Texas Monthly: 612 West's Crispy Sweetbreads with Chipotle-Sage

Featured in the May 1994 issue of Texas Monthly

612 West's Crispy Sweetbreads

The challenge of the recipe is in the timing: Both the meat and the accompanying golden corn cakes, topped with the incendiary chipotle-sage sauce, must be served hot off the stove. Your effort will be rewarded with a savory and eminently satisfying slow burn.

Chipotle-Sage Sauce

2 tablespoons canned chipotle chiles, seeded and julienne cut
2 tablespoons liquid from canned chiles
3 shallots, sliced
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 stick butter, cut in pieces
12 small whole sage leaves

Place first 4 ingredients in small saucepan over medium heat and reduce volume by 3/4. Add butter piece by piece, shaking pan until incorporated. Add sage leaves.

Sweetbreads

1 3/4 pounds sweetbreads
Salt and pepper to taste
Flour to dredge
2 to 3 tablespoons clarified butter

Soak sweetbreads for 6 hours in refrigerator in enough water to cover, changing water 2 or 3 times. Blanch sweetbreads in boiling salted water for 20 minutes; plunge into ice water. When sweetbreads are cool, peel off membrane and trim any tough parts, portion into 2-ounce pieces, and flatten slightly with your hand. Season, dredge in flour, and pan fry in clarified butter over medium heat until brown and crispy, 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Corn Cakes Recipe

612 West
612 W. Sixth
Austin, Texas

Sweetbreads are a rarity at most restaurants, but executive chef Raymond Tatum has made the rich organ meat his signature dish. "People tell me that I make the best sweetbreads," Tatum says. "And personally I really like them. It's only human instinct to keep doing something you do well." Tatum created this popular meal as the chef at Jeffrey's, another cutting-edge Austin restaurant, nearly six years ago.

Meat & Dairy
butter
1 3/4 pounds sweetbreads
1 egg

Produce
6 shallots
12 small whole sage leaves

Grocery
canned chipotle chiles
chicken stock
salt
pepper
flour