In good economic times, people have a tendency to turn their backs on foods that remind them of times when life wasn't so easy. But when life gets a little more financially challenging, attitudes can change suddenly. And in this period of economic climate change, there's been a rise in the profile of foods that routinely get lumped together in that vaguely uncomplimentary category, "variety meats" --  like oxtail, whole tongue, sweetbreads, kidneys, and the biggest of them all, heart.

Too many people have this image of heart as something vaguely icky and wobbly. This is just silly. Heart is a muscle meat, like steak: just a whole lot harder-working. Or else people think of it as something incredibly tough. Often this is the result of having eaten heart cooked by someone who didn't know how to treat it. Like oxtail and shin, it comes from a hard-working part of the cow, and like them, it needs long slow cooking to bring out its best. But when handled properly its flavor compares favorably with theirs, or surpasses them.

Our recipe comes from a surprising source: the ancient Minitel "site" of a tripe butchers' association in France, which EuroCuisineLady stumbled across decades back when Ireland was having a brief flirtation with the Minitel system. The site of "Les Societé Anonyme des Tripiers* de wherever" had a recipe section: and hidden there was one of the best treatments for heart ever seen. It being France, much red wine is involved. (Surprise, surprise.)

Ingredients:

• 1 beef heart
• 1 bottle rough red wine (Rioja, Bordeaux or similar)
• 6 cloves garlic (a whole head if the cloves are small), peeled and chopped or just smashed, as you prefer
• 2 large onions (red, golden or white, it doesn't seem to matter)
• 1/2 - 3/4 pound smoky bacon, sliced, the slices roughly chopped up (if you bacon has rinds, you can safely leave them on for this recipe)
• A few tablespoons of oil for sauteeing
• Coarse ground salt (or a few pinches of regular salt if you don't have a grinder)
• Coarse ground pepper
• Bouquet garni (thyme, sage, parsley, a little rosemary)
• Optional: a few pink peppercorns, a few pinches of chili flakes

A note regarding the wine: You don't need anything fancy. Chianti is a good choice, but anything cheap and rough will work perfectly well. Last time we did this recipe, the wine was a Rioja, because EuroCuisineLady couldn't find a Chianti that looked cheap and muscular enough. This time, while EuroCuisineLady was at the butcher's, EuroCuisineGuy went off and came back with an inexpensive Bordeaux, which worked beautifully.

So the first thing you need to do is prep the beef heart. This may sound daunting if you've never done it, but it only takes ten or fifteen minutes and isn't difficult. It also is not going to be particularly gory: nowhere near as bad as your average episode of CSI, anyway. Use a boning knife or whatever thin, very sharp knife you find most convenient.

First, trim off any exterior fat from the heart: you won't want that in the final product.

Once the outside of the heart is trimmed, slice straight though the heart and lay it out open in two pieces. At this point some people like to cut away the outer skin of the heart entirely, but this seems like an overreaction to EuroCuisineLady, as -- once everything is cooked -- even without the trimming you're not going to be able to tell the pieces that come from the outside layer of the heart from the ones that come from the inside. If you do want to do this, though, push the outside of the heart flat down against the cutting board and use the boning knife on it the same way you'd use it to remove the skin from the outside of a fish filet. (Depending on your knife and your skill, you may find it easier to cut the heart into two or three pieces, the long way -- top to bottom -- and operate on each of them separately.)

Next: tidy up the inside of the heart. There will be the occasional tube-y looking bit in there -- cut these away if you come across them -- and some stringy-looking ligaments inside. Cut these away too. There is some shiny membrane inside the chambers of the heart (nature makes the inside of the heart very "nonstick" so as not to harm the delicate red blood cells on their way through), and you can either trim this membrane away or not, just as you please: again, you won't notice it when the dish is finished. You may also find a hard bony-feeling bit up near the top of the heart: cut this away if it's there.

Once the membranes have been removed, slice each chunk of heart muscle into cubes or cubish bits, half an inch wide or so. You should wind up with at least a pound and a half or two pounds of perfectly lean, dark red meat.

Put them in a glass or other nonreactive bowl.

Now we start the marinade. Add:

• Most of the bottle of wine, enough to cover
• The peeled, chopped or smashed garlic cloves
• The herbs. If you have fresh ones available, they're always best: otherwise use dried ones, or add a storebought bouquet garni.
• A few grinds of salt and a few grinds of coarseground pepper: if you're using them, add the pink peppercorns and the chili flakes.

Stir the whole business together, cover with plastic wrap, and put in the fridge to marinate for at least 24 hours. 48 is better if you've got that much time to spare. The more time the meat can spend in the marinade, the more tender and flavorful it will be after cooking.

On cooking day: please note that the prep and total cooking time for this dish can vary from 4-5 hours: so if dinnertime is closer than that, wait a day.

When you're ready to start cooking:

Chop up the smoked bacon as large or small as you like (no larger than the heart pieces, but smaller if you choose). In the heaviest large, tight-lidded casserole you have, sauté the bacon in a little oil (olive oil works fine for this). Don't do this on too high a heat: you just want the bacon fat to run.

Peel and chop the onions. Sauté them slowly with the bacon until they start to go brown.

Once they've browned a little, add the heart and its marinade. Season with a little more salt and pepper. If necessary, add enough more red wine to cover the meat.

Get a small sheet of aluminum foil, enough to cover the open pot, and then put your lid down on top of it and press well until it's securely sealed. Put the pot into a slow oven (250°F / 120°C) and leave it there for three to four hours.

At the three-hour point, open the pot and check a little of the meat for tenderness. If you feel it could be a little more tender, put it back in the oven -- add more wine to top up, if you feel the need -- and give it another hour or hour and a half.

When the meat is tender enough for you, take the pot out of the oven, spoon the meat out of it, and thicken the gravy.You can simply pour the cooking juices into another pot and boil them until they reduce and thicken. Or you can make a roux of a couple of tablespoons of flour and a few tablespoons of butter in another pan (by frying the flour and butter together until the roux goes golden); when the roux is ready, take it off the heat, let it cool a bit, add the gravy juices to the roux, and boil everything together until it thickens.

When it's ready to serve: Mashed potatoes (as in our image above) are a natural choice to soak up the gravy. EuroCuisineGuy likes dumplings, or sometimes egg noodles. You might even try spaetzle. A green salad goes well on the side. And perhaps a glass of red wine...

*In France, a tripier doesn't just deal in tripe, but in the whole range of variety meats: they not only sell them, but often prepare and cook them as well, offering them as take-home ready meals.