Sweetbread medallions with horn of plenty

By: Antonio Carluccio
From: Complete Mushroom Book
Serves: 4
Photographer: Alastair Hendy

Not everybody likes offal in general, but sweetbreads, together with liver and kidneys, seem to be loved by most gourmets from around the world. In Italy we also appreciate other parts of the animal like spinal cord, tripe, brains, spleen and testicles, which we cook so that they become delicacies. One day, I will write an entire book about offal!

Ingredients

Quantity	Ingredient
350g	horn of plenty mushrooms, cleaned weight
600g	calf’s sweetbreads
	plain flour, for dusting
2 tablespoons	olive oil
60g	butter
2	garlic cloves, finely chopped
1	small fresh red chilli, finely chopped
3 tablespoons	dry red wine
2 tablespoons	parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon	mint, finely chopped
1	lemon, juiced
	salt, to taste
	pepper, to taste

Method

Clean the mushrooms well. Blanch the sweetbreads in salted water for 20 minutes, drain and cool. Cut away all the muscle and nerves. Cut the sweetbreads into medallions and dust them with flour.
Heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan and fry the sweetbread medallions over a moderate heat until they are brown on each side. Remove from the pan and keep warm.
Put the garlic, chilli and mushrooms into the same frying pan and sauté briefly.
Add the wine, herbs and some salt and pepper. Return the sweetbreads to the pan, add the lemon juice, and stir a little to flavour the meat. Serve either with toasted bread or with steamed rice.