Tag Archives: lamb

I Gotta Cook This Liver

kitchen crafty, ,

I love liver. A nice pan fried slice of calf’s liver is spectacular. High in iron, great protein. I feel good.

So what do I do with a sheep’s liver and a small amount of beef liver? MAKE PATE. A ton of it apparently.

6 containers of beef and lamb’s liver pate (and a possible burned out blender). The glass jars are 8oz each. EACH. Topped with clarified browned butter. See, the butter was supposed to just be clarified but someone left the fire on too long and….well, it smelled great.

Ingredients

  • A lamb’s liver. I have no idea how much. It looked to be the full liver. Got it from the farmer’s market
  • An order of beef liver that I got delivered from Greenling. It was a bit on the puny side.
  • 1 shallot
  • minced garlic
  • onion powder
  • powdered ginger
  • smoked sea salt
  • cream
  • Unsalted butter (KerryGold)
  • Bourbon
  • Port

Thaw and cut the liver into manageable chunks like an inch or less. Sautee your shallots in butter. Throw in your liver chunks. Realize that you aren’t really sauteeing anything because you overcrowded your pan. Add the garlic because it came from a jar. Cook the liver. Add some salt and the onion powder and other dried spices. Pour some bourbon because you saw it in a recipe. Pour in some port because you thought that was a good idea too (maybe a 1/4 cup of each. It’ll cook off). Cook until done.

Fish out your chunks to let cool a bit. Cook down the liquid because now it smells awesome. In a blender because you don’t have room for a food processor, add some of your liver chunks, some room temp butter (2 tbs), and some cream. You will note that I am using horribly inaccurate measurements. I would like this to be kinda chunky, not a mousse and I’m working in small batches.

Pulse the blender. Realize it’s not pulsing. Add more cream. Turn blender higher, watch as it eventually blends your precious work. Add more chunks. Watch as it stops blending and a horrible smell emanates. Realize the blender is smoking. Dump out partially blended liver into a bowl.

Start over with next set of liver, vowing to do better.

Repeat. Making sure to add all the golden liquid goodness you cooked down earlier.

Eventually have mostly processed liver pate that you can’t stop sneaking tastes of (you ARE tasting as you go, right?)

Scramble to find jars to hold this stuff.

Clarify a little, some, all the rest of the butter.

Pour it on top of the jars. Except for that Tupperware container. That’s lunch for a few days.

Store jars in the freezer because you were talking about liver pate with your mom and Thanksgiving is right around the corner and by god SOMEONE is EATING THIS.

Sunday Eats

Sunday Dinner, ,

Let’s work our way backwards, shall we?

6/17/2012: Alton Brown’s Shepherd’s Pie…mostly

A “real” shepherd’s pie is made with lamb, not beef. Hence the name “shepherd’s pie.” Whatever. Sunday, I ventured forth to get some ground lamb. Because I did not think ahead to go to the farmer’s market the say before. Grump. Now I gotta go to Central Market. Ugh. I didn’t wanna go all the way to Central Market. Sprout’s! They should have ground lamb!

This…this is not ground lamb

No problem! I have a big ass Kitchen Aid mixer and a meat grinding attachment! Now that I had transformed the lovely lamb shoulder chops into a mass of pink squidginess, I could then get to cooking! What does the recipe say? “Add onions and carrots and saute.” Why would I saute carrots? I did however, saute onions and–oh look!–5 medium sized mushrooms that need eating! Then I dumped in my lovely pink critter meat and browned it.

Next, “add flour, cook for one minute, add tomato paste–” Tomato paste? Sure, why the hell not! And hey, while I’m at it, I’ve got some cherry tomatoes from my garden, let’s slice and toss those in as well! They’ll cook down (no they won’t)! Simmer for a bit, add your additional veg (no corn here. it just looks wrong) and add to a casserole dish.

Looks tasty already

So, I’ve never made a proper shepherd’s (or cottage)  pie. I’ve always browned some meat, added gravy from a packet, dumped in some frozen veg and topped with mashed potatoes either from instant or from the refrigerated section. There was none of this “make a gravy” or “simmer” stuff. This time, however, I whipped some red potatoes (russets suck) and added it to the top (yes, I still used frozen veg. Alton said I could!).

Mmmm. 1000 calories per serving

Now, I have no idea why the recipe calls for an egg yolk, but I put it in. Next time I won’t. Bake this puppy for 25 minutes and dinner is served.

Ahem?

Right. Bread. I found a no knead bread that only called for 2 hour sitting time instead of 12. Welp.  This is bread. There’s nothing good or bad to say about it. It was flour, water, yeast, and salt. No milk (it would go bad), no oil/butter (why?), no sugar (guess the yeasties would eat it too fast?), and no character. It’s fine for dinner but not a sandwich bread. Of course, I think I did screw it up. It was supposed to be sturdy like a bread dough. I was goopy. “Using a serrated knife, cut off a piece of dough.” No. It was more like “Get a spoon.” Now I know how to fix it for next time.