Award-winning, Toronto-based cookbook author Jennifer McLagan tells us why we shouldn't be so afraid to eat brains, tongue, tripe, testicles and other off-cut meats.
Over slices of beef tongue and skewers of beef hearts at All The Best Fine Foods, I recently spoke with award-winning local cookbook author Jennifer McLagan about her newest work, Odd Bits: How to cook the rest of the animal, the third in her unofficial trilogy of carnivorous cookbooks. (She previously wrote about cooking with animal fat as well bones.)
The Melbourne-born McLagan earned degrees in economics and politics before developing an interest in food and enrolling in culinary school. She soon found herself cooking in posh hotel kitchens and later cooking at the American ambassador’s residence in England before meeting her husband in Toronto, where she has been based for the past three decades. I asked her about Australian cuisine, why people are afraid of offal and what she wouldn’t eat.
Where did the idea to write about off-cuts, animal fat and bones come from?
My husband works with props and special effects, so I got into food styling. I did a lot of styling for cookbooks. Some were good, some were bad, and I thought I’d try to do a cookbook myself. I first got an agent in the states and had all these fabulous ideas for cookbooks, but she didn’t care for any of them—except this article I did a while ago in the old President’s Choice Magazine on how to roast bones. She suggested that I make a book out of it. At the time I thought about how much I hated styling boneless chicken breasts, and how many recipes there were for boneless this and skinless that, and how it was all tasteless.
So that led to your first cookbook, Bones, in 2005. Were there a lot of books on off-cuts back then?
There are a lot of books about testicles and coxcombs—including The Joy of Cooking—but they assumed you knew how to prepare them. It’ll ask for “one clean brain” or “one prepared tongue,” but what does that mean for someone who has never even tried it before?
I cooked tongue and testicles before, but not spleen, so I needed one source for information like what to look for when buying it, how to prepare it and how to cook it. I figured if I put this book out there, people may not cook my recipes but they will learn that buying a heart is just like buying stewing beef and that they can make their own recipes.
Historically speaking, people weren’t always intimidated by the thought of eating tripe and intestines. When did everyone get so squeamish?
It happened when meat became cheap, so all the prime cuts were less expensive and easier and quicker to cook. I also think it happened when supermarkets took over the distribution of food and butchers disappeared. Supermarkets don’t want a lot of this stuff because it’s highly perishable. Living in the cities, we didn’t know what a farm or a chicken looks like; we’ve become so far removed from it.
If you go to Asia or any other continent—except Australia—you see all these foods in the market. Even here in the ethnic markets, you’ll see heads in Persian stores. This Anglo-Saxon culture that a lot of us live in has forgotten how to eat a lot of these species and we’ve totally forgotten what they look like and find them scary.
So were you raised in a WASPy setting?
I was pretty WASPy in the suburbs. I went to a private girl’s school but my mother grew up in a traditional Scottish household, so she’ll make stew with lamb’s neck, tongue for Christmas, as well as and brains and tripe. My friend’s mom owned the best Chinese restaurant, so we’d have things that were considered really exotic 40 years ago. I was exposed to a lot of this stuff as a kid, but there were some things I was prejudiced against. My mother wasn’t the best cook, so some of the things she cooked I didn’t like as a kid. It took a long time for me to eat tripe again.
What do you think of places or TV shows that portray offal as something to eat as a dare?
I don’t like that attitude and the idea that you need piercings and tattoos to cook it. None of these foods are horrible. They are all good forms of protein and we should be eating them. Why make it seem totally horrible and scary? Why not just tell people what it is and give them a recipe?
Which is what a lot of chefs here are doing.
Twenty years ago, I don’t think any restaurant here would be serving lamb shank. Chefs eventually put them on menus and people tried them, liked them and then recipes came out in women’s magazines and food magazines and they became mainstream.
It’s happening with places like The Black Hoof, Cava and The Beast, who put unusual items on their menu. People are also thinking a lot more about where their food is coming from nowadays and there’s also a moral aspect, too. Eating the animal is like honouring them. It’s a bit immoral to kill the animal and just eat the steak and the chops and throw the rest away. There’s also a cost fact. People will probably move to less extensive cuts and try the less common cuts.
As someone who grew up in Australia, could you talk about dishes or ingredients that are iconic in that country?
It’s hard to describe, because it’s a country of immigrants like Canada. But unlike Canada, Australia has a better variety of produce due to its climate. They have very strong laws about importing stuff, so they have very strong cheese and dairy producers, as well as wine. I hate fusion food but Australians make it distinctive by taking Asian ingredients and using European culinary skills to make a uniquely Australian dish.
In terms of ingredients, there’s barramundi, a freshwater fish but now it’s being farmed all over the world. Macadamia nuts are actually native to Australia. There’s also a little bit of a trend with using Aboriginal spices, seeds and nuts.
And Vegemite?
I hate Vegemite.
