Our gizzard cooking extravaganza paid off. The twenty four hour marination and the subsequent 19 hours of cooking in the marinade yielded rosy pink, tender, and toothsome gizzards. The inner lining of the gizzards were left intact during the curing and cooking process and seemed to help hold the gizzards' shape. When the lot was cool, I opened the bag, rinsed the gizzards and tentatively tried one. They had tenderness and meatiness in each bite, the curing had fully penetrated and seasoned the gizzards. The only bit of hesitancy I had was about the texture of the interior of the gizzard. It had a chewy-almost crunchy texture similar to that of braised pigs ears. If you have not eaten braised pigs ears I recommend it. They are meaty with a slightly firm, gelatinous snap in each bite. Makes you sit up and pay attention to what you're eating. Pigs ears aside, I did not think the gizzards were showing their best with this element of snap. So, I separated the interior membrane from the gizzards proper and reserved each group to use separately. I appreciated the texture and flavor of the total package, I just felt that each component could be utilized better on its own. 
Now we had a pile of cured, cooked, and cleaned gizzards and all of the trim. I gathered up the excess membrane (the gizzard lining) and used my handy dandy Pacojet to finely mince it up. The result looked liked deviled ham before a big dollop of mayonnaise is added. Aki and I discussed used for the minced gizzards: gizzard gribiche, gizzard grits (a play off of our shrimp grits), gizzard Bolognese sauce to serve with chicken noodles, gizzard vinaigrette, dirty risotto, even gizzard corned beef hash. In the end, Aki thought we should fold them into the chicken liver terrine we were also working on to give some texture and substance to the finished product, reminiscent of a country pate. As I am one to listen to my partner in crime, I added the minced gizzard trim to the terrine. Little did I know, or perhaps I failed to ask, that I was not supposed to use all the minced gizzards with the livers. Rather, Aki intended that some of the minced gizzards were supposed to be reserved to test a few of our other ideas. I guess I will be mincing some of the cleaned and trimmed gizzards. Yet, I still have a list of ideas specifically for them: served in a ragout with Dijon garganelli, warmed in truffle butter on top of sunflower seed risotto, crusted with hazelnuts and served with roasted pears, and of course buffalo wing style.
What Alex is failing to mention here is quantity. There were a lot of gizzards involved in this experiment and we could have easily tested a number of different concepts with the trim. Instead we now have an abundance of chicken liver pate. ( I actually thought we were going to do a few different things with the livers as well, but that's another post.) I really enjoy pate, but there are only two of us to eat it at the moment and we could easily feed twenty with the amount we now have on hand. It is an admirable use of livers and gizzards, just perhaps not the most efficient one for our current circumstances. Now if we were in a restaurant...
