‘Calf’s brains have a bland, gentle richness that soothes and cossets': Tom Parker Bowles on the joys of eating offal

‘“Nose-to-Tail-Eating” means it would be disingenuous to the animal not to make the most of the whole beast; there is a set of delights, textural and flavoursome, which lie beyond the fillet.’ So writes Fergus Henderson (below) — oracle of offal, high priest of ‘umbles, and the chef behind London’s legendary St JOHN restaurant — in his 1999 classic, Nose to Tail Eating — A Kind of British Cooking. And while Fergus has done so much to champion what the Americans call, in their coyly euphemistic way, ‘variety meats’, he's the first to admit that eating the whole beast is just plain common sense. ‘Once an animal has been killed you would be foolish not to make the best use of every single delicious part,’ he goes on. ‘It is simply the right thing to do.’

Amen to that. Because offal (the bits that literally fell off the carcass in the butchery process) is more sinned against than sinning and so, therefore, cheap. It is packed full of nutrients, and a sumptuous feast of flavour and texture, too.

In most parts of the world, it’s a delicacy, rather than a thing of disgust, something to be worshipped and adored. From Mexican menudo (spicy tripe stew) and Turkish kokorec (offal skewers) to Greek magiritsa (offal soup) Roman rigatoni con la pajata (baby calf’s intestine in tomato sauce), and South Korean gopchang jeongol (another spicy tripe stew) — not to mention the dozens of regional Chinese dishes filled with pig’s intestines, trotters, hearts, lungs and all the rest — this is all about gentle flavours, and textures both toothsome and tender.

St JOHN may have elevated tripe, tongue, bone marrow, kidneys and ox heart from cheap bit players to A-list superstars, as well as inspiring a new generation of offal obsessed chefs, but it wasn’t as if they were reinventing the wheel — rather re-embracing a great British culinary tradition.

Back in the days before electricity, refrigeration and sanitised, plastic-wrapped pieces of bland chicken breast, it was the organs, trotters, ears and cheeks that were the greatest treat of all. They had to be devoured sharpish too, before turning rancid.

Black pudding would be made with fresh pig’s blood, ox hearts stuffed and baked, or chopped up, mixed with pig’s liver, belly and breadcrumbs, then wrapped in caul (the lacy membrane that encases the animal’s internal organs) to make faggots. An East Anglian pig’s fry consisted of liver, kidney, melt (or spleen), belly, heart and brain, cut into tiny pieces, rolled in seasoned flour, baked and served with a thick gravy. Sheep lungs, hearts and livers would be forced into a cleaned sheep stomach, alongside oatmeal, onion and suet, and made into haggis. Calves’ feet were boiled to make jelly, cow heel stewed, tongue and ox cheeks transformed into brawn, served with a pungent mustard sauce. Tripe was simmered in milk with onions, boar’s head (a great Christmas delicacy) pickled, deboned and stuffed with forcemeat, steamed then glazed. While sheep’s trotters (especially up north) were stewed with onion and carrot trimmings, battered and deep fried. Nothing was wasted, as the old saying goes, save the oink, moo or baa.

These days, though, offal is more culinary cuss than exquisite mouthful, something to be feared, abhorred and avoided. It’s not just the texture that puts people off (the texture that we ‘umbles lovers so adore), but the very thought of offal. ‘Brains are for zombies,’ said my son with pinched-face disgust, as I tucked into a plate of calf’s brains, swimming in a nutty brown butter. They have the texture of set custard, and a bland, gentle richness that soothes and cossets. While they may seem visceral, bloody and barbaric, prepared properly, they’re actually anything but. Not that any of this matters to the offal deniers, who can barely bring themselves to look upon the organ, let alone devour it.

Even some of my more adventurous friends, who have no problem gobbling sea urchin, stinky tofu or natto (fermented soybeans) go green at the mere mention of liver. I blame school. Because it was here when our tender palates were still developing, that we were forced to ingest a pallid lump of overcooked organ, riddled with veins and sinister tubes. Kidneys were worse still, cooked until they had the consistency of rubber bullets, and smelling like they’d just been fished out of the communal urinal. Steak and kidney pudding for lunch was a dark day for all. Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses, may have eaten ‘with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.’ But few shared his taste for ‘grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his plate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.’ Little wonder an entire generation took against offal from such an early age.

At its best, though, offal offers the ultimate in magnificent, fully immersive eating. As Fergus so rightly points out, we should embrace every part of the beast, not just the prime cuts. Who can resist a pair of plump devilled kidneys at St JOHN, glorious, glistening lobes of lusciousness, sitting atop lustily buttered toast. Or their iconic bone marrow, gently wobbling, scooped out and piled onto still more toast, with a pile of parsley, sharply dressed and studded with capers, and a generous pinch of salt. There’s the fegato burro e salvia at Riva in Barnes, elegant slivers of calf’s liver, gently fried in butter until a blushing pink, the softest and most sensuous of mouthfuls. Or those milk-fed lamb’s kidneys at Barrafina on Adelaide Street, that arrive atop a metal trivet, above a glowing piece of charcoal, so the fat sizzles when it hits the red hot coal. Bliss. No one does brains better than Bouchon Racine’s Henry Harris. The ‘assorted meats in fiery sauce’ at Barshu in Soho has tripe and intestines in a brow-beadingly spicy melange, while the lamb offal flatbread at BAM in Highbury Corner is a modern take on a Turkish classic.

One of the greatest dishes I ever ate was at Le Grand Vefour, in Paris (back when it was good): veal sweetbreads, creamy, and beautifully burnished, studded with black truffle, and served in an intense veal jus reduction. Each mouthful was as richly lavish as Marie Antonette’s boudoir, although a lie down after is de rigeur. I wasn’t always a tripe fan, and still can’t eat great slabs of the stuff. I like it cut small, so you don’t have too much to chew. The flavour ranges from the bland (when it’s been bleached) to the rather beefy. There’s the trippa alla Fiorentina at I Trippaio di San Frediano, in the piazza by San Frediano in Florence, pre-braised rumen (tripe from the cow’s first stomach) and omasum, or bible tripe, the most delicate, simmered in a tomato sauce and finished with a flurry of Parmesan. And a trip to Porto is never complete without at least one bowl of dobrada à modo do Porto, with white beans, sausage and postage-stamp sized squares of tripe. Casa Nanda is a good place to start.

Sometimes, though, things can get a little too extreme. I remember being in Laos a few years back, and eating raw tripe salad. It was like beefy chewing gum and I hardly made it past a mouthful. Lu, or spiced cold pork blood soup, is probably not best eaten in a truck stop outside Chiang Mai in Thailand. Hygiene standards were not exactly high, and it had a sinister ferric tang.

But those are exceptions. There’s nothing awful about offal. Quite the opposite, in fact — it’s one of God’s gifts to gastronomy.