Kidneys, Devilled Lazy American Style, & Goostrami

The other day my butcher was so pleased to see me he gave me a couple lamb's kidneys for free after I'd gotten done picking out a couple chickens, a few beef short ribs, and some sausage. So what do you do with a couple of small kidneys? I wanted devilled kidneys but was too lazy to get the 6-7 ingredients ready to go, even if I had all of them, which I didn't. If you don't have everything ready to go you end up overcooking the kidneys and feeling unhappy with the result. After browning the kidneys, you work quickly, adding individually and stirring and reducing a bunch of things along the lines of sherry, vinegar, redcurrant jelly, worcestershire, mustard, cayenne, double cream. Much better to get someone else to do this. So I opted for Buffalo-style. A basic Buffalo wings "sauce" is nearly equal parts butter and cayenne(ish) hot sauce -- tabasco or frank's, e.g. I cut up and fried the kidney pieces in some butter, pulled them out of the pan, put in a very healthy slug of frank's hot sauce, stirred to combine, added the kidney back in, tossed with the sauce in the pan, and plated with a small handful of sliced green onions on top. Quick, simple, and tasty. Celery or shallot would have also worked fine I think.

Another culinary discovery: I took the last smoked goose breast I'd made "ham" out of using the previously mentioned duck breast ham recipe, fired up the slicer, and turned it into a mound of ruby red, finely sliced (shaved) goose breast. I also sliced up the lasted homemade bacon. Then fried up a few pieces of the bacon. Then fried up a handful of the shaved goose breast, steaming hot with crispy edges, coating liberally with freshly cracked black pepper at the end. And... it tasted kind of like pastrami. Like good pastrami. Which is not entirely surprising given that goose is much more beef-like than duck, and it was cured then smoked. Goostrami reubens?