San Francisco chef Chris Cosentino goes whole hog
Photo: Lisa M. Hamilton
November 2007
The Carnivore’s Dilemma
Responsible meat eaters belly up to the offal truth
By Lisa M. Hamilton
When Chris Cosentino was a kid, his great grandmother would cook tripe — and he would run. “I didn’t even have to see it,” he says. “One smell and I would take off in fear.”
Fast forward thirty years to the premiere episode of The Next Iron Chef, the reality series spun off from The Food Network’s famous speed-cooking show in which chefs use unlikely ingredients to create fanciful five-course meals. Cosentino, now chef of Incanto restaurant in San Francisco, is a contestant. The final competition is to make dessert using a decidedly non-desserty savory ingredient, things like squid and catfish. When Cosentino chooses tripe, the other contestants tease him for being too safe — too predictable. These days, tripe is his middle name.
Tripe, for those who’ve never had the pleasure, is the lining from one of the four chambers of a cow’s or other ruminant’s stomach. Cosentino is the unofficial captain of a culinary movement — aptly called “Head to Tail” — that’s embracing tripe and all the other unloved parts of the animal. He has comrades all over the country: At LA’s Angelini Osteria, chef Gino Angelini is serving veal kidneys with white wine and onions, and chicken livers with green beans and balsamic. In Seattle, chef Tamara Murphy at Brasa, author of the celebrated “Life of a Pig” blog, has experimented with “Everything Pig Pate,” made with pork trimmings, fat, heart, liver, kidney and tongue.
What Cosentino came up with for the Iron Chef dessert contest was “Honeycomb Tripe Panzanella with Stone Fruit.” Panzanella is normally a sort of Italian bread pudding, but in place of stale crusts Cosentino used fried tripe croutons. The judges approved — one later told me it was “fantastic!” The next day foodie bloggers applauded, and one even predicted they would see it on the menu at Incanto soon.
For most Americans, the question is, of course: Why would they cook this stuff? For Cosentino and other proponents of head-to-tail cooking, the question is instead: Why did we ever stop?
Offal — the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal — is nothing new in most other countries. Even in the United States, Mexican restaurants serve menudo (tripe soup) and chicharrónes (fried pig skins), and Chinese restaurants serve chicken feet and fish head stew. Behind these dishes is an age-old, economical logic: animals are valuable, so when you kill one, you use the whole thing.
But in American culture, over the past century offal has become taboo — or rather, has been able to become taboo — thanks to an agricultural economy geared toward making meat cheap. Familiar culprits including factory farms and the Midwestern sea of corn and soybeans (much of which becomes animal feed) have made meat plentiful enough that we don’t have to eat offal.
“It used to be that neighbors got together and slaughtered a couple of animals,” Cosentino says. “When they did, everything was used — everything had an outlet. But these days, nobody cares. They just want what they want. That’s why we eat steaks and chops and throw out the rest.”
For Cosentino, the real turning point came when he first slaughtered a meat animal himself. He had always worked with “gourmet” offal like sweetbreads and foie gras, but the day he faced that whole goat, head to tail, he gained a new perspective. “Until you’ve actually done a slaughter, I don’t think you have a true understanding of how much there is to an animal,” he said. Picking and choosing was no longer an option.
For his almost missionary zeal in promoting offal-eating, Cosentino finds plenty of critics — he has even received death threats from animal rights activists. But knowing that Americans are going to continue to eat meat, he insists that head-to-tail is the only moral choice. “An animal is giving its life for you to eat,” he says. “Do it justice and eat every last piece. It’s just the right thing to do.”
Talk to head-to-tail devotees, though, and what really motivates them is the culinary experience of “the fifth quarter”: the sweetness of lamb’s brains, the richness of blood sausage. These odd cuts are not even particularly difficult to prepare — there are centuries’ worth of recipes from Italy alone. What’s challenging is learning the techniques for preparing them, but even that just takes a little detective work.
Cosentino recounts that he had always wanted to use beef tendons, but for all the recipes he found not one explained how to make these immediately inedible parts ready for cooking. And so he learned by chance: One day at a Szechuan restaurant, Cosentino saw beef tendons on the menu. With his lunch companion playing interpreter, he got instructions from the Chinese chef. Today, Cosentino uses his technique before braising beef tendons to make nervetta, a Piemontese dish with beans and sage.
Ready to try it? Cosentino recommends beef heart as a gateway organ. As a muscle, it has a texture similar to a lean steak and is prepared much the same way. He offers the recipe at left, which pairs the deeply flavored meat with sweet beets and spicy horseradish.
When not in her office in Northern California, writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton can usually be found on a farm.
Photo: Harold McGee
Grilled Beef Heart with Roasted Golden Beets and Horseradish Vinaigrette
Serves 4 as an entrée or 8 as an appetizer
1 beef heart (approximately 2-3 lbs.), trimmed of sinew and gristle and cut into 2” x 6” pieces
1 bunch golden beets, roasted then peeled
For the marinade:
1 cup orange juice
½ cups white wine
12 sprigs of fresh thyme, crushed
3 cloves garlic, crushed, skin on
Extra-virgin olive oil
In a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic and thyme. Scoop them out and mix with the rest of the marinade ingredients. Leave the flavors to blend for an hour.
Pour the marinade over the beef heart pieces and marinate for two hours. Season the hearts with salt and fresh ground black pepper, then grill the hearts to medium-rare (about 3 minutes on each side, depending on thickness).
Cut the beets into rounds or quarters, place in a mixing bowl, and dress with salt, pepper, and horseradish vinaigrette (see below).
To serve, divide the salad among the eight warm salad plates or one large serving platter. Thinly slice the beef heart, arrange it over the salad, and dress the whole plate with more horseradish vinaigrette. Finish the plate with a grating of fresh horseradish and a drizzle of the olive oil.
Horseradish Vinaigrette
½ cup Champagne vinegar
1½ cups pure olive oil
2 tbs orange juice
Extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup finely grated horseradish
Salt and pepper
In a bowl, combine the vinegar, horseradish, orange juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Slowly whisk in the pure olive oil, creating an emulsion. Finish with extra-virgin olive oil.
Sidebar: Eat Local, Really Local
This Thanksgiving, revive an endangered local foods tradition.
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