It's offally good (+recipes)

The keen young members of my culinary team look faintly queasy when I start to remove the kidneys and lobes of bright white fat from the carcass of a rabbit.

It is clear these younger generations have completely missed the opportunity to experience the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal.

Snout, chitterlings (pork intestine), trotters and testicles can seem a little challenging to most, but we may have encountered and loved many other types of offal.

Master of nose-to-tail cuisine is chef Fergus Henderson of St John Restaurant in Britain. His signature dish is roast bone marrow and parsley salad, but other beauties on his special feast menu include lamb tongue, radishes and white beans; grilled ox heart, beetroot and pickled walnuts and a roast suckling pig that feeds up to 16 guests and must be ordered a week in advance.

Closer to home, Tony Astle of Antoine's Restaurant is famous for tripe served in a cream, sherry, onion and green peppercorn sauce. Take also Scottish haggis, a sheep's stomach stuffed with a boiled combination of heart, lungs, liver and rolled oats; the faggots of minced pig cheek and liver, breadcrumbs, onions and herbs wrapped in a pig's caul; brawn: stuffed pig's head eaten cold, set with its own gelatine and black pudding or Spanish morcilla sausages made from congealed pig blood.

The Chinese are wizards with offal, braising glutinous chicken feet, pork intestines and the best pig's ear I have ever eaten - simmered with Chinese rice wine, ginger, spring onion and mandarin peel. Entry-level offal is sweetbreads - thymus and pancreas glands soaked in salted water, drained, poached in milk then fried in breadcrumbs until golden brown.

I prefer soaking them in milk overnight, patting them dry then removing the membrane with a small knife. Pan-fry them in a mixture of olive oil, butter and porcini powder.

To cook livers that have a clean fresh flavour, remove and discard the white vein-like membrane with the tip of a knife then pat them in a mixture of flour and powdered sun-dried mandarin peel and pan-fry. Prepare kidneys the same way, but coat them in garlic and oregano churrasco-style (Brazilian barbecue), skewer and grill.
Serve with warm tortillas.

And the secret to tender tripe is to slowly cook the honeycomb sheets around smoked ham hocks.

RECIPES

Lamb's kidney nicoise
Liver parfait with a hint of chocolate