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Lamb Kidneys En Brochette
Skin twelve very fresh lamb kidneys, then cut them into thin slices crosswise. Cut the same number of thin slices of lean bacon, half inch square, and evenly arrange them alternately on six skewers. Season all over with a half teaspoon each salt and pepper. Roll them in a tablespoon oil, then in bread crumbs, arrange on a double broiler and broil on a brisk fire for four minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, pour a little melted butter over them and serve.
A straightforward grill that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the kidneys. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: don't cook them throughLamb kidneys turn grainy and faintly ammoniac the moment they pass medium. Four minutes a side over a modern broiler or a hot grill will usually take thin slices well past that; two to three minutes total, turning once, leaves them rosy at the centre, which is what you want.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler. This is a hinged wire broiler — two grids that clamp the food between them so a whole rack of skewers can be flipped at once over the coals. A grill basket does the same job, or lay the skewers directly on a grill grate and turn them with tongs.
- "A brisk fire"Coals burned down to grey ash and glowing hot, close to the food. Under a domestic broiler, preheat on high and set the rack about three inches from the element.
- TrimmingSkinning means peeling off the thin membrane. The recipe skips the other step: the white gristly core at the centre must be cut out, or the slices contract into cups and chew like elastic.
- Slicing and skeweringCut crosswise into thin slices; the recipe does not specify a thickness. Twelve kidneys across six skewers is two kidneys a head, a generous portion; scale down if serving as a first course.
- The baconHalf-inch squares cut from thin slices of the lean bacon the recipe calls for, cut before cooking. Modern supermarket bacon is often wet-cured and will spit and steam; a dry-cured bacon behaves better over direct heat.
- Crumbs and oilA tablespoon of oil for twelve kidneys is barely a film. Toss the slices in it so the crumbs adhere, and use dry fine crumbs rather than panko, which chars before the interior is warm.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon each of salt and pepper across the whole batch is light by current tastes; season the slices directly before oiling, and add a squeeze of lemon at the table, which the melted butter finish invites.
En brochette simply means "on a skewer," and the phrase is often said to have entered English-language cookbooks through French restaurant practice, where it signalled a small grilled item served on its skewer rather than a kebab in the Middle Eastern sense. Kidneys and bacon were a fixture of the Anglo-American breakfast and supper table well into the twentieth century, when offal was cheap, plentiful and eaten without comment; a hotel or club kitchen could turn out kidneys en brochette in minutes over the same fire it used for chops. The dish itself would have been thoroughly familiar to an English or American diner, French name notwithstanding.