Tongue and Cheek

Day 24

Kidneys, sweetbreads, tongue and liver. Too bad there weren't some fava beans and a little Chianti to wash it all down.

I've never been extremely squeamish about organ meats. I've eaten most of them—including a huge plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, filled with bull testicles, lamb's tongue and trotters. I've tasted tripe from a street cart in Chinatown, scarfed down house-made foie gras in Paris and enjoyed brain from a freshly butchered lamb. My thought is that most food is worth a shot because you never know if you'll love it; even if you don't, at least you can say you've tried it.

Today, however, I wasn't feeling as adventurous. I mean, I tried each dish (which was more daring than most people in the class), but I hesitated before every bite. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that many of my fellow students were disgusted by the dishes, or perhaps because we ate so many organs throughout the day.

It was an awfully large amount of offal.

I think the real reason I was turned off, though, was because of the first dish. Chef demoed rouelles de rognons—or for those who don't speak French—sauteed kidneys. Before he put them on the fire, he passed around an uncooked veal kidney so we could smell the "freshness." "Fresh" smelled like urine to me—and it tasted like urine, too.

After that, I didn't want to eat much. Unfortunately, it was too early for that, as we had three dishes ahead of us: foie de veau (sauteed calf's liver), braised lamb's tongue and pan-fried sweetbreads. I was thankful the latter was prepared with a goat cheese polenta because the creamy yellow starch was my lunch.

There was something off-putting about seeing the organs in their raw form. When I've eaten them in the past, someone else has prepared the dishes. Cooking them yourself makes you think even more about what you're actually consuming. And when you walk into a kitchen first thing in the morning and have to fetch uncooked lamb's tongues that are thawing in the sink, your mind races. (By the way, isn't there something completely ironic about eating a tongue? I chuckle every time I think about it.)

When I arrived home this evening, I was hungry, but nothing sounded appetizing. I decided on a familiar choice: crunchy peanut butter and apricot preserves on potato bread. It was perfect.

I won't dismiss organ meats from my diet. I just can't stomach them regularly or eat them continuously one after the other.

I'll put it this way: Organ meats are not something I would give my left kidney for.