Mommy made dinner tonight

My father does all the cooking in the house and has for a very long time. But lately, mommy has returned to cooking.

I should say she's always baked, as long as I can remember she's been a home baker. But now she's branching out into cooking a little more.

Tonight she made a marinated london broil with an herb butter (tarragon, lemon, parsley) that was fantastic. She also made these parmesan pull-apart rolls that were wonderful and broiled mashed potatoes with goat cheese. It was a killer spread. Then, for desert she made a lime cake - it was just a yellow cake (albeit very thick and dense, like pound cake) with lime and a lime glaze. Very refreshing and tasty. 

I wanted to talk about it because london broil embraces a culinary concept that I absolutely adore. Find a way to use undesirable parts in a remarkably delicious way. A london broil uses beef top round, which isn't even a mediocre cut of beef. If you look at the applications for top round you'll see that there are not a lot of seriously good uses. London broil easily tops the list, but aside from that it's only good for stewing or some ancillary topping like fajitas or sandwiches.

But I love the idea that someone found this wonderful use for this cut of beef. Which brings me to charcuterie and offal.

Charcuterie is just an art that ceases to amaze me. Sausages, pates, pate en croutes, terrines, galantines, ballotines, are so cool!

Grind up some meat and fat, puree some of it to add an excellent textural sensation, season, mold it in a vessel or shove into some poultry and bake. At work recently I had a pork terrine made of ground pork and fat back with dried apricots, shallots, garlic, basil, black pepper and parsley. It was awesome. A while back I had a duck terrine with whole gloves of garlic jammed up in there. Superb.

So you may not know the difference between a terrine or galantine. Well:

First an foremost, the forcemeat, a type of meat that has been ground in a specific way, there are basic forcemeats, mousselines, and country style forcemeats. Country style is more coarse than basic and mousselines include egg whites.

A pate is a general term, traditionally is was a forcemeat baked in a savory pastry. Now, a pate usually has no pastry and is baked in a mold which would technically make it a terrine.

A pate en croute is the new name for the traditional pate with a crust.

A galantines are incredibly indulgent and awesome. They are forcemeats of poultry, game or suckling pig wrapped in the skin of its animal and poached in a stock. Ballotines are almost the same thing only they are always served hot whereas galantines are served cold. Also, I think ballotines typically only use deboned poultry.

The reason why I admire chefs who are good at this is because it's an art born out of a desire to not waste so much food. Traditionally, the purpose of doing this was to take all the scraps you were producing on a daily basis and use them up in a easily preserved way. It's artistic utilitarianism at its best. I love it.

Which brings me to offal, something that has seen a bit of a resurgence in popularity. Offal is the nasty bits, literally. Organs like intestines, stomachs, hearts, fries (code for testicles), sweetbreads (lymph glands), and brains. The more and more I get into this career and its lifestyle the more and more I want to try things like sweetbreads and hearts. I don't know that I'm ready for fries or brains.

I love the philosophy behind using everything the animal has to offer. It's part education, part economical, and part creative. And you must admire a chef who's talents allow him to make something like animal testicles desirable.