We Made It From the Market: Sweetbreads

Ah, sweetbreads. I’ll admit that the first time I ever ordered them, I had no idea what they were (and let’s just say that those salad days were a little more recent than I’d like to admit). Still, when I took my first bite, I knew I was in love (so much so that Official Co-Writer/Fiancee of DCWD Texas knows now that, along with a few other dishes like foie or duck breast, if it’s on a menu, 80 percent of the time, I’ll order it). I will also admit that I am among the luckiest fiancés in the world, a sentiment encapsulated by a random Wednesday when Texas brought home none other than a half-pound sweetbread for me.

Still, the thought of cooking the sweetbread itself was frightening. Where does one even start? Coincidentally, an episode of Top Chef we had watched the week before had Chef Hugh Acheson critiquing cheftestant Brooke Williamson on not cleaning her sweetbreads enough. Holding this slippery viscous chunk in my hands, I thought to myself, what is there even to clean?

Luckily for me, I had impulse purchased a copy of Fergus Henderson’s nose-to-tail cookbook and used its simple sweetbread recipe to cook the gland up right:

Fergus Henderson's Sweetbreads

1 pound lamb sweetbreads
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A pot of water (enough to happily cover the sweetbreads)
A healthy splash of white wine
Cloves of garlic
A bundle of thyme and parsley tied together
Black peppercorns
A splash of olive oil
A knob of unsalted butter

Rinse your sweetbreads thoroughly in cold, gently running water to remove any blood, giving them the occasional gentle shuggle to aid the cleansing process.

Bring your pot of water with its wine, herbs, and spices to a boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer. Slip your sweetbreads into the pot. Poach for 2.5 minutes so they firm up slightly. Think of the finger that pushes the Pillsbury Doughboy’s tummy. Your finger should push the same way.

Remove the sweetbreads from the pot, lay a kitchen towel out on a tray, and scatter the sweetbreads across it to cool and dry off.

Once the sweetbreads are cool enough to handle, peel the membrane off the little glands, a slightly fiddly process but well worth the trouble when it comes to the eating.

Now to the vital part. Get your frying pan hot, but not furiously hot. Add a splash of oil and a knob of butter. As this melts, season the sweetbreads with salt and pepper and then add to the pan. What we are looking for is a steady sizzle, not a frantic singeing, so that the sweetbreads brown to a nutty crispness all over, maintaining a giving interior. At this point they are ready to serve with a chunk of lemon—the nutty nodule, not the burnt offering or the anemic gland.

Once you have achieved the nutty nodule, there are many additions to the pan you can make, for example, a splash of chicken stock, a splash of red wine vinegar, peas, pea shoots, young fava beans, bacon, quarters of Little Gem lettuce, braised endive, mint, capers, young spinach, or watercress. 

Taste Test: **** (out of 5)

Date Ideas: Scratch DC

The working dad whose turn it is to cook but whose time is at a premium. The dater who wants to impress her prospective girlfriend but who can’t peel garlic. The roommates who have already burned through their favorite cookbooks and are yearning for something different. What do these people have in common? They’re the target audience for local start-up Scratch DC.

When it comes to making dinner, everyone, from the culinary neophyte to the gastronomic elite, wants the comfort of a well-made and self-made meal. Unfortunately, this desire occasionally goes hand-in-hand with a temporary lack of creativity, talent, or perhaps most importantly, time. Scratch DC seeks to fill that void by cutting out the most onerous parts of home cooking: decision making, shopping, and prep work. For around $30, Scratch delivers a meal kit for two right to your door. Add-ons include chocolate fondue dessert, and roses and candles; a beer and wine license is also being pursued.

On the day our sample box came, the situation could not have been more perfect for Scratch’s ideal consumer. I had just returned from a two-week long work trip, and my fiancée and I were headed out on a weeklong vacation the next day, leaving our fridge options limited. Around 6pm, our meal arrived: a shoebox-like container with individually packed ingredients. Each component came in its own condiment cup or Ziploc bag, pre-cut and mixed. Also inside was a long recipe card with step-by-step instructions that were straightforward, idiot-proof, and still a little tongue-in-cheek (sample: To the bowl, add your container of cheesy goodness [goat cheese, parmesan, nutmeg, salt, pepper] [marked with smiley]. Mix that sexiness up).

Our meal was a spinach and goat cheese ravioli in a portabella-parmesan wine sauce, an entrée which seemed the right balance between readily accessible and foodie-friendly, with the added bonus of being asked to hand-make the ravioli yourselves (an ideal date situation if we’ve ever seen one). To that end, in place of pasta, Scratch had substituted wonton wrappers, which as the recipe card put it, were “a little foodie secret.”

There was a lot to like about the set-up. For one, Scratch made no assumptions about what our kitchen would be stocked with: the box came with small containers of olive oil and salt and pepper. Its ingredient sourcing was solid, and at the least reflected a conscientiousness about their clientele. The meal also achieved the enviable success of having the final product seem much more impressive relative to the actual skill level and time needed to execute it. For the budget-conscious among us, the portion was more than ample for the two of us, a boon considering its price point. And, again perhaps most importantly, the dish itself was delicious: for cheese hounds like us, the thick more-parmesan-than-not sauce hit all the right spots and the added touch of bacon was a nice blast of salt (but was by no means a necessary ingredient, a plus for pescetarian Official Fiancee of DCWD Texas).

So if you find yourself caught in a dinner bind, Scratch DC is highly recommended.

First Look: GBD

Plaudits: None
Neighborhood: Dupont Circle

The Setup

It's not always this way, but it seems like it pretty often: when an idea happens, it usually comes in pairs as people race to get to that market first. It's most immediately obvious in movies: Deep Impact and Armageddon, Red Planet and Mission to Mars, Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. But sometimes, it happens with restaurants too (see: every Italian restaurant coming on 14th Street). This week's edition focuses on the chicken and doughnuts concept, and the Neighborhood Restaurant Group's Golden Brown and Delicious (GBD).

The Vibe

Even if you didn't know GBD was an NRG property, you could probably figure it out. The hallmarks are there: the exposed brick with repurposed wood highlights, the design-friendly typography, the warm brown and crimson tones, the air of relaxed coolness around you. The shop is long and thing, with a grab-and-go counter up front, and a long rowhouse feel to the rest of it, as a small bar and some tables flow back into the shop's space. The interior atmosphere seems like it's dependent on the sunshine streaming in from the bay window; at around 9pm when we stopped by, the space was dim but still buzzy, but one could easily envision a brighter, faster morning for breakfast service.

The Food

The menu is drawn right from a Southern comfort food playbook: biscuits, fried things, sharp sauces. To that end, Official Friend of DCWD Noah and I split two dishes. The first was the chicken fried steak with garlic roasted smashed potatoes and red eye gravy. Now I don't fancy myself an expert on chicken-fried steak just yet; Official Co-Writer/Fiancee of DCWD Texas only introduced me to this feat of Southern cooking just a little over a year ago. Still, in my experience, GBD does an incredible job of keeping the meat moist while keeping the crust crispy.

The second is the former secret menu staple from sister restaurants Birch and Barley/Churchkey: The Luther, a gluttonous sandwich of fried chicken and slab bacon layered between two fried brioche doughnuts glazed in maple-chicken jus and candied pecans (even just typing those words makes side of fries seem irrelevant). If the sandwich sounds like a bit much, you wouldn't be wrong. But you'd be missing out on the incredible combination of sweet and salty and savory that is the Luther. It's like every first McGriddle bite, except if it never got worse. For something so straightforwardly indulgent, it's surprisingly complex (while still being luxuriant). Incredible.

The Verdict

If you know what you're getting yourself into, this place can be awesome.

Food Rating: **** (out of 5)
Date Rating: 3 Hearts (out of 5)
Dress Code: Casual
Bar Rating: N/A
Vibe: Energetic
Cost: $ (out of 5) (less than $25 for two)