In the 1950s, we ate a number of dishes that have mercifully slipped from regular rotation on family menus. Growing up in an ethnic home, we ate some things that are Mediterranean delicacies. For example, we ate a lot of offal. Calves ' liver and onions routinely came to the table. Sometimes there would be bacon included. This was served as the main dish. Chicken liver pate was a party dish (one that I routinely served once I started entertaining as an adult). There was lots of less appealing offal served.
If I see tripe in a dish or on a menu, I cringe. Mother used to cook tripe and serve it in soup or a pasta sauce. Beyond the flavor, the honeycomb texture was too much for me. Even cut up very small, I still find it repulsive, just as I did when I was a child. For the same reason I also don't eat head cheese, a cold cut that is a European delicacy. It is quite spicy and made from the head of the pig or other animal. The meat is chopped up, and the meat gelatin holds it together. My dad loved both tripe and head cheese. As a teen, I encountered in a slice of head cheese a bit of meat where the bristles of the pig were still visible and intact. It put me off head cheese for the rest of my life. Since it was viewed as a delicacy, we were not forced to eat it. Thank goodness.
We were forced to eat beef tongue. Today, I only find tongue at very ethnic delis. Mother loved it so we saw it fairly often. The meat is delicious, but the visuals are not very appealing. My brother used to note disdainfully that we were having "licker" for dinner. It was definitively not his favorite food, and he did what he could to make the rest of us hate it. Mother would bring a whole tongue to the table (cringe, cringe) and slice it up. When first cooked the tongue had a thick skin, like a hide, covering it. Mother would snip it with scissors at the table and then commence cutting slices. I used to shut my eyes while she carved. It was nearly a traumatic experience.
The offal hits just kept coming. We ate kidneys, usually lamb, in stew. They were usually cut up so it was not quite as thrilling dining spectacle as the tongue. Mother called them "meat mushrooms," but she couldn't fool us. We ate our portions of her delicious stew without complaint.
Only very occasionally would mother really venture and cook calves brains. I found this dish way beyond my palate, and I never wanted to watch the preparation.
Our offal meals were not that unusual for the time. Farm families still used all of the pig but the oink, so it was not that odd at the time to include what mother would describe as "parts" in our menus. Today, I don't eat or cook "parts." The broad use of antibiotics in the cattle industry, and the threat of mad cow disease has made me rethink including offal in my menus.
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