Tongue recipes

[Guest guest]

I haven't tried all these, so I'm not personally vouching for them, but

_Innards & Other Variety Meats_ has a bunch of recipes for tongue sauces,

and more recipes for uncured tongue too.

Here's their horseradish sauce:

1 cup stock (reserved tongue stock preferred)

2T freshly grated horseradish

2T butter

1T fine bread crumbs*

1/3 cup cream

2 egg yolks, beaten

1t Dijon-style mustard

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Simmer stock and horseradish in a saucepan for 15 minutes. Remove from

heat, stir in butter, bread crumbs* and cream. Return to low heat,

stirring until it begins to thicken. Slowly add egg yolks, stirring

steadily. Add mustard, salt and pepper. Pour over warm tongue

slices. Serve with parslied potatoes and dill pickles.

* Personally, I'd skip the bread crumbs entirely and thicken it either by

reducing the stock or using an extra egg yolks. I intend to try this as

soon as I run out of the small amount of conventional horseradish sauce I

made runs out.

My version of a regular horseradish cream sauce:

Freshly grated horseradish, or well-strained horseradish from a jar if need be

Yoghurt cream or kefir cream

Juice of maybe half a lemon per cup or so mixture

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Basically, you want enough soured cream to achieve a thick but spreadable

sauce. It's sublime on cured tongue, and it has plenty of other uses

too. It'll keep more or less as long as yoghurt cream or kefir cream would

keep, which is to say, longer than you'll actually have it on hand.

Their chili sauce:

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic

2 cups peeled chopped tomatoes

1/2t cumin

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 or 2 dried red chilis OR 1 or 2t mild chili powder

2T olive oil

Puree onion, garlic and tomatoes in blender. Add cumin, salt, pepper and

chilis or chili powder. Heat oil in skillet and add tomatoes to mixture;

simmer 10 minutes. Place slices of tongue on flameproof platter, pour

sauce over all and simmer a few minutes to heat through.

Their pickled lamb tongues:

8 to 10 lamb tongues

2 - 3 sprigs parsley

2t tarragon

1 bay leaf

1T salt

14 peppercorns

1 onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic

4 whole allspice

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup water

salt to taste

Clean tongues and put into a large stock pot with parsley, 1t of the

tarragon, bay leaf, salt, 8 of the peppercorns, onion, garlic, and water to

cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 hour or until

just tender. Drain and skin the tongues. Cut in half lengthwise. Place

in crock or jar.

Combine remaining tarragon and peppercorns, allspice, vinegar, water, and

salt to taste in a small saucepan; boil 1 minute. Pour over peeled lamb

tongues in crock. Let cool. Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to

blend. Excellent served as a first course or on a country buffet table

with mustard or horseradish.

Sadly, this book is out of print, but it's available used very cheaply, and

with the caveat that I haven't actually tried many of its recipes yet, it

looks worth ten times or more what you're likely to pay for it. I've

barely even scratched the surface of tongue recipes in this post. Every

page has 2-3 recipes, and there are 14 pages of tongue recipes alone,

though some of those are admittedly just sauces for tongue.

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