ConnotationPress.com - October 2009

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Food - October 2009

From Plate to Palate, with Amanda McGuire : October 2009

I just met Sarah L., and I absolutely adore her. She’s one of the few people that I’ve met who’s absolutely obsessed with food to the same degree I am. Today she’s cooking Rocky Mountain Oysters for me at her house. I’m basically trusting a stranger to cook a bull’s balls for me. I’ve threatened opponents with eating balls as a geeky middle-schooler unable to play kick ball, but actually eating balls. That’s something entirely different. I’ve never been to her house. I don’t know how well she cleans. I have no evidence of how well she cooks. I hear it’s easy to screw up offal. I’m new to all of this. When I try to imagine me eating bull testes, I sweat a little, my hands tremble, and my stomach turns. I feel crazy. I also feel adrenaline.

Rocky Mountain Oysters - Sarah Lenz

My mom and I are standing in her driveway, staring into the back of her new boyfriend’s pickup truck.

“Yup, them’s gonna make a good mountain oyster feed,” the new boyfriend, Loren, says with obvious pride.

In the bed of his truck, a mound of raw, frozen bull testicles lay bundled in gallon-sized freezer bags. Each freezer bag holds about four pounds of mountain oysters, which amounts to about eight testicles per bag, all in all several hundred pounds of testicles. I’m not sure if I’m more disgusted by the magnitude of meat or by the fact that calling bull testicles “meat” might not be the right term.

Great Grandma Piwowarski’s Crispy Chicken Livers - Sarah Pazur

Great Grandma Piwowarski’s Crispy Chicken Livers

She was a tough old broad. Alma Piwowarski , my late Great Grandmother, wasn’t your average Polish-American housewife. In 1933, she left her comfy suburban bungalow for the drudges of General Motors’ Turnstead Plant. For 41 years she served as a parts inspector. But Grandma was no slouch in the kitchen. To this day, we serve many of her Polish delicacies at Christmas and Easter. These crispy chicken livers were one of her everyday favorites. According to my dad, Grandma loved to order these at a restaurant when she could find them. Now considered a throw back dish, chicken livers seem to have crept back into vogue. I noticed them the first time this summer at Michael Symon’s Roast in the historic Book Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit. Grandma Alma would have swooned over his perfectly prepared, flavor-packed morsels. But I have to say, after preparing grandma’s recipe at home, Piwowarski gave Symon a run for his money.

Cinnamon Apple Semifreddo with Maple Walnut Sauce - Carrie Hribar

Cinnamon Apple Semifreddo with Maple Walnut Sauce

Serves 8, at minimum

I’ve always been a fan of ice cream, but I became especially interested in making ice cream last summer after my sister brought her new boyfriend to a family vacation. He came armed with an assortment of homemade ice cream recipes. They spent a large part of the week in the kitchen with their ice cream machine, cracking eggs and cooking mysterious custards over the stove, resulting in ridiculously tasty frozen confections. While I’ve gained a brother-in-law since then, I still haven’t acquired an ice cream maker. I have realized, though, that I can achieve something similar without extra kitchen appliances.