628. GRILLED BACON-WRAPPED SWEETBREAD

makes 2 generous servings


1 pound sweetbreads
1 teaspoon vinegar in cold water
1/2 teaspoon salt
Fresh-ground black pepper
Salt
1 teaspoon dried thyme
8 to 10 slices bacon

Soak the sweetbreads for 1 hour in a bowl of cold water to cover by about an inch with 1 teaspoon of vinegar. Drain.

Place the sweetbreads in a saucepan of boiling water salted with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook for 5 minutes. Drain and allow to cool.

Remove the bits of fat from the sweetbreads along with any coarse membrane that keeps the lobes of the sweetbreads together.

Cut the sweetbreads into approximately 3-inch-long pieces. Season liberally with pepper and lightly with salt. Crush the thyme between your fingers and sprinkle all over the sweetbreads.

Wrap a piece of bacon around each sweetbread, trying to enclose as much as possible, if not the whole. Secure bacon to sweetbreads with toothpicks or small trussing skewers.

Place as far away as possible from the heat in a gas or electric broiler. Cook about 15 minutes, turning twice. (Of course, these are even better cooked over charcoal on a barbecue.)


courtesy of: Arthur Schwartz, the Food Maven