Chicken Liver Mousse, not Moose

  

I've had a pound of chicken livers from the farmers market locked away in the freezer for quite some time.  The girlfriend isn't exactly dying to eat them, so I needed to wait until she was out of town.  But I still had to figure out what to do with them.  Fortunately, one of my colleagues is a former  chef, and when I told him about my stash of offal, he eagerly offered me a recipe.  Chicken liver mousse makes the medicine go down smooth.

Liver is the original multi-vitamin.  I'm generally cautious about parsing foods based on their vitamin, mineral, or other micronutrient content.  After all, it's hard to be nutrient deficient, or insufficient, when your main foods are vegetables, meat, and dairy.  So looking at nutrient content is almost a moot point.  But liver is worth talking about.  

Either cherished or despised, this vital organ provides compounds that are hard to squeeze out of standard muscle meat, such as choline and vitamin A, and provides more B vitamins than anything else.  

The graphs below show the vitamin content of 3.5 ounces of chicken liver, 1.75 ounces of chicken liver (an amount that could reasonably be eaten in a night's worth of pâté), and 3.5 ounces of chicken breast tenders, all cooked.  Vitamins are measured in different units, such as international units, milligrams, or micrograms, so it's only valid to compare the vitamin contents between the foods, and not between the different vitamins.  Two graphs are shown since some vitamins simply come in higher numbers (vitamin A) than others (choline), and I didn't want to do any crazy graph standardizing on Christmas Day.  A quick glance shows that the amount of choline and vitamins A and B12 in liver compared to breast meat is remarkable.  Whether you're an obligate carnivore, or mostly vegetarian, the occasional liver dish would be a nice way to round out a diet.  

Fig. 1  Vitamins with smaller numbers

Fig 2. Vitamins with larger numbers

But enough with the lecture.  The mousse is rich, slightly sweat from the Madiera, and a way to use up the somewhat obscure chicken livers that might otherwise be discarded before roasting a whole bird.  There isn't a lot of liver taste, I promise. But I still have to see if the girlfriend approves.  Merry Christmas!

Chicken Liver Mousse

Here's what you need.  And yes, it's essentially a 1:1 ratio of butter to liver, by weight.

Ingredients:  1/2 pound chicken livers, 1/2 pound butter, Madiera, water, salt and pepper.

1.  Poach the chicken livers in a 50:50 mix of Madiera and water,  or 1 cup of each, over medium-high heat.  Cook for no more than 3 minutes.  You want the livers cooked to rare or medium-rare, as overcooking them will negatively affect the puree.  

2.  Set the livers aside.  Reduce the cooking liquid to just under 1/4 cup.  In the mean time, cut cold butter into 3/4 inch cubes.

3.  As the cooking liquid approaches the right volume, puree the livers in a food processor using small pulses.  Then, turn the processor ON, and add butter, one cube at a time.  Hit it with a few splashes of fresh Madiera as you go. 

4.  Add the reduced cooking liquid (it should be a rich brown color) to the processor.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Process to incorporate.

5.  Spread the mousse into a shallow ramekin.  Cover tightly as you would guacamole, and remember that all of the iron in the liver will oxidize and brown when exposed to air, so make sure you keep it covered when it is stored.  Let it set-up in fridge for one hour.  The dish can easily be made the morning or night before, and stored in the fridge.

Serve over toasted baguette with thinly sliced blanched asparagus, along with a nice glass of Pinot Noir.  

This post was shared on Traditional Tuesdays.

A Thai Meal in NorCal

This meal was actually about a month ago, but the memory still remains.   When we were visiting the girlfriend's parents, we made a Thai dinner to enjoy on the patio on a mild NorCal summer evening.  Talking about isolated nutrients can get you into trouble because they are naturally part of a whole food.  But the same is true for foods.  They are normally a part of a meal.  I want to share our entire meal (recipes) because I think that it was truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Grilled chicken with red curry sauce
     
     Sauce:

1. In a medium bowl, combine 10 oz. of coconut milk, juice from 2 limes and 1/2 tsp of lime zest, 1 tbsp fish sauce, and 1 tbsp red curry paste.   In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, heat 1/3 water and 1/3 sugar and allow to boil for 3 minutes - this will create a nice thick simple syrup.  Remove pan from heat, add coconut mixture, and return to heat and allow to simmer just under 10 minutes; whisk frequently to ensure syrup does not lump together.  Retain 1/3 cup of sauce for serving.

     Chicken

1. Prepare 1.5 lb bone-in (1 lb boneless) chicken thighs by drying with a paper towel, and liberally seasoning with salt and pepper. 
2. Grill on a pre-heated grill to your liking.  I personally grill chicken thighs on medium-high until a rich dark brown; turning relatively frequently.  Cooking thighs until roughly 180°F will render them less gummy, and they will not dry out at this temperature like breast meat will.
3. Once the chicken is a dark golden-brown, baste red curry sauce onto each piece, flip and cook for one minute, baste the opposite side, and then flip once again for another minute.  Repeat if there is extra sauce.

     4.  Serve chicken with grilled zucchini (from the garden if you have it!) and the reserved red curry sauce.  Garnish with limes and scallions.            

Asian-style cucumber salad

1. Peel and thinly slice 4 cucumbers.  Set in the fridge to chill while preparing dressing.
2. Simmer 1/3 cup rice wine vinegar until reduced to 2 tbsp; pour into bowl to cool.
3. While vinegar is cooking, whisk in juice from 1/2 of a lime, 2 tsp. honey, 1 tbsp. fish sauce, and 2 tsp. olive oil.  
4. Mince 1-2 seeded serrano chiles, and finely chop 1/4 cup of fresh mint and 1/4 cup fresh basil. 
5. In a large bowl, combine cucumbers, dressing, and chopped chiles and herbs.  Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Coconut rice

1. I used this recipe.  Garnish with cilantro and scallions.  Full-fat coconut milk, please. 

I occasionally eat white rice.  But to mitigate its nasty effects on blood sugar, I drowned it in coconut milk and crowded it out with meats and veggies :)

Enjoy!

This post was submitted to Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays.

Cheap to chic grass-fed beef

I've been fairly consistent about getting my weekday ground beef from the farmers market, but I wanted to get something different for saturday night.  I enjoy staying home for a nice saturday dinner for several reasons:  I have more control over the quality and quantity of my food, my girlfriend doesn't have to worry about gluten contamination, and I am more comfortable about eating medium-rare beef.  The latter is especially appealing after recently reading Fast Food Nation.  Eesh   But I have to make sure that I can out-do any steak house.

The more enticing cuts of grass-fed beef can be prohibitively expensive for a graduate student.  So to lower the cost, I was looking for something esoteric.  A shoulder clod* costs much less than steaks and is even cheaper than some other roasts, AND it happened to be on sale.  You just have to deal with the toughness of the cut.

Shoulder clod (far) and neck bones (near; a previous post...)

The entire goal of this recipe is to cook low-and-slow while still achieving medium rare, as both will improve tenderness.  As you'll see, wrapping the nearly finished roast in aluminum foil and a kitchen towel will allow the roast to finish cooking (medium-rare) and maintain enough heat to continue tenderizing the meat.  You'll sacrifice the texture of the crust, but it's well worth it.

Roast Shoulder Clod

1. Use a 2.5 lb shoulder clod roast.  Pat the roast dry and season liberally with salt and pepper, and a bit of garlic powder.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and store in the fridge for 12-24 hours (although I only did 3!).
2. Preheat the oven to 225°F**, and let the roast rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
3. Heat some beef tallow, or other high-heat cooking fat, in a heavy-bottomed pan. Sear all four sides of the roast.        
4. Place beef on a baking sheet and roast for 90 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 135°F (for medium-rare).  Remove from the oven and wrap roast in heavy-duty aluminum foil, and then wrap in a kitchen towel.  Allow roast to rest like this for another 30 minutes. 
5. While resting, open a nice Cab that you essentially forgot that you had.  And fry-up some gluten-free squash blossoms, for good measure.

     5.  Slice as thin as possible.  Impossibly thin if you can...

Serve with some market vegetables.  Make sure to arrange food in a pretentious "man, I gotta' blog about this meal" sort of way.   

*From what I can tell, the shoulder clod that I bought was only part of a true shoulder clod.  Technically, beef clod refer to an entire beef shoulder.  Similar to the Boston Butt of a pig.

**I'm aware that it is generally a poor idea to rely on the oven in the summer, especially if you don't live in mild California.  This should work just as well on a grill or in a smoker.  However, if using a grill, roast meat on the unlit side of the grill and do your best to maintain this low temperature; this will mimic an oven.  

This post was submitted to Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday

Fermenting isn't just for dairy: Curtido, or Latin "sauerkraut"

As I mentioned in my kefir post, once you start fermenting dairy, you've entered into whole other world of local-hippie-whole food.  Fermenting a few veggies to create the Latin relish curtido was the next logical step.  From what I can tell, the recipe I used most closely resembles the Salvadoran version of this common condiment.  I adapted the recipe from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.  Who would have thought fermenting your own veggies would be so easy?  Again, as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether probiotics are a panacea or not, but at least they taste darn good.

Salvadoran Curtido (a la Nourishing Traditions)


1.  Shred 1/2 to 3/4 of a full green cabbage, grate about 1 cup's worth of carrots, and finely slice half of a large red onion from pole to pole.  Combine in a large bowl.

2.  To the bowl of veggies, combine a tbsp of kosher salt, a 1-2 tsp of dried oregano, and a big pinch of crushed red pepper.  Add 4 tbsp of whey (I strained out some from an over-fermented batch of kefir).

3.  Do some light stretching, then smash all the veggies to extract their water.  It should take about 10 minutes worth of smashing.  You could use a meat tenderizer, or do like I did, and grind them with a pint glass.  I believe Alton Brown would call that a multi-tasker.

After ten minutes, and switching arms a few times, it should looks like this:

4.  Transfer the veggies and liquid into a very clean quart-size jar with a lid.  Pack down the veggies so that they are completely submerged by the fermenting liquid.  This is important, because from what I've read, failure to do this may lead to spoilage (growth of the bad rather than the good bugs).  Make sure that there is at least an inch from the top of the jar to prevent explosions.  Cover and leave at room temperature for 72 hours, then transfer to the fridge.  The curtido will improve with time in the fridge.  I finished mine within two weeks, and it was great until the end.  Not sure how much longer it would last.

I let mine ferment with its friends...

When it's finished, it will look something like this:

Tangy, flavorful, and spicy.  A bit too strong on it's own, but it is incredible with the richness of meat.  Especially with my almost-daily burger:

Unintentional paleo...

Here's to good bacteria, in milk and in veggies.

Everything but the ketchup...

I took this long holiday weekend to hit the farmer's market hard and make a mess in the kitchen.  The Saturday morning market was hot and busy.  And it didn't help that I was lugging around an entire flat of strawberries (you'll see why below).  After the market, we settled down for the All-American classic: hamburgers.  We did them protein-style with grilled onions, avocado, and pepper Jack cheese.  And we celebrated the coming of the fig season with fresh figs topped with goat cheese and honey.  And yes, I do celebrate fig season.  And to celebrate America this weekend, we enjoyed an entire meal from the local farmers who grew it.  Well, everything but the ketchup.

From now on, I call it the "Farmer Burger"

Figs and goat cheese

Figs with goat cheese and honey

1. Choose black mission figs that are extremely soft, and slice them in half
2. Top with fresh goat cheese
3. Drizzle with honey (we used avocado honey, which was almost savory - much more interesting than the store bought)
4. Sprinkle with almond slivers, if on hand.  

And for dessert later that night:

The gluten-free crust is under there somewhere...

Home-made gluten-free strawberry pie.  In no way was this low-carb, but we wanted to celebrate with an American classic.  Although I am generally in a quandary regarding strawberry pie, which has taken me to deep philosophical thinking about the fundamentals of pie that I can elaborate on at some other time, I was very pleased to make it from scratch.  The glaze definitely didn't look as pretty as the one from Marie Callender's, but since it was made from only puréed strawberries, sugar, and pectin, it was one of the freshest tasting pies I've ever had.  And we got to take the leftovers to watch the fireworks tonight.

Happy Fourth!

Salmon Cakes

I couldn't recall the last time that I had eaten salmon cakes, so I was excited to make them. But wow!  They were even better than I had anticipated.  Serve with an arugula salad dressed with a lemon-vinegerette, and you have a perfect low carb Summer dinner.  Now if only June-gloom would pass so it would be warm enough to sit outside...

Pan-fried Salmon Cakes

Prepare seasoning and fillers while the salmon comes to temperature.  Finely chop 2 tbsp each of fresh parsley, shallot, and scallion.  Mix in a bowl with 3-4 tbsp of bread crumbs (I will try gluten-free next time), juice from one half of a lemon, 1/2 tbsp of dijon mustard, and 2 tbsp mayo.  Season with salt and pepper.

Slice 1lb of skinless salmon fillet into manageable pieces.  Coarsely grind in a food processor using short bursts.  It's probably best to do it in batches to ensure better uniformity in the grind - remember, we want ground salmon, not salmon paste.

Mix ground salmon with fillers until combined.  I was able to make six uniform patties with this batch.  Once formed, gently coat them with bread crumbs by setting them in a bed of bread crumbs on a separate plate.  

Heat several tablespoons of cooking fat on medium-high.  I used left-over bacon fat, but I suppose vegetable oil would suffice.  Drop a couple of bread crumbs into the hot fat, and if it bubbles, then it's ready to fry.  Cook until golden-brown, two-three minutes per each side.  

Drain over paper towels and serve with homemade tartar sauce (thanks mom).  

And when they're in season, don't forget the berries and cream.

Dinner a la The Sweet Beet blog

The Sweet Beet posted a recent recipe for "egg-muffins" that I was dying to try out.  So, the girlfriend and I made a Sunday supper out of them.  Like the previous post, it lends itself to farmers market ingredients.

We made a jam-packed spinach salad with apples, avocado, feta, and bacon.  It was dressed with a walnut-gorganzola-rasberry vinaigrette from Trader Joe's.  The muffins ended up as a side to the salad.  The girlfriend also picked up a couple of adirondack chairs for her balcony, so we took this occasion to open a Reisling from our Temecula trip in order to celebrate the weather and the supper.

Happy low-carb.  Happy farmers market.  Happy Sunday.

Memorial Day BBQ

I enjoyed some delicious BBQ with my friends AA and KR at their house on Memorial Day.  Unfortunately I was a bit slow with my camera so I couldn't photo-document all the food.  My friend (KR) bought the meat and veggies, I brought some fixings and prepared the meat, and my other friend (AA) grilled it.  We make a great team.

Coconut-curried chicken and sausage

Meats:
Sausages and burgers
BBQ seasoned flap-meat steaks (used my stock BBQ rub)
Jerk chicken thighs (again, my stock Jerk rub)
Coconut-curried chicken breasts

1. Mix a can of unsweetend coconut milk with a few generous dashes of fish sauce, soy-sauce, and Siracha
2. Chop 1/4 cup of cilantro and 2 serrano chilies, then add to marinade.
3. Squeeze two lime's worth of juice into marinade.
4. Add 1 tbsp of sweet curry powder, then mix.
5. Save some marinade to add to chicken once it comes off the grill.  This really makes the dish.
6. Add chicken to marinade, let rest, then grill.

I served the chicken with more fish sauce and Siracha.  Limes and cilantro are always welcome.  KR also prepared her always-amazing cheese-stuffed grilled chili peppers.  She made both jalapeños and medium chilies.  

To celebrate, I made sugar-free Dark N' Stormy's.  I used gold rum with a dash of Jamaican rum, plenty of lime juice, and topped them up with diet ginger ale.  These would explain why I was a bit slow with the camera...

Happy Memorial Day!

Memorial Weekend Farmers Market

The girlfriend has been traveling through Europe this weekend, so I had the weekend to myself.  And like any red-blooded bachelor with a free weekend would do, I went to the Santa Monica farmers market.

I was happy to see a vendor selling young coconuts.  I took the opportunity to buy one on my way out and enjoy it while walking the beach.  Coconut water and sun-derived vitamin D - a Sunday afternoon that would please any Paleo-diet advocate.  And yes, after finishing the water I did scrape up the coconut meat with a spoon.

 

I  mostly gathered (no Paleo-pun intended) vegetables from the market.  Unfortunately the beef vendor ran out of the cheap obscure cuts such as soup-bones or liver, so I'll just have to return another time for some good ole' grass-fed beef.  I also had to pick up some eggs to sit on (again, no pun intended) until next week.  I still have some farmers market eggs, but I just couldn't help myself from picking up more.  And I thought I would get another bunch of beets before I commit to spring and summer vegetables.  

Beets not pictured since they were being roasted!

I had to stock up on beans since I can't get them at the Torrance market.  The vendor confirmed my suspicions that black beans cook much easier than red or other beans.  I can slow-cook black beans on low while I'm on campus and return in the evening to tender beans, but other beans aren't quite as expedient.  Though the piquinto beans should be just as easy.  I'll report on those later.

And of course I had to make a farmers market salad.  I soaked the lettuce and cherries to shed off the dirt - and there was plenty - before dressing the salad with roasted beets, chopped cherries, avocado, Trader Joe's Orange Chicken, and tomatoes.  I used the orange sauce to make an orange-lime vinaigrette.  

Good and low-glycemic load ;)