Arnoult, whose family has been selling les produits tripiers since the 1870s. “So they are looking to reduce the food budget and they are eating more offal.”
The trend is a relief to Mr Arnoult after a long decline in products once considered a central part of the nation’s gastronomic culture, before being dismissed as unsafe and outdated in more recent times. Veal sweetbreads were banned between 2000 and 2002 amid fears over “mad cow” disease, while braised beef cheeks were neglected as diners turned to sushi or cod acras. Tripe à la mode de Caen - cooked in cider and said to be William the Conqueror’s favourite meal - has long been out of favour.
The National Federation of French Offal Merchants has tried to win back custom with an annual, month-long
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Beef tongue is very, very good. Most tender beef I have had. Easy to fix. Takes about 3 hours though.
Offal! After reading the first sentence I thought we were going to read about a Kennedy clan all-nighter.
Mmmmm...food
“It’s not that people have become a lot poorer in this country, but they think they’re poorer because of all the talk of the crisis,”
I think that says it all. Scare the people and they will vote for you.
Oxtails, hearts, liver, tongue, all palatable..
Sweet Breads and Brains..I’ll pass Mad Cow and all that...
sweetbreads are yummy!
Yummy?
Yeah maybe, I’ll take a nice cast iron skillet full of papas and sobeyos and jalapenos over the hippocampus gland..
I dunno what that is but it sure don’t sound like MEAT
Potatoes and Onions with hot peppers beats the heck out of offal offerings, at best a slow simmered liver that has the silver skin removed over qtr chopped onions is the tastiest morsels they have to offer.
Bleech...I’d rather shoot my deer and rabbits and catch my trout then eat the “sweet meat”...shudder...
ok I guess no succulent chicken gizzards for you either
Tripe, tongues, sweetbreads, kidneys, brains, lungs and hearts—all delicious.
But I stopped eating beef in any form years ago, thanks to mad cow disease.
In fact, as much as I like meat, I rarely eat any form of it nowadays because I don’t trust any of it.
I don’t think I offal was ever out of fashion in France.
I once had some kind of fried tripe that I believe still had the sh#t in it. Apparantly was quite a common dish in that region. Not so nice.
I’ll pass on the gizards...
Hussein has used the old Leninist trick. "When we win, the spoils are ours."
He told everyone who pays no income tax, "I will return all your Social Security Tax. Then I will provide everyone with free health care. If we have a majority of the vote, we can do anything we want with the whole U.S. Treasury."
The text messaging between high school students was a well kept secret. Plenty of public school educated frybrains believed him.
yitbos
so picky...
Chicken livers sauted in olive oil , garlic, red onions and sage are pretty tasty, and very cheap. Serve ‘em with a wilted spinach salad made with toasted pecans and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and some hot cinnamon-apple slices on the side and you’ll be a happy camper.
I love liver. chicken and especially beef. Especially with sauteed onions. it has to be a little sweet.
Had chopped liver for dinner. Yum!
For some reason my father was always talking about something called “tripe à la mode de Caen”. He had a lot of experience eating French food, but I’m not sure if it was something he liked or if he was just joking about it.
Is offal french for awful?
**gags**
I used to like something called “spaghetti Caruso” that was sometimes on the menu at Italian restaurants - spaghetti with chicken livers. It was really good but I can’t image eating it now or preparing it at home. I think it might have been named after the opera singer.
In the US it is generally referred to as organ meats. Also certain cuts of muscle not usually consumed as individual dishes (tongue, [ox]tail)
They banned bone marrow in France after Mad Cow, but all you had to do is ask the butcher for some and he’d bring it out from the meat locker wrapped up. Like they really expected us to live without our Risotto alla Milanese. Jeez!
I don’t like beef tongue; however, sweetbreads and ox tails are great.
As a kid I remember eating fried chicken livers once a week or so. I liked them. Haven’t had them in decades, though.
I do like homemade sausage...as long as I don’t know what’s in it, LOL!
Boiled or fried...
In some very expensive restaurants, the veal, which I ordered medium rare, came with braised ox tail to give a depth of flavor to the veal. It was wonderful.
I grew up with pickled tongue and liver and occasionally, when my grandmother was still alive, we had a stew made with heart and lungs. And of course, chopped chicken liver or pan fried chicken livers with marinara sauce over spaghetti. No complaints. It is all very good food.
I was in a French restaurant, and it was the dish of the day, and the odour was very ...pungent. It is made with either a pig or a lamb colon. I do not know HOW they eat it.
French andouillette, on the other hand, is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters who don’t object to the taste or aroma of feces. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille [a milder, less stinky sausage], but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more feces-like flavor. By contrast, many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been repulsed by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig’s colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors.
As you say - not so nice.
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