Veal heart

Cœur de veau

What it is

It is the leanest thing the animal has: no marbling, no sheets of connective tissue to melt, nothing that bastes it from within. Butchers used to sell it larded — threaded on a needle with strips of back fat — because a whole veal heart braised bare comes out dry, and the fat has to be put in by hand.

In the kitchen

Two methods and no third: sliced four millimetres across the grain and flashed like minute steak, sixty seconds in all, or larded and braised whole for four hours in stock. Anything between browns the outside and leaves the middle chewy.

Goes with

Onion Carrot Thyme Bay leaf Fatback (green back fat) Parsley Black pepper

Same species

Abura-kasu Amourettes (spinal marrow) Spider steak Bastourma Flank steak Beef

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