'Twas a dark and stormy night when two trucks carrying several tons of meat jack-knifed and crashed after arriving in Britain off the Holyhead ferry from Ireland a few years back.
The meat turned out to be beef tripe. And the owners of this delicious but offaly unfashionable cargo turned out to be McDonald's, worldwide purveyors of hamburgers and other fast foods.
Newspapers worldwide had a highly entertaining couple of days quizzing the Big Mac: What is this tripe for? Do you put tripe in your burgers? If you do, is it revealed on your menus? And so on.
Personally, if McDonald's put a well-cooked Lancashire tripe and onions on its menu (like Oscars' excellent version), I would be there in a flash. But in these days of anonymous, bland, fat-saturated fast foods, offal meats are not as popular as they were a generation ago.
Even if you are one of those unfortunates to whom even the thought of calves' liver, lamb kidneys, haggis, honeycomb tripe and sweetbreads is off your personal menu, I can assure you that you have already eaten a significant amount of offal in your time - and not known about it.
The boast "100-percent beef burger" is, of course, totally true, even if beef tripe is included in the definition. Some stuck-together ground-meat patties are compounds of many tail-to-head meats, including offal. Do you like commercial polony or bologna sausage, salami rolls, "sandwich" ham? Most of them contain offal. And a good thing, too, because every one of the 19 types of offal I know can be cooked deliciously. Just as much to the point: they are usually a lot cheaper than normal cuts.
In these tight times, more butchers are rescuing these delicacies from the mince and sausage meat bins, and dishes Grandma relished and made so well are coming back.
Clean white tripe is harder to get these days because the demand for black cleaned tripe is growing fast. White tripe is available, but its price is moving towards R20/kg or more.
Use the phone to shop around - where you live is important. My local supermarket sells lambs' kidneys for around R40 a kilo. If you go to its Pinetown branch, those same delicacies cost about R30kg. My favourite butchery sells lamb kidneys for around R19/kg.
Model Meats in Pinetown has always had more good, cared-for offal available than most, and this is one of the factors that keeps me going there - as well as its grass-fed beef. Its ox liver is also grass-fed, of course, and consistent in quality and cutting - look for a medium to light brown colour and slices cut evenly about 2cm thick.
Butchers can respond to these times, so keep nagging for your favourites. I've seen beef heart, trimmed and acceptably priced, in Pick 'n Pay recently.
Dolf Ferreira of Model is trying to organise lamb hearts and sweetbreads on a regular basis. But this is not easy - he tells me the big wholesalers chuck them into the bins of ground-meat anonymity.
Beef heart is more hopeful and he is trying to increase his supply. Nicely trimmed, he sells it for around R18/kg. See my Grandma Sarah's magnificent recipe for beef heart, stuffed with sage and onion and braised to a rich tenderness, below.
Chicken livers are available everywhere, but mostly only admired when cooked with peri-peri. There are other gorgeous chicken liver dishes. Try the one below.
Oxtail used to be cheap, but then restaurants took it up and it now costs around R48/kg in supermarket butcheries. But pigs' tails make excellent stews. Where are they? In the wholesale butchers' bins for processing. In Europe beef sweetbreads are a delicacy that cost around the equivalent of R150/kg.
Here, most of the big butchers toss them in the bin for anonymous appearances in sausage or even pet food. What a waste.
Elizabeth David's Fast Chicken Livers
500g chicken livers (or a mix of livers and hearts), all cut in half
40g flour
40g melted butter
100g bacon scraps
6 tbs Marsala (the little-known dessert wine, one of South Africa's best value wines)
200ml chicken stock
Bunch of parsley, chopped
Season the livers with salt and pepper to taste.
Dust them with the flour. Put the butter in a pan and saute the bacon for 2 minutes. Add the livers, stir-frying them for 2 minutes. Add the Marsala. Let it bubble for a minute. Add the stock and cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring regularly. Stir in 3 tbs of the parsley. Serve with crisp croutons or rice. Use more of the parsley as a garnish. Serves four.
French Ox Kidney and Bacon Casserole
Two good-sized ox kidneys, split length-wise and thinly sliced
Strip pork back fat about 12cm long or a big fatty pork braai chop
100ml red wine
4 chopped spring onions, chopped
A large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbs chopped parsley
500g bacon bits
3 tbs brandy
Seasonings and a pinch of oregano
Cut the pork fat lengthwise and lay the strips in a casserole, or use the chop in the same way.
Add the wine, seasoning and oregano. Add a layer of kidney slices on top. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Mix the spring onions, onion, garlic and parsley.
Sprinkle this mix over the kidney slices. Make more layers in this way, depending upon the size of your casserole, but ending with a layer of bacon on top.
Cover and cook for 150C for three hours, adding the brandy 10 minutes before the end of cooking.
Serve straight from the casserole with your choice of vegetables. Serves (4-6)
My Grandma Sarah's Stuffed and Braised Beef Heart
(To feed depends on the size of heart you can get)
Take two hearts, cut each open but staying linked, then stuff them and tie them together with string. If already sliced, you can do the same by fitting the slices around the stuffing. A couple of good sized hearts - making, say, 500g to 1kg - can feed 2 to 4 or 6. And so on. Let's say you have a kilo of heart, trimmed inside and out. Get together:
A couple of boned pork braai chops cut in chunks about 4cm x 4cm.
250g to 300g of yesterday's bread, reduced to fresh crumbs
Dried oregano, marjoram or sage and 2 bay leaves
Salt and black pepper
2 onions, chopped fine
I large onion cut in thick slices
6 medium carrots
2 eggs
500ml beef stock
150ml red wine
Butter and oil for frying
A good-sized pot or fireproof casserole
Wash the heart or its pieces and season inside and out with salt and pepper. If the heart or hearts are in one piece the job is extra easy. Make the stuffing (see below), stuff the heart and tie it together with string. Then colour it light brown on all sides over medium hot oil and butter in the casserole.
Take it out and then put the carrots, sliced onions and the braai chops - cut into chunks - and the bay leaves on the bottom.
Add the stock, wine and hearts and simmer with the lid on for three hours (that's why Grandma Sarah made this on Sundays - it simmered while she was at church). Or bake at 160C for two hours or until the meat is tender to a probing knife.
If the heart is already cut in half, make the stuffing and mould into a ball or balls and fit the heart pieces around it. Tie together with string and proceed as above. The heart will taste like the finest rump steak you have ever enjoyed.
The stuffing
Put the crumbs and finely chopped onion into a mixing bowl. Season to taste and add 2 level tsps of the herb or herbs of your choice, mixing well. Add an egg and mix again. You should be able to mould the stuffing into a roundish ball to arrange the heart slices around it. Too dry? Add the other egg. Too wet? Add more bread crumbs.