Offal with it’s head! Kunal Vijayakar’s guide to feasting on ‘scraps’
Some might shudder at the thought of bull’s testicles in Spain, I drool. There’s a beauty to the nose-to-tail approach in cooking, and a tonne of gorgeous flavours too.
This is a statutory warning. What follows may be extremely sensitive in nature, and may cause permanent changes in your thought processes and ideology. My objective is not to hurt any sentiments or be biased in favour of or against any particular person, society, gender, creed, religion or food. My sole intention is to make you hungry. So, with that out of the way, let’s talk offal. For those who don’t know what that means, ‘offal’ is the collective noun for the entrails and internal organs of an animal used for food. In other words, all my favourite spare parts.
When you are young and impressionable, you make no judgement on the food that is put before you. Whatever your mother serves you, you eat. The only choices you make are led by your personal palate. Exactly in that way, my parents and grandparents put before me, brain masala, liver on toast, smoked tongue sandwiches, gurda-kapura (kidneys and sweetbread), kiri-kaleji (liver and udders), and ear, nose and throat.
Without getting judgmental about the body part, and judging only by taste, I grew to love these unusual shapes, textures and flavours. So while others may shudder at the thought of bull’s testicles in Spain, I drool.
Just the other day I was at a food festival casually lounging at a stall being run by Kurush Dalal, archaeologist and leading Parsi caterer. I sampled his dhansak made with pork instead of mutton or chicken. In place of a classic masoor ma ghos (red lentils cooked with mutton) he was serving masoor ma jeeb, or ox tongue. And a whole dark mixture of aleti-paleti. Made during wedding feasts, aleti-paleti is a traditional Parsi breakfast dish made of mixed offal — liver, gizzards and other parts that don’t get used in the main courses of pulao, salli boti etc. These are tossed with onion, potato and spice and sautéed till dry and tender.
Kurush explains that since there was no electricity in the old days and therefore no refrigeration, once an animal was slaughtered it could not be stored and everything had to be consumed in a steady stream. So each body part acquired a recipe and a cooking method, creating an unbelievable array of carnivorous treasures.
This is just not a Parsi trait; it is true of any peoples who consume meat. The Scots make Haggis, a type of pudding made with the liver, heart and lungs of a sheep, minced and mixed with kidneys and meat from around the loins, along with oatmeal, seasoned with onion, cayenne pepper and other spices. The mixture is packed into a sheep’s stomach and boiled. Between you and me, it tastes foul, but it’s Scotland’s national dish.
The Irish and English don’t even waste the blood. A full English breakfast will always include black pudding, a type of sausage made from pork blood, pork fat, some sort of oats and barley.
In Jamaica, a cow cod soup is considered an aphrodisiac. It’s made with bull penis (cod) stewed with white rum, bananas and peppers. Have I grossed you out sufficiently? I hope not.
I am a big fan of mutton kidney or gurda, and I have become an even bigger devotee now, because it’s so rarely available. My mother used to make a spectacular gurda-kapura in a dark green gravy of green chillies, tomato, coriander and onion, spiced with turmeric, garam masala and dhania powder.
Tava in Bandra, I’ve discovered, even today serves a delicious gurda fry in a thick, dark brown gravy, as well as mutton gurda (dry) on a sigdi. You can combine that with a roti and have a gurda roll as well. Trust me this is one of the last bastions.
Moving on to other parts, the kiri or udders are the creamiest, most buttery part of an animal you could ever eat. Near the Mahim dargah, the kababwala on LJ Road has been at it for years. Mildly spiced and barbecued on a skewer, served with chopped onions and hot bread, these are a frenzy.
Farm Products at Colaba used to make salted tongue. Pink and rough, smoked with love and sliced, this between breads with a dash of sharp English mustard was our picnic tiffin. But tongue or zabaan is a delicacy made in masala as well. At Sarvi, Nagpada, you can get tongue masala, tongue gravy, tongue masala fry or just a tongue plain fry. Their tongue plain fry is smoky, full of ghee, with fried onions and potatoes, and must be had to be believed.
I am guessing the easiest offal to accept is paya or trotters. At Surti Barah Handi, pichota (rump) (paya) trotters are only two of the offal extravaganza cooking in those 12 pots. The sticky, gelatinous and bony soup is an acquired taste. For the uninitiated it’s also available at Jaffer Bhai’s on certain days and is really well-spiced and cooked.
The north-east lays out a spread of spares. Manipur does pork intestine filled with liver, heart and inner fats, with ginger-garlic, coriander and chillies, in a dish called hokhari. The Khasis in Meghalaya cook pork liver, heart and intestines to make dohjem. In Maharashtra, the Saojis of Vidarbha make a dark, black spicy curry called sundari, with the skin and intestines of the goat. How they cook them so that they remain tender and don’t turn chewy is a mystery to me. I could go on and on.
With the younger generation leaning towards experimental and unfamiliar foods, even offal is getting a second look. The Bombay Canteen’s evolved chef Thomas Zacharias recently created a nose-to-tail menu of the goat. A dozen different parts were featured through dishes from various regions and communities across India. I missed that meal, but I believe no part was spared.