I am not the next Iron Chef.

So for dinner Monday night, I was a bit tighter on cash, and decided to finally break down and experiment with beef heart.

My love of Tony Bourdain has sort of left me inheriting a deep curiosity about offal, but I personally have done nothing whatsoever with them in my life. This appeals though, in a way, because it presents a fun challenge. I love getting some strange new ingredient, and then trying to figure out what in god's name to do with it, and what better challenge for the cook's instinct than the sort of thing most people simply throw away?

Heart also seemed like a relatively easy place to start. It is after all, nothing more than one big muscle, and thus, can be treated in some ways like a tough, gamey cut of regular old beef.

Google however, was almost no help whatsoever. Seriously, I've just about given up on finding food information on Google, because invariably I seem to just wind up with shit tons of links to those "post your own recipes" sorts of sites, which are generally littered with misinformation and shoddy recipes that often result in terrible or even inedible food.

While I did eventually find a reference to a Peruvian dish called anticuchos, which is marinated chunks of beef heart, skewered, and then grilled. But I was feeling remarkably lazy, and not really feeling up to trying to find an adequate container for marinade. I will probably try this again however.

So instead, I decided to get creative, and devise my own method. For some reason, perhaps simple alliteration, the phrase "braised beef heart" kept popping into mind, and so I decided that was what I would do. I had some left over sangiovese, and figured I'd do a red wine braise, using that crummy folding omelet pan I'd seen on the stove.

So, I melted about a tablespoon of butter in the pan, added two chopped garlic cloves, and a half teaspoon of chili garlic paste. I salted and peppered the strips of beef heart on each side, and then seared them in the butter, before adding some of the wine, a little more black pepper, cumin, and New Mexico chile powder. Brought that up to a simmer, folded the top closed, turned down the heat to low, and cooked it for about a half an hour.

It was upon checking it, that I discovered that the brand new dial thermometer I'd bought for temping meat with, was apparently already broken. I'd had some trouble with it the night before with the porketta chop, but now it was just giving me temperatures that made no sense at all, and taking far, far longer than it should to take a reading. I finally wound up giving up and just cutting into the thing. Satisfied it had reached doneness, I removed the meat from the pan, set it on a plate, and to the now carmelized wine and spice mixture, added a bit of seasoned rice vinegar in an attempt to deglaze the pan a bit, and create a pan sauce, which I then drizzled liberally over the heart.

My initial reaction upon finally tasting it was a bit mixed. By itself, the meat still had a bit of an odd liver-y taste to it, and it was still a bit tough. The sauce, while a bit greasy and lumpy, still tasted quite good however, and managed to cut through that organ meat taste a bit, and the meat itself seemed to mellow over time. From time to time, I would also get bites of very uneven texture, where part of it would be OK, but then one side would be very tough. I think perhaps next time I need to endeavor to more carefully butcher the meat, so as to perhaps remove some of the extra-tough layers of the meat.

However, at it's core, the recipe shows promise. I think it needed more cooking liquid, indeed, probably the remainder of the bottle I had left, but I was wanting to conserve enough for a glass to drink with the meal. It also probably needed a longer cooking time, to ensure more break down of the meat, and a more careful eye towards removing outer membranes and such that result in tough sections. I will have to try it again, and hopefully do it right next time.


For entertainment as I consumed my meal, I watch the concluding two episodes of the Next Iron Chef. I was pleased. While John Besh is definitely an excellent chef, in my heart of hearts, I'd been wanting Symon to win from day one. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just his style, his attitude, his personality. I'd seen him before on Iron Chef, as well as Bourdain's visit to Cleveland, and was impressed with the guy. I was disappointed that Morou got sent home when he did, although I am sort of forced to agree that his presentations were a bit formulaic, it seemed to me like a small thing, especially considering that otherwise the actual food seemed to be consistently impressive.

I was also please to see that the two Food Network ringers, the ones who looked like they were accidental transplants from Next Food Network Star, both got sent home. Both really just seemed amateurish, the woman's personality, especially in her final appearance, was painfully grating in it's vapid bubbliness, and the other guy, while he did surprise on occasion, just clearly didn't even belong in the same room with any of the other giants there. As Ruhlman and Bourdain had both intimated on their blog, Food Network really surprised by not going with the vapid "TV personality" over the people with real talent and experience.

So overall, I'm very happy with the results. The show was fantastic, and I think the ultimate winner really deserved it, and I look forward to seeing him in action in the coming season of Iron Chef America.