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Minced Beef Tongue
Cut any cold cooked beef tongue into oblong-shaped pieces, cut them again transversely into slices, and put them into a saucepan with a few slices of uncooked truffle. Cut an onion and three small Jerusalem artichokes into slices and again into quarters, place them in a fryingpan with a little oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and fry over a moderate fire until done. Add one tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley, cook for a minute or two, and then add the pieces of tongue and truffles. Cook for three or four minutes longer, remove the pan from the fire, and pour in the juice of two lemons. Turn the mince out onto a dish, garnish with pieces of bread fried in butter, and serve.
A quick sauté built on leftovers from a boiled tongue, of the kind a hotel kitchen always had on hand. Nothing here is difficult; the variables are the tongue itself and the truffle.
- "Minced" does not mean groundThe tongue is cut into oblongs and then across into slices — a fine dice at most. Grinding it turns the dish into hash and loses the point, which is distinct pieces of meat glossed with oil and lemon.
- Cold cooked tongueWhole beef tongue is a 3-4 lb cut that needs simmering 3 hours or so, peeling while warm, and chilling before it slices cleanly. Deli-sliced cured tongue works but is saltier; cut back the seasoning in the pan. Figure about 1 lb of cooked meat for four.
- Raw truffleSliced uncooked truffle is a luxury the Waldorf could take for granted. Fresh black truffle is the intended article; jarred preserved truffle is a distant second, and truffle oil is not a substitute — it is aromatic compound in oil and will read as perfume against the lemon. The dish holds up without any truffle at all.
- Jerusalem artichokesSunchokes, not globe artichokes and not the same plant at all. Scrub rather than peel, and slice thin so the quarters cook through in the pan; three small ones is roughly 4-5 oz. They stay slightly crisp, which is the textural contrast the dish depends on.
- A moderate fireMedium heat, and give the onion and sunchokes a good 10-12 minutes. Undercooked sunchoke is chalky, and the later steps are too brief to fix it.
- The lemon goes in off the heatThe juice of two lemons is a lot of acid — 4 to 6 tablespoons — and it is added after the pan leaves the fire so it stays sharp rather than cooking down. Taste first; one lemon is plenty for most palates.
- Don't cook the tongue twiceThree or four minutes is to heat the meat through, not to brown it. Tongue that has already been simmered tender will only tighten and dry with further cooking.
- The fried breadCut crustless bread into triangles or fingers and fry in butter until crisp on both sides. Do it before you start the mince, so they are ready when the pan comes off.
Beef tongue was standard hotel and household fare in Oscar Tschirky's era, boiled whole, pressed, and served cold in slices; in a large kitchen like the Waldorf's there would presumably be some left over from time to time, and recipes like this one exist to use it up handsomely rather than plainly. The treatment is French in outline — a quick sauté garnished with croûtons — but the Jerusalem artichoke is a North American tuber that Europeans had adopted in the early seventeenth century. Pairing it with raw truffle is the sort of gesture that marks the book: an offcut and a bargain root, dressed with the most expensive ingredient in the larder. The name, incidentally, has nothing to do with Jerusalem; it is generally traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, the plant being a sunflower relative.