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Mutton Kidney Fried
(Granelli di montone fritti) Wash, remove the skin that covers the kidneys and cut in very thin slices. Wipe with a cloth, dip first in ground bread crumbs, then in a beaten egg mixed with melted butter, then again in the bread crumbs. This must be done rapidly, at the time of frying, otherwise the bread crumbs absorb the moisture of the kidney and make them too hard.
Melt a piece of butter in a saucepan on a strong fire and when it begins to brown, dip the slices of kidney. Turn often, sprinkle with a little parsley chopped fine, salt and serve with lemon. 154
A straightforward breaded fry that lives or dies on speed and heat. Everything here is about getting the coating on and into the fat before the meat weeps.
- What you are actually buyingThe Italian title, granelli di montone, means ram's testicles, not kidneys; the English heading, and the recipe's own repeated references to kidneys, may be a euphemism or simply a translator's error. Either works with the method, but lamb or mutton kidneys are far easier to source; ask a halal or Italian butcher for the alternative.
- The membraneBoth kidneys and granelli are wrapped in a tough outer skin that shrinks and curls violently in hot fat. Slit it and peel it off completely before slicing, and cut out the white core of a kidney while you are at it.
- Slice thin, and coldThe recipe does not define "very thin"; a few millimetres is the practical reading. Chilling the kidney firm, or freezing it for fifteen minutes, makes clean slices possible; a soft kidney tears under the knife.
- Bread at the last momentThis is the hinge, and the recipe says so outright. Set up the crumbs and the egg-butter beside the pan and coat only as many slices as will fit in one batch — crumbs left sitting on wet kidney turn to paste and fry hard.
- The egg and butterBeat one egg with about a tablespoon of melted, cooled butter per two kidneys. Hot butter will scramble the egg.
- Heat and timingThe book gives no temperature; "a strong fire" here means butter foaming and just beginning to colour. Thin slices need one to two minutes a side, no more. Kidney held longer than that goes grainy, and no amount of lemon will bring it back.
- Butter alone will burnAt that heat, plain butter browns to black before the second batch. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, keeps the flavour without the scorching.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; two mutton or four lamb kidneys will serve two as a second course. Serve at once, on a hot plate, with lemon wedges — the acid is structural to the dish, not a garnish.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) has often been said to draw on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, though the debt is not documented, and it would be inference rather than fact to hear Artusi's register in the brisk warning about crumbs absorbing moisture. The mistranslation of granelli as "kidney" is telling: an English-language cookbook aimed at American readers in 1919 needed a heading that would not startle. Frying offal in a double crumb coat, sharpened with lemon and parsley, belongs to a wide family of Italian fritti misti in which brains, sweetbreads, artichokes and courgette flowers all get the same treatment and come to the table together.