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Broiled Mutton Kidney
(Rognone di montone alla graticola) After washing the kidneys, remove the filmy skin that covers them and cut them in the middle without, however, detaching campletely the two parts. Season with salt and pepper, grease with oil and put them on a strong fire on the grill. After ten or twelve minutes they will be broiled. Serve hot with parsley and slices of lemon. 153
A two-line grill recipe whose whole success rests on heat and timing. Everything else is trimming.
- Trim the coreCooks conventionally cut out the white fatty core and the tubes at the hinge once the kidney is split; the recipe does not mention it. Left in, the centre stays chewy.
- The filmy skinThe membrane is easiest to peel when the kidney is cold and dry: nick it at one end and pull it away in a sheet. If it clings, it will shrink on the fire and curl the kidney into a ball.
- ButterflyingCutting through the middle without detaching the halves opens the kidney flat, like a book, so it cooks in one layer. A pair of soaked wooden skewers pushed crosswise keeps it flat on the grill.
- Ten or twelve minutes is too longOver a modern gas grill or a very hot ridged pan, lamb kidneys need roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side. Cooked right through they turn grey and rubbery. Note that the recipe already specifies a strong fire.
- Mutton versus lambMutton kidneys from a mature sheep are larger and much stronger in flavour, and are effectively unavailable in most shops. Lamb kidneys, sold in pairs from a butcher, are the practical substitute and want the shorter end of any timing.
- Salt timingThe recipe salts and peppers before oiling and grilling. If you prefer, oil first, grill, then season as they come off the fire.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe gives no quantity, and serves the kidneys hot as a second course. The parsley and lemon are not merely decoration: the acid cuts the mineral richness, so squeeze the lemon over while the kidneys are still hot.
Kidneys belong to what Roman cooks call the quinto quarto, the "fifth quarter" of the animal left after the four saleable quarters were sold, and which fell to slaughterhouse workers and to households that could not afford loin or leg. Offal appears throughout Italian regional cooking as a matter of thrift rather than delicacy, and a grilled kidney seasoned with nothing but salt, pepper, oil and lemon is about as plain as a second course gets. The book keeps the Italian title alongside the English translation, as it does elsewhere. That the recipe specifies mutton rather than lamb is a period marker: mature sheep were common on the table well into the twentieth century and have since largely disappeared from Anglophone butchers' counters.