There’s no shortage of global cuisine in Abu Dhabi. You can go to Italy via Lebanon and India and come back a different way. It’s not too dissimilar in supermarkets. They’re pretty well stocked with pasta, curries and sushi, but brand name orange juice, baked beans and crisps are still a major pull. Boring.
What about the brain, tongue, heart, liver, kidneys and feet? Yeah, we’ve often walked past that bit too. At the most, we’ve picked them up with the most disturbing glares and only imagined what they’d taste like. That is until now. If Indians can use every part of a buffalo, then why can’t we do the same with lamb, well, the pre-packaged parts available in Spinneys anyway? Unfortunately, my mates bailed so ‘we’ very quickly became me, a frying pan, a vat of boiling water, a George Foreman grill and a fridge full of limbs and organs. Sound like a normal Friday night in?
Tongue
Dhs4-7
So this is what they mean by The Silence of the Lambs. You only see about a quarter of the picture when you see a live lamb skipping in meadows. Its tongue looks all cute just peering out of its mouth, but the further back the tongue goes, the more it looks like something out of Tremors. The texture doesn’t help either. Mick Jagger has got nothing on this floppy wad of rubber and I’m reckoning he doesn’t have a rough, scaly bit lining his tongue. That’s more Keith Richards. George Foreman was crying out for this, despite his recipe book not covering tongue. It swelled fairly quickly and looked like a lamb chop with a phallic bit of fat – that was the cute-looking bit of the tongue by the way. It didn’t lose any of its rubber qualities after cooking, but resist bouncing it off walls and try it with a bit of chilli sauce instead. As for the scaly bit, that went really crispy and, singed for a bit longer, would probably make a tasty lamb-based pub snack.
Brain
Dhs5-8
The most disturbing thing I read when I was looking how to prepare and cook brain was ‘skim the scum’. And it didn’t get much better when I was chopping it up and got a squirt of blood on my shirt. There’s a weird ligament-like tail hanging off the side, so I whipped that off and fried the rest. Ignoring the brain curry recipes I found, I put it between a bread roll instead and had it as if it was a McDonalds’ meal. Despite the bread and even a bit of BBQ sauce, it tastes like flavourless pudding. Sadly, I can’t see a McBrain sandwich or McBrain nuggets ever catching on.
Kidneys
Dhs5-8
These things look quite attractive packaged up like four expensive lamb medallions. They’d look more appetising packaged with a bit of steak, gravy and puff pastry though. But you can’t have everything. Instead of making a pie I fried a couple of the slimy blighters with some onions and garlic and put the other two on the Foreman. Much like the liver, they came down with George Best syndrome but with a weird after-taste. I’d like to say that it added a pleasant flavour, but considering the bodily function that kidneys serve, it’s hard to escape the possibility that I’ve necked a shot of lamb urine too.
Liver
Dhs6–9
Liver, along with kidney, is probably the only food I’ve ever seen regularly on a restaurant menu. If lambs were alcoholics, they’d be fine with one of these because it’s big, strong and sturdy. It smells like a BBQ before cooking and a couple of strips on the Foreman would go nicely with the skewered heart. Sadly, cooking it in a pan makes it go a bit George Best – grey and grainy with a leathery texture.
Feet
Dhs3–6
Ever seen your Grandma’s toenails? You can see where this one’s going. Feet are just wrong in general, and that’s before plucking the odd hair and boiling them in water, oil, onion and garlic for an hour. They constantly tested my gag reflexes right from buying them in the shop. They look like a cross between a fat witch’s finger and a really bad football injury with no escape from knobbly bone and frayed ligaments. Having them sit at the bottom of a bubbling pot of water for 10 minutes and turning the water murky gives Swamp Thing a whole new context. But the stock they create is actually pretty nice, and I think this is what these bad boys are best for because there’s no meat to be found. The surrounding skin rucks up like a pair of leg warmers and tastes fatty and rancid and, along with the tongue, they made my flat smell so bad that I thought foot and mouth disease had got in. It’s cool though, Spinneys sells air freshener too.
Heart
Dhs5-8
Biology lessons would have been more interesting if they involved cooking one of these guys over a bunsen burner. And all the recipes and cooking suggestions I found for heart read like a biology lesson too, directing me to remove as many veins and valve ends as possible. Even with the most intricate of tweezers and the best eyesight this is painstaking work. Seeing as I don’t have intricate tweezers, good eyesight or that much time on my hands, I just threw it in the pan with some oil and garlic and made do with watching it curl up like a Great Dane’s turd and savouring more rubber and muscle. There was a welcome taste of lamb steak though, and cut into strips and grilled on the Foreman, heart would make a tasty kebab.
If you spot anything weird and exotic during your food shop or on a menu somewhere that you’d rather let someone else try; email me at scott.walker@itp.com.
