In honor of Valentine’s Week, have a heart– a lamb’s heart. It’s no bigger than the size of your fist. Once you trim away the exterior fat and the interior veins and ventricles, you’re entrusted to a fair amount of lean and tender muscle flesh. You could quick-sear it and eat it like a steak or give up cooking entirely and serve it tartare-style.
Kibbeh Naye, a sort of Lebanese lamb tartare, is an easy preparation to use when you have perfectly fresh and high-quality lamb at hand. The dish is generally made with leg or loin meat, it’s scrumptious with lamb’s heart too.
Merely run the heart through the mill or food mill up until you have a fairly smooth paste. The texture ends up being velvety and the flavor, not too offal-y– just clean-tasting and slightly lamby. Combine with a bit of onion, lemon, and cayenne pepper, and you’ve got a simple appetiser that satisfies the craving for pure, untainted meat.
Adapted from The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall