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Mixed Grill (for 2)
I LOIN LAMB CHOP I RIB LAMB CHOP I LAMB KIDNEY, SPLIT I TOMATO, HALVED 2 COOKED POTATOES, SLICED SALT AND PEPPER Grill everything together, and add a small savory sausage or two, if you like.
Mustard pickles go wonderfully well with this.
While we don't recommend carrying giblets to camp, because of their spoilability, many sportsmen don't object to kidneys when they're "high," among them those grouse eating British grousers who go on big game shooting safaris, yet have to have a box of kidneys shipped out from home every month or so, maybe with dry ice and maybe with none.
In any case, every Englishman feels as though he's lost his pipe or his pants if he's deprived of kidneys for breakfast, especially in camp.
A camp grill of chops, kidney, tomato and pre-cooked potato, all done over one fire. The whole point is staggered timing: everything goes on the same grate, but not at the same moment.
- Fire and heatBuild a bed of coals burnt down to grey ash, hot enough to hold a hand at grate height for about three seconds. A gas grill on medium-high, roughly 400-450F, does the same job. Flare-ups from lamb fat are the main enemy, so keep a cooler zone to shift things onto.
- Order of cookingThe recipe says to grill everything together; if you prefer to stagger it, the chops take longest, roughly 4-5 minutes a side for a 1-inch loin chop (135-140F reads medium-rare to medium). Kidney halves and sausage can go on at the halfway point; tomato halves and potato slices need only 3-4 minutes, cut side down first.
- Kidney preparationSplit lengthwise, snip out the white core and gristle with scissors, and soak 20-30 minutes in cold salted water or milk to draw out the ammoniac edge. Pat dry before grilling or it will steam rather than sear.
- Kidney donenessGrill until the surface browns, about 2-3 minutes a side. Lamb kidney toughens quickly once fully grey through; see the note below on buying fresh and cooking offal through.
- "High" kidneysThe passage about sportsmen who prefer kidneys well past freshness describes a taste, not a technique. Offal spoils faster than muscle meat because of its blood and enzyme content; buy kidneys the day you cook them, keep them cold, and cook them through.
- Cooked potatoesBoil or roast whole potatoes ahead, cool them, then slice about 1/2 inch thick. Cold-cooked potato holds together on the grate; freshly boiled hot potato falls apart. Brush the slices with fat before they go on.
- Mustard picklesThe suggested accompaniment is a jarred mustard-and-turmeric mixed pickle of the chowchow sort, not smooth mustard. Any tart pickle or a spoonful of coarse mustard serves the same purpose, which is to cut the lamb fat.
- YieldAs written it feeds two modestly. For a real appetite, allow two chops per person and add the sausage rather than treating it as optional.
The mixed grill is a British chophouse and hotel-breakfast dish associated with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: chop, kidney, sausage, bacon, tomato and mushroom, all cooked on one grid and served on one plate. Its appearance in an American outdoor-cooking book reads as a piece of Anglophilia, and the author's digression about British sportsmen shipping kidneys out to safari camp points the same way. Kidney at breakfast, devilled or grilled, was familiar in English country and club dining well into the twentieth century, which may be why an offal cut that many American cooks today never buy turns up here as though it needed no introduction.