Roasted Sweetbreads with Applewood-Smoked Bacon, Braised Belgian Endive, and Black Truffle Sauce

My friends, Deanna and Lucas Manteca, own a wonderful little restaurant called Sea Salt in Stone Harbor, NJ. I spend a lot of time there in the summer and it's where I fell in love with sweetbreads. I'd seen sweetbreads on the menu in other restaurants over the years, but never felt compelled to order them because I was kind of afraid of them. Two summers ago, Lucas put together a tasting menu for my birthday dinner, and sweetbreads was one of the courses. To be honest, I can't remember how he prepared them, but I remember thinking, wow. Just wow. I'd had no idea they'd be this good. Texturally, I had a moment where I thought I might get squicked out, but the moment passed rather quickly, and I was hooked. From that moment on, I ordered sweetbreads whenever I could. Last summer, Lucas did a sweetbreads eggroll, and it blew my mind.

But making them has never been a priority item on my culinary to-do list. I never had the desire to seek them out, buy them, or figure out how to cook them. Why? Have you SEEN what sweetbreads look like raw? They're kind of gross. Wanna see?


Oh whoops. That's not sweetbreads. It's Sweetness from Roll Bounce. My bad.

Here's what sweetBREADS look like (photo courtesy of Getty Images):


Pretty, huh? So, what are sweetbreads? Well, they ain't sweet, and they sure as hell aren't bread. When I was younger, I used to think sweetbreads was a place of pain, as in, "I'm gonna kick you in the sweetbreads." Actually, sweetbreads are the thymus, a gland located in a young calf's chest and throat area that helps ward off disease. This gland disappears once the animal ages past 6 months old. There are two cuts to sweetbreads -- the throat cut and the heart cut. The heart cut is more round and even, and the throat cut isn't. There isn't a definitive answer as to why this gland is called "sweetbreads." Some experts date it back to the late 1500s, and say that the word "bread" was used interchangeably as the word "morsel" and perhaps that's where it originated.

I seem to recall an article about sweetbreads in the food section of The New York Times that had a line in it that went something like, "Sometimes people have no idea what they're eating, and it's better that they just don't ask." I'm not sure I agree with that, but to each his own I suppose. I'm a fan of sweetbreads, so I was happy to make this dish? Were my neighbors happy to eat it? Read on, my friends, read on.

I went to DC's Eastern Market to purchase my sweetbreads, brought them home and soaked them overnight in the fridge in a bowl of cold water:


I changed the water once before I went to bed, and again when I woke up, then let them soak for a few more hours. I then brought a large pot of water to a boil, lightly salted it and added the sweetbreads:


I simmered them for a few minutes, drained them, and placed them in an ice bath to cool:


I drained them again, removed any excess membrane (there wasn't a lot) and compressed them between two towel-lined baking sheets. I weighted it with two plates and put them in the refrigerator overnight:


The next day, I heated some oil in a deep sauté pan, seasoned the somewhat-flattened sweetbreads with salt and pepper, then sautéed them on one side for 5 minutes, followed by 3 minutes on the other side, until they had turned golden brown:


I drained off some of the fat, then added turkey stock (I was still out of chicken stock - must make some this weekend), some vermouth, and these lovely aromatics:



I brought this up to a simmer and simmered it for about 5 or 6 minutes. I took the sweetbreads out of the cooking liquid, discarded the solids from it, then poured it in a tall, narrow pitcher so the fat could rise to the top. I scooped out the fat and returned the sweetbreads to the liquid and put them in the refrigerator while I finished the rest of the dish.

The next step was to make the braised endive. I chose a red endive instead of the traditional yellow ones (because the only yellow ones I could find had brown spots all over them and looked like death warmed over). Red endives were created by breeding a regular endive with an Italian chicory called Treviso, so it has a little bit of chicory taste to it, but the upside is that it's not nearly as bitter as endives can sometimes be. They're also gorgeous:


I removed one layer of the outer leaves and cut off the bottom and cored it a bit. I plugged the cored area with kosher salt, salted all the endives, and stood them up for 30 minutes:


They look like little penguins, don't they?

I rinsed them to remove the salt and heated a little bit of canola oil in a pot. I browned the endives, added some turkey stock to cover them. I covered the pot with a parchment lid and simmered it for 40 minutes to fully cook the endives. You'll see the braised endive in the final plating photo.

Next, I made the truffle sauce by combining some veal stock and a few drops of white wine vinegar in a small saucepan and brought it to a simmer. I reduced it to a sauce consistency (much like the truffle ragout for the truffle custards) and removed it from the heat:


Next, I cut my slices of lovely, lovely applewood-smoked bacon into small strips (or lardons) about 3 inches by 1/4 inch:


I put the lardons into saucepan, covered them with water, and brought it to a boil:


I drained the lardons and rinsed them with cold water, then drained them on a paper towel.

This next part is where I rightfully took some creative license. The final step of preparing the sweetbreads involves my boyfriend, bacon, but The French Laundry Cookbook actually suggests using a larding needle to insert the bacon pieces into the sweetbreads. Ask my Aunt Phyllis sometime about my awesome sewing skills and you'll understand why I changed this step. Suffice to say, I nearly failed 7th grade home ec because I sucked so bad at sewing. I hated it so much I waited until the night before our wraparound skirt (I KNOW!) was due, and went to my aunt's house to finish it on her sewing machine. She and my uncle were all "will you be okay here by yourself if we go out for dinner?" and I could barely hear them over the loud gunning of the sewing machine's foot pedal because I figured the faster I sewed, the faster I'd get done, quality be damned. I had no idea what the hell I was doing; I just cut and sewed willy-nilly, and ended up with bloody fingers and glaucoma (okay, maybe not glaucoma) from all the finish work I had to do by hand. My proud moment came when I got a D on the project. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my entire extended family to get a D in home ec... or any subject for that matter. So, yeah. Me and sewing? Not so much. I hate it as much as I hate softshell crabs.

The French Laundry Cookbook gives detailed instructions on how to sew the bacon into the sweetbreads, but thankfully ALSO includes a sentence that reads: "If you do not have a larding needle, the lardons can be added to the skillet and cooked with the sweetbreads." I read it as if the first draft of that text most certainly involved Thomas Keller rolling his eyes with a heavy sigh as he dictated to Michael Ruhlman: "If you are an unskilled non-sewing loser named Carol Blymire who is the shame of her family and also her Amish homeland because of her non-sewingosity, then I guess you can take the easy way out, because clearly, Carol Blymire, you should not ever be around needles, even really dull larding needles, because we really don't need your fingers bleeding into this dish, Carol Blymire, or having it look even more hacked up than it probably eventually will because we know you, Carol Blymire, oh yes, we know how you roll."

Whew. Crisis averted. And also, I guess I won't be auditioning for Project Runway anytime soon. Or ever.

After I'd preheated the oven to 350 degrees, I heated a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat, then added some canola oil and butter and let it warm up. In the meantime, I cut and trimmed the sweetbreads into six small brick-like shapes (approximately 2x3" each). When the oil and butter started bubbling, I added the lardons, then the sweetbreads. I basted the sweetbreads with the liquid, then placed the uncovered pan in the oven for about 15 minutes, basting the sweetbreads twice during that time and turning them over halfway through the cooking process.


While they were cooking, I tossed together some truffle slices, minced chives and white truffle oil in a small bowl. I also warmed up the endives during this time. I did not cut them and twist them like a turban, as the book suggests. I don't know why I bailed on that step. I just did. I also reheated the truffle sauce, stirred in a bit of white truffle oil, as well as some salt and pepper.

Time for plating! First on the plate went the truffle sauce. On top of that, I placed the sweetbread, with some bacon. Next to that was the endive. Lastly, I topped it all off with the truffle slice-chive mixture. Have a look-see:


It doesn't resemble the photo in the book, and in fact, looks bigger than it actually was. But who cares, because this was one of the best dishes I have ever made. I had some very reluctant tasters who were not really thrilled with the idea of eating sweetbreads, but once they took a bite, they were pleasantly surprised. My neighbor's parents and brother were in from out of town, so there were six plates and 10 or 11 people around the table. We all shared nicely and only fought a little over the bacon. The kids were prepared to hate it, and had been practicing their best gagging noises, but didn't have to use them. The 11-year old, "G" said, "This is soooo much better than I thought it was going to be." This is the same kid who called me Christmas Eve all nanny-nanny-boo-boo-bragging to tell me he ordered braised veal cheeks at Eric Ripert's new bistro here in DC. He actually ate three or four bites of the sweetbreads before he let his uncle have a taste. I love it.

The texture of the sweetbreads was really nice. Not chewy, and not spongy at all, and everything that accompanied it was outstanding. The endive was hearty and robust, and the truffles just capped it off with a light richness (if that's possible to imagine) that added such a nice finish. We were all off to another neighbor's party that night, so I didn't serve any wine with this, but if I had, I probably would've chosen a Pinot Noir or a Syrah.

I'd make this dish again, no question. And, if any of you are up for an adventure in eating, try this. It's not that difficult, and the end result is outstanding.

Up Next: "Liver & Onions" -- Sautéed Calf's Liver, Vidalia and Red Onion Confit, Onion Rings, and Vinegar Sauce

Quick Note: You can still vote for me at Culinate's Death By Chocolate contest. To do that, click on this lovely little graphic (if you don't, I will follow through on my threat to sing "No Diggity" into your voicemail for hours on end; watch me):


Resources:
Sweetbreads from Union Meat at Eastern Market in DC
365 organic canola oil and butter
Bacon, produce and herbs from Whole Foods
Noilly-Pratt dry vermouth
Black truffle from D'Artagnan
Saveurs white truffle oil

Music to Cook By: The Roll Bounce Soundtrack, natch! I supplemented it with some additional Kool & The Gang and other awesome 70s disco, R&B and funk, and had a hankerin' to head to my local roller skating rink.

Read my previous post: White Truffle Oil-infused Custards with Black Truffle Ragout