The Fifth quarter by Anissa Helou
Publisher: Absolute - 2004
ISBN 1 904573 21 5
Content: Information and recipes about Offal
This cook book on offal has a great North African and Arabic influence, possibly due to the background of the author.
If you like offal or even if you have never tried offal, this book has some great recipes for all types and varieties of "innards".
The forward to the book is by Hugh Fearnley hyphon, backslash let's all live in the country and eat in a barn with a bunch of hangers on Whittingstall.Anyway he waxes on about most people not liking offal and he can't understand why - Listen Hughy it's because they come from the inside of an animal and a lot of people can't get their taste buds around this !!!
There are no pictures only a few arty drawings of hooves and stuff so you will not be put off by pictures of shiny, bloody, veiny things hanging on hooks.
There is a short interesting piece before each recipe which makes it quite a good read, although there is a lot of cheffy name dropping.
The recipes are divided into Soups,Salads and Starter - Main Dishes & feats - Barbecues and sauces & Dips
There are some excellent recipes for British Offal dishes and and I particularly like the recipe for ' Crappit head' which is a Scottish dish that uses fish heads - yes I know the head isn't from the inside of an animal but heads, feet and tails are all classed as offal.Another good recipe is for Black Pudding which uses the head meat added to the blood and fat before being cooked, a bit yummy if you ask me.
There is a lovely Lebanese recipe for 'Sauteed Spleen' which wouldn't get most taste buds running but still a great recipe.
In fact this a great book in any collection and only surpassed by 'Nose to Tail Eating' by Fergus Henderson but more of that at a later date, I don't want to turn you off recipes straight away.
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