Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (88 page)

Carefully remove veins from chicken livers and slice each one into about 3 slices. Dredge in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper. In a heavy skillet, saute the slices, a few at a time, in 2 tablespoons butter and olive oil until golden. Remove and keep warm in oven. Pour out browning fat and add remaining butter. Saute hazelnuts until golden. Add scallions and saute briefly. Add chicken stock, garlic and optional gelatin. Bring to a rapid boil and reduce until sauce thickens. Lower heat to a simmer. Return livers to the sauce to warm through. Serve with
basic brown rice
or
triangle croutons
.

Acute and chronic pesticide exposure, such as to cholinesterase inhibitors used on citrus fruits, will overdrive the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is responsible for relaying the nervous impulses across the nerve channel junctions to the muscles, glands, behavioral centers, etc. Such a poisoning incident will put the heart muscle into varying degrees of overdrive, culminating in a paralysis scenario at worst. . .. Could not the residues of these and other pollutants detectable in most types of our daily foodstuffs and water supplies be insidiously accountable for a slice of the increased rate of coronary disease surfacing in the Western world?

In a major rice growing area of the Philippines, Dr. Loevinsohn from Imperial College, London, found that the onset of a massive epidemic of stroke and heart disease corresponded with the advent of the green agrarian revolution in 1970, when pesticide use rose by nearly 250% in the area. Dr. Loevinsohn believes that the full scale of deaths, largely confined to the farmworker sector of the population and to the month of August which is the height of the spray season, has been hidden by the local doctors who misattributed these cardiac deaths to deaths of natural degeneration.

Just how many millions of other cardiac deaths from twentieth-century toxic exposure have been misappropriated and scapegoated on to saturated fat? Mark Purdey
Heart Rot, the Amish and Homeostasis

MAZALIKA

(Variety Meat Medley)

Serves 8

1 pound beef heart

1 pound veal or lamb kidneys

1 pound sweetbreads

1 pound brains

juice of 4 lemons

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon pepper

3 medium onions, finely chopped

6 tablespoons butter

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 cup red wine

2 cups
beef stock

1 tablespoon gelatin (See
Sources
), optional

2 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed

This wonderful dish from Egypt is testimony to the importance of organ meats in ethnic cuisines.

Cut all organ meats into a small dice. (None need be prepared in advance.) Marinate heart and kidneys together for several hours in juice of 2 lemons plus ½ teaspoon each salt and pepper; marinate sweetbreads and brains together for several hours in juice of 2 lemons and remaining salt and pepper. Drain all meats and pat dry.

Saute onions in 2 tablespoons each butter and olive oil until soft. Reserve. Saute heart and kidneys in remaining butter and oil in batches until well browned. Reserve. Pour out browning fat and add wine, stock and garlic to pan and boil, uncovered, about 10 minutes. Reduce to simmer. Add heart and kidneys to pan and simmer, uncovered, for about 15 minutes. Add onions, brains and sweetbreads and simmer, uncovered, for another 5 minutes or so, or until most of liquid has evaporated. Serve with
basic brown rice

Variation:

Continue boiling until liquid is almost completely gone. Serve with pita bread,
tahini sauce
, very thin slices of tomato and shredded romaine lettuce dressed with a little lemon juice.

The British like kidneys in their meat pies. Peruvians enjoy
anticuchos
—marinated, grilled beef heart. Sicilians on the streets of Palermo can grab a quick spleen sandwich, Italians in general—and Egyptians—are partial to liver, while the Japanese go in for intestines. Chinese restaurants in New York serve pigs' ears. But in the US, where it is also known euphemistically as "variety meat," most offal is exported or processed into sausage and lunch meat or it ends up as pet food. Peter Gumbul
The Wall Street Journal

Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys. . .James Joyce
Ulysses

SIMPLE SHAD ROE

Serves 4-6

1 shad roe (2 lobes)

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons vinegar

4 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon paprika

sea salt and pepper

1 lemon, cut into wedges

Place roe in a pan and cover with a mixture of filtered water, salt and vinegar. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about 10 minutes. Place roe in a colander and rinse with cold water. Using a sharp knife, peel off as much of the membrane as you can and cut out the vein.

Place roe in a baking dish and sprinkle with paprika. Season to taste. Pour melted butter over. Broil until golden, turn and broil other side. Serve with lemon wedges.

I have presumed in this discussion that the primitive races are able to provide us with valuable information. In the first place, the primitive peoples have carried out programs that will produce physically excellent babies. This they have achieved by a system of carefully planned nutritional programs for mothers-to-be. Those groups of primitive racial stocks, who live by the sea and have access to animal life from the sea, have depended largely upon certain types of animal life and animal products. Specifically, the Eskimos, the people of the South Sea Islands, the residents of the islands north of Australia, the Gaelics in the Outer Hebrides, and the coastal Peruvian Indians have depended upon these products for their reinforcement. Fish eggs have been used as part of the program in all of these groups. The cattle tribes of Africa, the Swiss in isolated high Alpine valleys, and the tribes living in the higher altitudes of Asia, including northern India, have depended upon a very high quality of dairy products. Among the primitive Masai in certain districts of Africa, the girls were required to wait for marriage until the time of the year when the cows were on the rapidly growing young grass and to use the milk from these cows for a certain number of months before they could be married. In several agricultural tribes in Africa, the girls were fed on special foods for six months before marriage. Weston Price, DDS
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

SHAD ROE WITH WINE SAUCE

Serves 4-6

1 shad roe (2 lobes) prepared as in preceding recipe, omitting paprika

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup shallots, finely minced

1 cup white wine

2 cups
fish stock
or
chicken stock

2 tablespoons arrowroot mixed with 2 tablespoons filtered water

1 cup spinach or kale, finely chopped

sea salt and pepper

juice of 1 lemon

While preparing roe, saute shallots in butter until soft. Add wine and stock, bring to a boil and skim. Boil vigorously until sauce reduces and thickens. Spoonful by spoonful, add arrowroot mixture until desired consistency is obtained. Stir in greens and simmer until wilted. Add lemon juice and season to taste. Slice roe, divide between individual plates and spoon sauce over.

A return to traditional foods is a way of taking power away from the multinationals and giving it back to the artisan. The kind of food processing that makes food more nutritious is the same kind of food processing that the farmer or the farming community can do
in situ
—sour milk and grain products, aged cheeses, pickles, sausages, broth and beverages. All the boxed, bottled and frozen products in modern supermarkets—the cheerios, crackers, cookies, egg-beaters, margarines, diet sodas and TV dinners—have made fortunes for a few and impoverished the rest of us. The way we eat determines not only how healthy we will be, but what kind of economy we have—the kind where a few people make millions and millions of dollars or the kind where millions of people make a decent living.

Technology propels us headlong into the future, but there will be no future unless that technology is tamed to the service of wise ancestral foodways.
Nasty, Brutish and Short?

ROE CAKES

Makes 8 patties

1 shad roe (2 lobes) or ¾ pound roe from other fish

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons vinegar

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons butter

1½ cup whole grain bread crumbs

2 eggs, lightly beaten

sea salt and pepper

½ teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

This recipe is for those who know they should eat fish eggs but don't like the taste. There is no fishy taste in these delicious patties. They may be frozen and then sauteed after thawing.

Place roe in a pan and cover with a mixture of filtered water, salt and vinegar. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes. Remove roe to a colander and rinse with cold water. Using a sharp knife, remove roe from casing and place roe eggs in a bowl. Meanwhile, saute onion in butter until soft. Add onions, bread crumbs, eggs and seasonings to roe and mix well with hands. Form into patties. Saute until golden in butter and olive oil. Serve with a pickled condiment such as
pickled daikon radish
or
ginger carrots
; or ginger carrots; or serve for breakfast with scrambled eggs.