Clean sheep's kidneys and cut into thin slices. Sprinkle with salt, cayenne pepper and grated lemon peel. Then dip in beaten egg and fine bread-crumbs and broil on a hot greased gridiron. Serve on buttered toast, spread with curry paste.
A quick devilled kidney under a colonial name. The whole thing hinges on high heat and short cooking — sheep's kidney turns grainy and bitter the moment it passes medium.
- Buy and trimLamb (sheep's) kidneys are sold whole, sometimes in suet. Peel off the membrane, halve lengthways and snip out the white core with scissors before slicing; the core is gristle and will not soften.
- "Clean"Beyond trimming, a soak of 20-30 minutes in cold salted water or milk moderates the ammoniac edge. Pat thoroughly dry or the egg wash will not grip.
- Slice thickness"thin slices" is unmeasured; something around 1/4 inch works. Thinner and they curl and dry on the bars; thicker and the crumb burns before the centre loses its rawness.
- Gridiron equals broiler or grill panA hot greased gridiron over coals corresponds to a preheated ridged grill pan over high heat, or an oven broiler with the rack close to the element. Two to three minutes a side is the whole cooking time — the slices should stay pink at the centre.
- Crumbs"Fine bread-crumbs" are dried crumbs from stale white bread, finer and paler than panko. Press them on firmly and let the coated slices rest a few minutes so the coating sets.
- Curry pasteThis most likely means a commercial bottled paste of ground spices in oil — thick, salty and sharp, closer to Patak's than to a Thai curry paste; some households made their own. Use it thinly on the toast; it is a condiment here, not a sauce.
- CayennePeriod cayenne may have been milder, and adulteration of ground spices was a known problem. Start with a scant pinch per kidney and adjust after tasting one slice.
- YieldAllow two kidneys per person as a savoury or breakfast dish, three if it is the main item. The slices must go straight from the fire to the toast; they toughen as they sit.
Devilled and grilled kidneys were a fixture of the British breakfast sideboard and of the late-Victorian "savoury" served at the end of dinner, and Anglo-Indian cookery pushed the seasoning further — cayenne, lemon peel and a smear of bottled curry paste. The recipe as printed is headed only "Indian"; bottled curry pastes and powders were sold to British grocers during the nineteenth century, and cooks at home used them as a shortcut to a flavour they associated with the Raj. A book like this one, offering a dish a day from a different nation, depended on exactly such shortcuts: one bottled ingredient and a national label were enough to make an English breakfast plate read as Indian.