Organs: Butter them, fry them, maybe I'll eat them

Fried sweetbreads with a browned butter sauce, polenta and spinach

Level 2 Lesson 4
Friday, July 30, 2010

The sweetbreads looked spongy, like small brains, but they were actually thymus glands.

Chef M carefully sliced the sweetbreads on the bias.

Maria asked what animal the glands came from.

“Veal,” Chef M replied.

“Oh,” said Maria who looked like she had swallowed a wasp.

“Twenty-five years ago, if you gave me sweetbreads, I would have said, ‘Get the fuck out. I want steak,’” Chef M said.

He looked at us pointedly.

“Your taste—change. Your palate—change,” he said. “You just gotta be open-minded.”

My husband had ordered sweetbreads once at an expensive restaurant. I don’t remember taking a bite. But I was looking forward to trying the sweetbreads I’d be cooking.

John and I removed some of the membrane and gristle that was still attached to our sweetbreads. We brushed the sweetbreads with mustard and splashed them with white wine. Then we breaded and fried them.

On a warm plate, we placed three sweetbreads against a mound of goat cheese polenta and topped the polenta with sautéed spinach. Then we drizzled a browned butter sauce with capers, lemon slices and parsley over the thymus glands.

Chef J, Chef M’s number two, split a sweetbread with his fork and took a generous bite.

“Mmm. Good,” Chef J said.

Then he took a bite of our polenta.

He liked our presentation, but he noticed the lemon slices had burned a little. (That was my fault.)

I pierced a sweetbread with my fork and tasted it. It was pretty good—fried. As I chewed, I felt the texture of the organ, how pasty it felt. I swallowed.

Chef M demonstrated how to cut up a calf’s liver. It was huge, covering two cutting boards. As Chef M removed the thin membrane from the liver, the flesh glistened and moved like Jell-O.

Maria asked about the size of the liver.

Chef J said it was a normal size for a calf.

Maria looked like she was about to throw up.

She told me later she could handle chicken parts, but not when huge organs were laid out in front of her. The animal from which the organs came from seemed too real for her, too up close.

“I felt nauseous the whole time,” she said.

We sautéed liver slices Chef M had cut for us, and laid caramelized onions over them. 

Our last dish of the night was lamb tongue. Chef assistants had already blanched the tongues for us. All we had to do was make the salad and plate the dish.

The lamb tongue looked like a small, gray phallus. John held the tongue as he sliced it as thin as he could. I made the vinaigrette to dress the fingerling potatoes.

We layered the tongue slices in a circle and placed the potatoes in the middle.


After presenting our plate, John and I ate the lamb tongue. It tasted like roast beef. The mustard in the vinaigrette masked the real flavor of the organ, and I took one bite after another.

I would never have tried lamb tongue outside of school. But Chef M’s comments on how my palate would change stuck with me.

It was Chef M’s last day at The French Culinary Institute. He had only taught us for a week and a half, but I would miss him. I could follow a recipe down to each word, but Chef M said I’d have to work it out myself.
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