Day 20: You Gotta Have Heart!

After dinner last night my mother noted that I was approaching the end of this adventure and asked what I was going to eat on April first.  Without hesitation, I blurted out “a salad!”  “Seriously”, she asked, “besides the salad, what are you craving?”  I half-jokingly said I’d probably eat some more bacon, but I think I’ll more than likely have some venison.  It’s become a staple in my meat diet ever since I found a consistent source for it, a family friend who’s a hunter and usually has more meat than his family can consume.  I absolutely love venison carpaccio of tenderloin, seared on the outside and cool in the centre served with a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt.  It’s nothing but subtle and delicate and gives you a true appreciation for the meat.  I imagine some food losers would probably try and put barbeque sauce or ketchup on the carpaccio since for some people meat is meat, and you put ketchup on meat.  But I guarantee you that if they did that at my table they’d end up getting stabbed in the face or at the very least be subjected to a swift and painful defenestration.  So dinner on April 1^st has been set, venison carpaccio and a salad… a huge salad with arugula, avocado, toasted pine nuts, parmigiano and a generous squeeze of lemon.

I prepared a quick and creative breakfast.  I had some leftover crispy skin from the pig’s head dinner and thought about using it in another Nutellvis in place of bacon since it would have added a hell of a crunch to the already crunchy peanut butter; but I didn’t have the time.  After heating up the skin in a pan and draining off the considerable fat, I made a sandwich with the bacon marmalade that I had previously maligned on account of its fake bacon seasoning (aka “fakon seasoning”).  The sandwich was a crispy tasty spectacle.

I then prepared what would be my lunch by frying some patties fashioned from the pig heart that I ground last night.  I skipped a crucial step and didn’t add any eggs to bind the patties together as they cooked.  And although I did my best to keep them together, they inevitably lost some of their shape as they cooked.  The bits that fell away reminded me of chunks of ice falling off an iceberg.  I wrapped the patties in plastic wrap and tossed them in my lunch bag, but I guess I didn’t do a good job wrapping them because the scent of meat started to fill the train on my commute into work.  The lady next to me was drooling; now maybe she always drools when she sleeps, but I’m guessing that she was drooling a little more because of the pork heart patties.

Peter proved his adventurous palette when he agreed to join me for lunch; a couple of others refused because they couldn’t stomach the thought of eating pigs heart.  Little do they know that heart meat is cleverly concealed in the sausages they happily eat on a frequent basis.  That’s the reason that I couldn’t get any at my butcher; they had ground them all up for the sausages they prepare and sell.  But since the Vietnamese grocery store doesn’t sell sausages, they had plenty of them.  Dressed with grainy mustard and mayo, the heart patties were so good that I almost forgot to take a picture; the photo below is actually me manhandling Peter’s sandwich because there wasn’t enough of mine left.  Peter countered with some pork sausage stew that his wife had prepared the night before and succeeded in turning lunch into a plethora of pork.

Everytime I say the word “heart” I think back to an old Molson Light commercial that had a catchy tune with the words “You gotta have heart...”.  All these years later I can still remember all the words.  Amazing really, since I was probably less than 5 years old at the time and hadn’t yet developed my taste for beer.  The fact that every word of it is still with me (yes, every single word) is a tribute to both the catchiness of that particular tune and the enduring power of nostalgia.  Molson Light may no longer be around, but the song is, even if it’s only in my head.

Which brings me to dinner, yet more heart; this time in a thick stew.  Unless your heart comes from an older pig with coronary artery disease, the heart is going to be lean and fat free.  So stewing is really the only way to go if you’re not going to grind it.  The heart was sliced and browned in olive oil.  The meat was set aside and the pan was deglazed with white wine.  To the pan I added chopped onions, then garlic, then shredded carrot and parsnips and finally some crushed tomatoes.  The heart was returned to the pan where everything simmered for a half hour.

After my truly hearty lunch and dinner, I don’t understand what the apprehension is towards eating it.  Get over it people…it’s all in your heads.