Things are heating up in the scary kitchen! We found a new local butcher with very fair prices and a willingness to supply almost any part of the animal on pre-order. We hadn’t ordered anything this time, but somewhere they found some Pig’s kidneys for us:

The diet of an animal is mostly reflected in the kidneys, so we are happy that this pig was grass-fed. I would not want to eat the kidneys of an indoors pig reared on antibiotics! Feeling more confident about the taste to expect, we now tried to improve the texture by cutting out some of the gristly bits:

The recipe from Ferguson’s The Whole Beast, which I had ordered from Hundt Hammer Stein, suggested chopping the kidney into bite-sized chunks and coating them in a mix of ground mustard seeds and flour:

After 2 minutes on each side a mix of red wine and Worcestershire sauce was added, then cooking on medium ‘until the ingredients had the chance to meet’ (Ferguson). After introductions were made, we invited the finished kidneys to the plate to meet some local potatoes and a dollop of our cabbage&apple ferment.

Not looking so scary now, are we?

In fact the texture was really smooth, just like having steak medaillons…

…for a fraction of the price: about €3 to feed 3 people on a grass-fed piece of organic meat!

— Brio