Ginés Cascales remembers a gastronomic episode from his childhood from which he came out badly. In his family house they roasted some lamb heads well greased with butter as usual. Ginés could not escape the gluttony of dipping bread, again and again, in the resulting sauce, basically melted butter flavored with the juices of the meat and the dressing. The consequence was a pernicious nausea that kept him away for years from what many, and he himself, consider an exquisite snack.
Roasted lamb head is a traditional dish that, however, suffers from rejection by new generations. Ginés concedes that the vision of a split skull with organs inside is not compatible with current consumption habits far from the primitivism of this type of food. The rejection extends to the entire offal or almost. Perhaps the gizzards will be saved if diners do not ask too many questions about their true nature.
In popular cuisine, lamb has provided offal products that, although they were consumed as an affordable resource for weak economies, their culinary treatment has turned them, if not into delicacies, into at least dishes worthy of appreciation.
Although it has never been proven, popular belief gave great importance to the consumption of brains in children's diets, considering that their contribution in phosphorus and other minerals achieved better functional and structural development of the brain. But lamb brains were not only intended for children's food: adults have traditionally appreciated them sauced, battered and fried or in an omelet. The so-called Sacromonte de Granada tortilla is famous, in which this typical offal product intervenes. They were even originally part of the filling of traditional Murcian meat pies.
Lamb tongues are also a product subject to various preparations, after they have been blanched or stripped, by means of a prior cooking treatment of the skin that covers them, or not. Stewed with vegetables, pickled or vinaigrette, they are traditional recipes.
Ginés Cascales, an informed man, knows that lamb's eyes are an exquisite dish in certain cultures, but we have not been able to overcome, neither before nor now, the rejection they cause.
«One of sweetbreads!» It is a command repeated a thousand times in the bars and taverns of our country. This growth gland in young lambs is a appreciated tapa, omnipresent in popular cuisine offerings. It is usually prepared sautéed with garlic and parsley and served immediately to be consumed hot. Not far from the lechecillas, which are also called gizzards, there is another small gland that popular Madrid cuisine calls streams and which is served, in fewer and fewer establishments, fried.
The package made up of the lungs (bofe), heart, spleen and liver of the lamb is known as offal o barbecue There are many popular recipes for consuming these organ meats. Being from a young animal, they are small in size and, therefore, susceptible to being prepared together, chopped and combined with different fried vegetables, in a ragout or sauced with tomato. An iconic dish of this type from the Balearic Islands is Mallorcan fried food. The offal is of Mediterranean tradition: in France it is called crack and it is usually prepared, as in Spain, fried with onion, white wine and aromatic herbs; in Italy, where it is called corotella, Roman tradition cooks fried food with artichokes. The country that has the largest herd of sheep in Europe, Great Britain, could not waste the viscera of its sheep and the so-called pluck sheep It is the ingredient with which the famous haggis Scotch, a type of thick sausage made from finely chopped offal, onion, oatmeal, lamb suet, spices and salt, stuffed into the stomach of the ruminant.
In Madrid, street fry shops of yesteryear sold entresijos and gallinejas, the small intestine of the lamb with part of the tissues that join it to the abdominal wall. Today, only a few establishments offer these preparations, longed for by lovers of typicality and tradition and ignored by young people who do not appreciate the flavor of the lamb suet in which the chickens are fried.
Cuenca happens to be the capital of the zarajo. It is the name given to lamb intestines, clean, balled up with the help of two twigs of vine shoots, cooked and airy. To consume them, they are cut into slices, grilled or fried. In Aragon, the zarajos are called skeins. These are wound around a piece of insole, just as it is done in La Rioja and Navarra where they are known as embuchados. In Madrid, zarajos have been present in the offerings of numerous taverns, although they are disappearing from the tapas boards.
From time to time, Ginés Cascales orders half a dozen lamb kidneys from his butcher to complete a family barbecue, knowing that barring some unforeseen event, only he will be the lucky one to taste the espetos with the tasty offal that is usually prepared, either grilled or sautéed with garlic, parsley and a splash of white wine, preferably sherry.
And the panoply offered by the lamb offal is completed with the handyman, that is: the lower part of the animal's legs. After being cooked in a broth flavored to taste, the trotters, boned and battered or whole, are usually prepared in a traditional sauce of onion, tomato, ñora meat or chorizo pepper, white wine and cooking broth, with the addition of chorizo, ham or bacon.
The lamb offal is a culinary knowledge that enriches the heritage of traditional Spanish cuisine.
Fernando Riquelme, Supernumerary Academic
Article published in Cum grano salis – El Cuaderno (elcuadernodigital.com)
