Gizza gizzard mate

For much of the prep-time of this meal, my answer would have been 'Please, take as many as you want.' Yes, this is a pan full of chicken gizzards from the market, cooked more or less as per Flo from allnigerianrecipes.com's recipe (no habaneros though - cowardy custard used a Scotch bonnet and an ordinary red one). I only bought them because I thought it was a good piratical word, and I was bricking it before I began cooking, because raw gizzards do not look good, even to someone like me who's eaten the odd bollock, a couple of squirrels and three or four types of foot. Raw gizzards look like offcuts from some kind of rubber mask manufactory, and I had to just assume they'd already had their 'inside skins' removed, because I had no idea how to tell. Several minutes into cooking, they weren't smelling good and I was wondering whether I'd done a bad thing and whether I'd anything else I could prepare quickly as a replacement. By the time they absorbed the stock and went in the oven they were smelling better, and when they came out of the frying pan (boiled, baked and fried. These gizzards are definitely dead) they even looked half-edible.
I had to pour myself a delicious glass of Yemeni Vimto to pluck up some Red Sea courage before tucking in, and I had a big bowl of labneh on hand to extinguish any chilli flames. I served them with some rice I'd boiled with chopped tomato and rocket (yesterday's leftover salad), because it's Sunday and I was baking English muffins and it was as near as I felt like doing to jollof rice. Which was not very near at all.

And in I went. The first one was very chewy and the flavour was a bit too offaly for something that tough. The toughness remained a theme, though I think the first one was definitely the worst, and the flavour mellowed a bit. I'm not sure I'll do them this way again (if I do, I'll boil them for longer and bake them on a higher setting) but I'm pleased I've eaten them and I'll probably have the leftovers for lunch. And now I'm going to eat some Thornton's Mini Caramel Shortbreads as my reward for being brave. Avast!