Eating head to tail has been something of a revelation to me after I quit being a vegetarian; bones, offal and all things edible in an animal are now something that I frequently eat.
As a child my favourite foods did include reindeer bones, the yellowish greasy marrow was sucked out of them after a long cooking, and a sort of reindeer jerky which was made from the heart of the reindeer, it had been dried outside until it was tough, salty and just very delicious. I couldn’t get enough of these foods, but somehow I still held a deep aversion to things that included liver, heart and parts not so often eaten.
I do realize now that it is a cultural thing; I was happy to eat the dried hearts for example because everyone around me enjoyed them when we visited my mother’s family in Lapland. But at home in the southern parts of Scandinavia everything else than the plain muscle meats were considered something not so tasty and it really rubbed onto me too.
Then came the vegetarian years which played a number on my thinking in many ways, I felt like all foods from animals were not so tasty, something I never wanted to have anything to do with. It was only vegetables, beans and grains for me. As years progressed my aversion towards meat grew stronger and I once thought that I would faint when I saw someone bite into some pink charred liver in a restaurant. It all seems so ridiculous now.
This only tells the tale of how deeply the ideas of suitable foods to eat are embedded into our minds even though reality might differ from what we believe. The culture around us dictates much of what we believe is something safe and good to eat, as a vegetarian I was surrounded by others who also believed that every part of an animal was something not to be eaten. People would call minced meat for example as slaughter waste; the language we used reflected the morality of what we thought was right, it felt like an affirmation.
In many ways offal has had the same fate as meat in general has had with vegetarians; it is not eaten and it is not usually appreciated.
But all of this seems to be changing; even the prices of kidneys, liver and ox tail for example have gone up - at least here. There are more and more restaurants serving bone marrow, heart, sweetbreads etc.
For me starting to eat bone marrow for example has been something of a learning experience, at first I had to close my eyes when eating them even though I enjoyed the taste -who wouldn’t enjoy the incredible richness - the sight of those big cooked bovine bones on my plate was so strange. My first times eating liver were difficult, I smothered them in lingonberries, the taste is like that of a slightly rusty nail, I thought.
Now days there isn’t many foods I enjoy more than lamb kidney, liver and bone marrow. I say it was worth it, adjusting my taste buds to these new things.
For some more reading I would recommend this book, The River Cottage Meat Book and about the health aspects of bone marrow Mark’s Daily Apple
Two Bone Marrow Recipes
Basic Bone Marrow
-Bones
-Salt
Put the bones into a dish of some sort, keep in mind that the fat will start dripping when they cook, so something with higher sides is essential.
Cook the bones for approximately 30 minutes at 400F/200 C, the bones are done when there is no more pink in them.
Scrambled Eggs and Marrow
serves 2
-4 eggs
-the marrow from 4 already cut and cooked bones
-1-2 tbls creme fraiche
- some chopped chives (optional)
Scramble the eggs with the creme fraiche, be thorough so that no clumps remain.
Put your pan on medium heat, add a little bit of olive oil and butter. Pour the eggs in, start by moving a spatula towards the center from all around, just gently move the liquid towards the center until the eggs start to get more firm. This movement will give you a soft scramble, not a tough and rubbery one. When they are almost done add the marrows into them.
Top with chives.
The creme fraiche will give you the best scrambled eggs ever and the marrow adds richness to them.
This can of course be done without the marrow too.
Getting Lost
What better to do on a really hot and humid day, when the temperature rises to over 30 C, than getting lost when hiking in the forest.
This is exactly what we did with my boyfriend. I don’t know how it happened and luckily we were in no real danger since the woods are not all that big at the place where we were, but it was still hard on the feet and the soul also. Imagine walking on endless forest paths when it’s so hot that you can’t even think straight, it will start eating you up after the first couple of hours.
I might be inclined to start taking a map with us from now on.
It wasn’t so bad when thinking of it afterwards, we got to swim in the above forest lake, which was lovely, we found a bunch of wild strawberries, bilberries and lots of raspberries in the forest.
I don’t know what wild strawberries are called in English, but here they are called metsämansikka which translates to forest strawberry. They are extremely sweet and full of flavour, much more sweet than a regular strawberry. One of my favourites when it comes to anything sweet.
The bilberries are all ripe and bursting with flavour. I was very surprised when I ate my first bilberries straight from the forest this year, they are so much sweeter than usual, it must be the hot weather.
My next post will have to be something with berries.
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