Have a Heart
A Hearty Dinner
Heart to Handle

Somebody stop me.

What I'm trying to tell you is that I got brave and bought a two-pound chunk of beef heart at the Publix. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has acclimated me to the idea of organ meats lately, and besides, how could I turn down beef for a buck a pound?

I consulted Hugh's books after the purchase and found that he actually referred to beef hearts as one of the more daunting types of offal: huge, tough, and run through with icky ventricles and connective tissue that have to be trimmed. He didn't provide any recipes for it, either. But I gathered from what I read that any braising dish would take care of it well enough.

I laid it out on a cutting board, trimmed the weirdest-looking stuff off of it, and brined it for a couple of hours. Then I simmered it for three hours with vegetables, herbs, orange zest, and a pig's foot. Finally I sliced the heart thin, strained everything else out of the sauce, added half a bottle of red wine, and reduced it down.

I served this concoction over garlicky mashed potatoes, alongside buttery boiled cabbage.

I'm going to admit right away that it was weird. It's dark, almost as dark as liver. It's very fine-grained (more like Vietnamese mock duck than like any other actual meat I can think of) and tastes like beef but with an extra iron-y aftertaste. But it's really good. Extremely good. Delicious, in fact.

We would have it again in a heartbeat.