It was offal. Actually it ROCKED

Yesterday we stopped by the Belmont Butchery to pick up some sausage, blue cheese and sweetbreads. I have ordered sweetbreads at restaurants and have really liked them. I’ve wanted to make them for awhile now and decided what the hell, let’s do them this weekend.

So, tonight we made sweetbreads. Tanya at the Butchery gave us some tips and we reviewed recipes in the Silver Spoon and Julia Child’s opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

We made Artichoke and Parmesan Risotto and baked asparagus to accompany the sweetbreads. If the sweetbread experiment didn’t work we knew that the sides would be awesome as they are tried and true recipes. As it turned out, any worry over whether or not the sweetbreads were going to be excellent was just silly.

First, we blanched the sweetbreads and then I removed the membrane as well as I could. I cut off all the things that looked like veins and there was an actual piece of red meat that went into the blanch and since it felt pretty tough after the blanching, I cut that off too. Then, the better-half pressed the sweetbreads in between two plates. I cut them into pieces and let them soak in some half and half. I dredged them in a flour/salt/pepper mixture.

As the better-half stirred the risotto, we decided to cook a piece of the sweetbread (in butter) to see how it was going to go–the asparagus and risotto still had time in the oven/on the stove. As soon as I took a bite, I knew nothing but good times were in front of us. The better-half has only ever had sweetbreads as a taste off my plate and immediately decided that he could eat a plate of them if the situation arose.

We browned the sweetbreads in butter and then kept them warm in the oven until the risotto was done. Just before plating everything, I made a sauce (also a first–usually the better-half does this) that consisted of the fond from the sweetbreads, sherry and shallots. I reduced by half.

Oh my goodness, it was good.