Let’s hear it for the Big O

John Parsons with calves feet

There’s been some Twittering from Sheffield foodies about eating offal after one cooked a pig’s heart for her dog. She tried a bit first and liked it. Good for her. There’s some fine eating to be had in those bits of animals we mention with a shudder.

We’ve all eaten liver, kidneys and oxtail in a stew but what about wyssen (an animal’s throatpipe), sheep’s brains, chitterling and bag (the rear end of a pig’s alimentary canal), lamb’s testicles, pig’s stomach, pancreas and thyroid glands and lamb’s lights?

I can tick off some of them but I know a man who has gone right through the list because he’s cooked them. He’s John Parsons, master of the Big O (for offal) and this area’s answer to Offal King Fergus Henderson, the London chef who made ‘nose to tail eating’ fashionable. At Food and Fine Wine on Ecclesall Road a few years back he ran occasional offal evenings for intrepid diners and repeated the idea at Fancie further along some time later.

It was quite a revelation. Wyssen, spongy in texture, was served with squares of tripe in a borlotti bean stew. I closed my eyes to eat the sheep brains, sliced and fried, which were crisp on the outside with a creamy interior.

It would be unfair to suggest that everything offal is a success. “The lambs lights – lungs – with sultanas and orange zest were particularly foul, to be honest. It’s the texture, like a big, fleshy Aero. And pig’s stomach was particularly gross,” he told me that evening.

You can’t just call in at the butcher for this type of meat so John has to make a special journey to the abattoir when he’s planning an evening and hope they’ve got what he wants. These days he’s cooking at the Druid Inn, Birchover, so check if and when he plans to get offally again on http://www.druidinnbirchover.co.uk

Years ago I used to enjoy cooked Bath Chaps, which you could buy in Sainsbury’s, and was delighted to find them recently on Sheffield Market, not known by that name but Pig’s Cheeks. Sometimes we don’t realise we’re eating offal as in haslet, a meat loaf which includes all sorts of bits and pieces.

Tastes have changed. There used to be several tripe stalls on the old Sheaf Market which dwindled down to a single tray full of morose looking bits, sold only to pensioners. I am also partial to brawn, but only very occasionally, which requires a pig’s head and trotters if made properly.

We mustn’t forget the feet. I’ve had deep-fried hen’s tootsies as dim sum. The claws go remarkably crispy. David Blunkett MP once tipped me off about a little café on Devonshire Green which made gorgeous cow heel gravy.

I had a wonderful stuffed pig’s trotter a la Pierre Koffman from Max Fischer at Baslow Hall, filled as I remember with chicken and mushroom, and always look out for trotters on menus abroad. In Catalonia a waiter refused point blank to serve me trotter “because the English don’t like it.” I had to have something else.

I returned the next night and pointedly ordered it from the same waiter. This time I was served. So was it wonderful, a truly unexpected gastronomic experience? No.

Seen below, John’s offal tempura and spleen with mash