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Kidneys en Brochette
Cut some lambs' kidneys in quarter-inch slices. Season with salt and pepper, dip in olive oil. Arrange on a skewer with alternating slices of bacon.
Dip in oil, in bread crumbs, and broil over a clear fire, or sauté in butter. Serve with Piquante Sauce.
A short, forgiving recipe that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the kidneys. Lowney's assumes a coal or wood fire burned down to clear embers and a stock of Piquante Sauce already on hand.
- The hinge: brief, hot cookingLamb kidney slices a quarter-inch thick need only about 1 to 2 minutes per side over high heat, until the outside is browned and the centre still faintly pink. Held longer they turn grey, grainy and bitter.
- Soak and trim firstThe original skips preparation. Halve the kidneys, cut out the white core and any fat, and soak in cold salted water or milk for 20 to 30 minutes, then pat very dry — oil and crumbs will not adhere to a wet surface.
- "A clear fire"This means charcoal or wood coals with no flame and no smoke. A charcoal grill at high heat, or a gas broiler preheated 10 minutes with the pan close to the element, is the nearest modern approximation.
- Bacon behaves differently nowBacon of the period was more often dry-cured and cut from the slab, and generally drier than today's wet-cured, thin-sliced product, which renders fast and can burn before the kidney is done; use thick-cut and cut it into squares roughly the size of the kidney slices.
- SkewersMetal skewers conduct heat into the meat and will not char. If using bamboo, soak them 30 minutes and keep the ends off the coals. Thread the pieces loosely so the cut faces of the kidney are exposed to heat.
- Crumbs and oil"Bread crumbs" here means dry, fine crumbs from stale bread, not coarse panko. On a grill the crumbs are prone to falling off and scorching; sautéing in butter, the recipe's alternative, holds the coating better.
- Piquante SauceA brown sauce sharpened with vinegar, shallots and chopped gherkins or capers. Any tart brown sauce, or a quick pan sauce of butter, shallot, white wine vinegar and capers, serves the purpose.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Allow about two lambs' kidneys per person as an entrée course, or one to one and a half as part of a larger meal; four to six kidneys will serve two to three as an entrée.
En brochette is simply French for "on a skewer," and its appearance in an American cook book of about 1907 reflects the era's habit of borrowing French kitchen vocabulary for the entrée course — the small, made dish served between the fish and the roast. Lamb and mutton kidneys were cheap, plentiful offal in a period when whole carcasses were butchered locally; kidneys turned up grilled for breakfast, devilled, and skewered with bacon like this. The pairing with bacon is practical as well as traditional: kidney is very lean and the rendering fat bastes it. That this recipe sits in Lowney's Cook Book, published by a chocolate manufacturer as advertising, is a reminder that such books aimed to be complete household manuals, not merely collections of confectionery.