[Sca-cooks] Organ meat, was OOP Bugs was:International recipe site

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Adamantius wrote:
>Also sprach lilinah at earthlink.net:
>  >Kidneys... well, if i wanted to eat food out of a urinal i would...
>
>Hot button. I was with you up till that one. Where do people think
>kidneys got that urine from, and where did it go from there? If one
>is so turned off by urine in contact with food that's subsequently
>been washed and cooked, at that point one might as well be a
>vegetarian, because anything that's been in contact with the animal's
>bloodstream is essentially urine-treif. As for the claim that kidneys
>taste of urine, that's pretty silly. How much urine have the people
>making that claim tasted, and if any, why do most acids taste sour
>while uric acid, if it's the predominant flavor of kidneys, does not?
>Same for smell. You wash the meat; some like to marinate it in milk
>or salted water, but while they have an aroma, it isn't the aroma of
>urine. I wonder how one would set up a blind aroma test?

Well, i have actually eaten kidneys. They smelled like urine. It was 
not appetizing.

As for what's in the meat, i've made people squirm by telling them 
that the "au jus" consisted largely of blood. Doesn't bother me.

I've eaten Dinaguan, a Philippino dish made with all sorts of organs 
chopped up, seasoned with masses of garlic, and the sauce thickened 
with blood. It was ok, but not a favorite. Would i eat it again? I 
wouldn't order it, but if i was at a Philippino family gathering i 
would.

I've also eaten Saksang, a Batak dish, from North Sumatra (North 
Sumatra is south of Acheh). I watched them kill the pig, build a fire 
to singe off the hairs, missed most of the butchering (not out of 
squeamishness, just doing other things with my ex-husband's family). 
All edible parts are chopped up into more or less equal sized pieces. 
The part that bothered me the most was the skin that still had hairs 
on it. Like dinaguan, the blood is saved and added near the end, but 
cooked enough to thicken. It was a special ritual dish, and i ended 
up having at least one bowl of it every day for 10 days. It is 
seasoned with, among other things andalimon, which is the North 
Sumatran version of Szechuan pepper - if it isn't the same thing, 
it's definitely very very closely related - and with "coconut butter" 
the coconut meat of a fresh coconut is pounded to a paste and cooked 
with a little water until it becomes a golden yellow. Not high on my 
list of dishes, but it could be good.

So, no, i don't object to kidneys because they filter blood and 
create urine. I object because whenever i have been near cooked 
kidneys they smelled like urine. Perhaps they were not adequately 
washed and soaked.

As for people somehow consuming urine, we won't go there.

Anahita