A couple weeks ago some friends were discussing the merits of eating offal and concerns that certain organs bioaccumulate certain toxins, like heavy metals. The answer, it seemed, as is the answer to pretty much everything else, is that it's not that cut and dry and has both benefits and draw backs. Animal organs are dense in both valuable nutrients and environmental toxins, so everything in moderation, right? Anyway, as part of this conversation our friend Sarah said she had a recipe for buffalo heart that tasted EXACTLY like Spaghetti-Os. I was very intruiged, because come on, who doesn't LOVE Spaghetti-Os? Since Spaghetti-O's are essentially just tomatoes and high fructose corn syrup I'm not sure how they have such a distinct memorable flavor, but wow do they really bring it back. To my pleasant suprise the next week she brought me a jar of this delish mess. Guess what. It really tasted exactly like Spaghetti-Os. Exactly. Somehow.. in spite of the lack of pasta, cheese, and high fructose corn syrup.
Sarah got her beef heart from a local ranch just outside of Sacramento from a dude (dude is most appropriate for ranchers, right?) who raises grass-fed and finished cattle. This precipiated quite an interesting discussion with JT, who wouldn't eat it. My primary motivation for very rarely eating meat is limiting my impact on the environment, so for me, the methodology in which this animal was raised, slaughtered, then transported (not very far) is ideal. In comparison to organic dairy products or commerical free-range eggs, both of which I currently choose to abstain from consuming, the impact from such an operation is minimal. My other (well, only essentially) source of meat is buffalo from Wild Idea. They are based in South Dakota and pasture-raise, -finish, and -slaughter all their bison on native grasslands. Did you know native prarie grasses sequester more carbon per square foot than a rain forest? That makes me SO excited - and encouraging the preservation and resortation of the Great Plains' grasslands makes me feel slightly less guilty about my existence in general, which is worth the world to me! JT and I visited the ranch last summer and it's something we are both pretty passionate about supporting. Of course now that we live in California, our fancy buffalo has to travel another ~ 1,000 miles for us - which voids some of the offset guilt, but you have to let it go at some point. There is a vast difference between raising and grazing a cow and a buffalo (some of which you can read about in this awesome book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart) but after some thought, I was a double thumbs up for Sarah's beef. As the discussion between JT and I progressed, it became apparent that JT's real issue was not so much with the beef source, but rather that she was simply freaked out by eating a heart with no logical explanation of how it drastically differed from eating a shoulder or a thigh or a butt. It happens. Kombucha mothers freak me out. Animal hearts freak her out. That's more understandable.
Moving on - I mean isn't this supposed to be a recipe blog!? - I very much enjoyed the heart Spaghetti-Os and wanted to recreate them! So I ordered some of my very own buffalo heart (and liver!). There is this other appealing survialist aspect of eating offal that makes it feel like recycling the unwanted parts. And recycling is AWESOME!... and again lightens some of that crushing existence guilt (why such a capacity to feel guilt?! You'd think I was raised Christian?). Gosh, can we talk about something more uplifting - recipes, jeeze! Let's eat some organs!
Here's my replica version of the recipe which I thoroughly enjoyed (alone):
One (1) 3 lb (!!) buffalo heart
~5 lbs tomatoes (I used 6 big heirloom tomatoes)
1/4 cup fresh basil
2 Tbsp fresh oregano
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast (as an optional afterthought)
Chop it all, slow cooker, low, 8 hours, magic. You could also throw some cooked pasta in, which would really round out the Spaghetti-O experience. My version lacked that nostalgic tang, but it was still really quite delicious.
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