Beef tongue carppaccio 牛タンのカルパッチョ

 My wife loves beef tongue but not the way it’s usually prepared in Japan (thinly sliced and grilled). As a result I usually prepare the tongue by boiling it in water with some aromatics which is how the beef tongue she ate as a child was prepared. (She refers to it as the Pennsylvania Dutch rather than Japanese method of preparation. The Pa Dutch method results in a meat that is extremely tender and melts in the mouth. The Japanese method in contrast results is a fairly tough and chewy meat. As my wife would say, “Which is the best method of preparation? What was the question?”) After removing the skin, I thinly slice it and make sandwiches using pumpernickel bread with mayo and mustard. (Again made to the exacting specifications of the tongue sandwiches my wife used to eat as a child.) Portions are further cooked as a Japanese-Western style beef tongue stew. (Which by-the-way was not something my wife used to eat as a child but likes non-the-less.) 

We have not able to get beef tongue for a while. Although we know one of the grocery stores usually carries it, we have not been there recently since we are getting grocery home delivery. But an unexpected event led us to be at this particular grocery store and since we were there we snagged a rather large beef tongue. We enjoyed the tongue over several days as sandwiches and stew with spaetzle. I finally used the last portion of the tongue to make carpaccio (left in the picture below) and a small salad in Japanese-style (made using the PA. Dutch style prepared tongue, of course) with ponzu, yuzu-kosho, onion, cucumber topped with sesame seeds (right)

I made this carpaccio the same way I usually make it using leftover steaks or octopus. I first make zig-zag lines of olive oil (I used our favorite Spanish olive oil) and balsamic vinegar (this is a quite good one we got as a gift) perpendicular to each other on a plate. Then I scattered Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper over the oil mixture. I then I put on a layer of Videlia onion cut paper thin using a Japanese mandoline  slicer. I then add a layer of thinly sliced beef tongue. I garnish with cucumber (thinly sliced, salted, with the moisture squeezed out and then dressed with sweet vinegar), more onion and concasse of tomato with basil strips. I finished with more olive oil, balsamic vinegar. This was really great with read wine.

For the other salad, I just used the cucumber and onion left over from the previous salad. I arranged it with the onion on the bottom, the tongue (thinly sliced) next and topped with the cucumber. I dressed it with ponzu ポン酢 mixed with Yuzu-kosho 柚子胡椒 and topped with sesame. (The dressing is what made it Japanese style.) We liked the carpaccio better.

Our garden now has azaleas and iris in full bloom. My wife brought some of the more elegant looking    iris inside for us to enjoy. Isn’t spring wonderful!