[Sca-cooks] some liver and other offal recipes

[Philip Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sun, 2011-01-30 at 21:14 -0600, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Ana commented:
> <<< I came back from a month in Montevideo, my old hometown. We ate calf
> intestine, really stunning good, it's eaten as a part of the "parrillada" or
> barbecue. >>>
> 
> Interesting. I can buy sausage meat here, which is the sausage without the container. This idea of eating the container without the sausage meat is new, though. :-)
> 
> How were these served? As a pile of rings? Like you sometimes see with calamari? Or was this cut into strips? or what?  By itself, it sounds thin, filmy and insubstantial. Or was this as pieces mixed in with other pieces of meat?
> 
> This likely goes back to period, but do we have any mention of it or recipes?

FWIW, sausage casings are rarely made from the complete intestine;
normally what you see now is one of the layers, more a membrane than the
vascular and muscle tissue comprising most of the intestine (think about
what an intestine does, anatomically, and whether a sausage casing has
anything like the complexity of design needed).

When I see Argentine-style grilled pig intestines, they're short
sections, a few inches long, I guess, with that membrane layer, but also
muscle meat and fat. Between the meat, collagen/gelatin, fat and
caramelization from grilling, they are an incredibly rich and unctuous
food, miles away from empty sausage casing. If you've ever had fried
tripe, they're a bit like that.

Adamantius