Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “The River Cottage Meat Book” isn’t your typical chef’s cookbook. Check out the back cover: Instead of a shot of a well-groomed chef in a starched Bragard jacket, there’s Fearnley-Whittingstall with his loose T-shirt, long, stringy hair and thick glasses, looking more like a deranged graduate student than a culinarian; instead of a French knife, he’s holding a shepherd’s staff and herding — or exhorting — his North Devon cattle.
Open the book, and there’s another surprise: Rather than the glossy shots of jewel-like food you would expect in a chef’s cookbook, there’s a graphic sequence showing the slaughter of livestock.
This book is as much a manifesto as a collection of recipes. Fearnley- Whittingstall considers himself a “caring carnivore” and, like our ancestors (but not like us), sees no contradiction in raising his animals with involvement and affection and then slaughtering them and enjoying their meat. There’s a long, carefully considered discussion on the morality of raising and eating animals for their meat, what he calls “the contract of good husbandry.”
All the fussy haute cuisine stuff — tortured painterly garnishes, precision brunoises of vegetables, he disdains as “cheffy.” Most of the food in the book is deliberately homely-looking and favors either the blood-red or the gravy-brown.
There are probably the best essays on braising and gravy-making I’ve ever read, essays that dynamically combine food science, sensuality and old-fashioned home-cook know-how.
Fearnley-Wittingstall has a few unassailable suggestions when it comes to meat: Learn where your meat comes from. Show the animal respect by not wasting anything. Eat meat less often but eat better- quality meat when you do. And learn to cook the lesser-known, but equally delicious, cuts.
I don’t doubt that Fearnley-Wittingstall would like this recipe for anticuchos, cow heart, which is freely adapted from a Peruvian street- corner recipe. The heart, unlike other organ meats, has a firm but not chewy texture and is always the meatiest-tasting part of the animal. It responds well to an assertive marinade and is best served with a lively herb sauce, like a chimichurri or a salsa verde.
Try Latin supermarkets for cow hearts, or check with your favorite butcher.
John Broening cooks at Duo Restaurant in Denver, .
Anticuchos
Serves 4 people.
Ingredients
1 cow heart, about 2 pounds
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup ají Panca (Peruvian pepper puree)
2 tablespoons dry oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup red wine vinegar
Directions
Soak 4 wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes.
Carefully trim off the fat and silverskin from the cow heart. On a slight diagonal, cut the cow heart into horizontal slices about 1/2-inch thick.
Crush the oregano between your fingers (this will wake up the flavor). With a whisk, combine the garlic, aji, oregano, cumin, pepper and vinegar. Immerse the meat in the marinade and refrigerate 2-8 hours.
Skewer the cow heart, about four pieces to each skewer. Heat a grill pan over high heat until smoking hot. Season the skewers with salt.
Sear on both sides, about 2 minutes per side. Baste the meat with the marinade and cook for an additional 2 minutes.
Serve with a light herb sauce and boiled potatoes or grilled corn.
