Nearly at the end of the frugal five days...and for interest's sake (more my own than anyone else's) I'm going to have a little tot up session to see exactly how much I spent. That will follow, but for now, I've still got one last day that I've not penned up. Am very behind the times!
Since my kidney fetish started, I've been flipping through Delia and several other cookbooks to see what other ways there are of cooking them, and I found one rather intriguing recipe that looked very cheap and easy, and oh-so-World War Two. It had to be done.
By now, my butcher guffaws slightly every time I open the door, and makes references to my offal obsession. What can I say, I have a reputation to upkeep! Although most girls I talk to are a little wimpy about the stuff, I've been getting into animated discussions with the builders who are in, who apparently 'love a bit of steak and kidney pie/liver cooked with onions'. Maybe I should worry about my manly taste in meat, but I personally think it connotes an open mind, and an economic one too!
And so, to cook...
Lunch: Kidneys baked in Potatoes
1 Serving
Ingredients:
1 large potato, scrubbed; salt and pepper; knob of butter; 1 kidney; 1 tspn dijon mustard/mustard powder; 1 rasher bacon
Method:
Scrub and dry the potato, and rub salt into its skin. Bake in teh oven at 220C for about an hour or until it feels soft when pinched. Cut a cap off the potatoe and scoop out some of the inside. Skin the kidney and rub in salt, pepper and a little mustard. Roll it in a rasher of bacon and put in the potato case. Wrap the potato in foil with a scrap of butter and bake for an hour longer. The kidney gravy is soaked up by the potato - which, if you like kidneys, is scrumptious!
Serve with a lovely crisp salad and sharp dressing.
Dinner: Pasta Puttanesca
That was it, I was pretty much at the end of my weekly shopping supply and so the time had come for a truly store-cupboard only meal. I'm a bit obsessed with the 'store-cupboard' meal. I'm not sure why - I think it's something to do with the creativity and innovation behind it. Or maybe it's just the stingy so-n-so which hides deep within me. Whatever the reason, pasta puttanesca is without a shadow of a doubt a beautiful example of the ultimate SCM. Most seasoned chefs are well aware of the dish, but for those who aren't, a little history. Pasta puttanesca is a powerful, punchy pasta dish made with most ingredients which fussy eaters abhor - ie. all the seriously flavoured ones - capers, olives and anchovies. Yikes! As a result, this isn't a dish for the wimps. Its name literally translates as 'whore's spaghetti', a nod to the gutsy, raucous and unapologetic flavours frolicking around the dish. I blimmin' love it.
Ingredients:
Serves 2
Storecupboard - a glug of olive oil; 1 clove garlic, chopped; 1 tin chopped tomatoes; 2 tablespoons capers; a handful of tinned black olives, roughly chopped; 3-4 anchovy fillets, drained of oil; salt/pepper; whatever pasta you fancy (I like linguine)
Method:
Start to cook the pasta as you cook the sauce, in a large saucepan of boiling water.
On a low heat, fry the garlic in the olive oil until golden, then add in the tin of tomatoes. Stir and cook for a few moments, and then add in the rest of your storecupboard ingredients. Simmer on a low heat for about 15 minutes, by which stage the anchovies will have melted into the sauce barely to be seen again, leaving only a salty, savoury hint of their existence.
Drain the pasta and pour over the sauce.
Showing posts with label offal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label offal. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
I ate (his) liver with some....ciabatta and onions???
My kidney adventures seemed to develop this alarming taste for the wobbly stuff, and within days I was searching out my next inside-y treat. Offal-shopping seemed to rouse this peculiar sense of humour in me, as I clanged open the door to my local butcher's like Billy the Kid entering a saloon, heavy boots clunking and spurs jangling (though in reality this may have been more - skipping in in my ballet pumps, short dress swishing, eyelashes batting). 'I'll have some of your liver', I growled. Happily, butchers are in (full-time) possession of my (part-time) gruesome sense of humour and this request prompted one of the butchers guffawing heartily, yelling 'of course you can luv', and then miming a slicing action to his colleagues lower back.
I reassessed: 'ok then, maybe not your liver, but what other liver do you have?'. Calves' and Lambs' is the usual choice, and if you're lucky, the butcher's. Lambs', however, comes in at a mere £3.99 a kilo, but also with the warning that it is 'a bit stronger tasting, more in your face'. Away with subtlety, give me economy good sir! So 150g of their finest Lambs' liver it was for me! 60p lunch.
I huddled over a bunch of recipe books for this one, and ended up coming up with a mixture of Nigel's and Nigella's.
Liver and onion ciabatta
Serves 1
Ingredients
150g Liver - bat your eyelashes at the butcher and ask him to slice it very thinly
2 tablespoons flour seasoned well with salt and pepper
Groundnut oil or butter to fry
1/2 an onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon of pomegranate molasses stirred into a cup of water (or 1 pomegranate squeezed - distinctly more messy)
A ciabatta roll, sliced lengthways
Method
Soften the onions slowly in a frying pan for about ten minutes. When nicely golden, add half of the pomegranate molasses water, and cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the onions have fully absorbed the water and are a sumptuous, slithery mass. Remove from the frying pan onto a heated plate and cover to retain the heat. Start to toast the ciabatta.
Re-oil the pan and coat the liver with the seasoned flour, then fry briskly for about three minutes on both sides, before the liver cooks through so that it retains pinkness.
Load the toasted ciabatta up with the liver and the onions, and meanwhile deglaze the pan with the rest of the pomegranate sauce, and pour over to soak into the crusty ciabatta roll.
It was a real treat: the perfect, comforting, lunch for one on a cold and crispy late Autumn day. The soft sweetness of the liver is stopped from being overbearing by the mass of caramelised onions, and that particular tart sticky sweetness of the pomegranate sauce. I mopped up the sauce with the ciabatta and a crisp, simple chicory salad and had to rouse myself from a trance at the end of the meal.
I reassessed: 'ok then, maybe not your liver, but what other liver do you have?'. Calves' and Lambs' is the usual choice, and if you're lucky, the butcher's. Lambs', however, comes in at a mere £3.99 a kilo, but also with the warning that it is 'a bit stronger tasting, more in your face'. Away with subtlety, give me economy good sir! So 150g of their finest Lambs' liver it was for me! 60p lunch.
I huddled over a bunch of recipe books for this one, and ended up coming up with a mixture of Nigel's and Nigella's.
Liver and onion ciabatta
Serves 1
Ingredients
150g Liver - bat your eyelashes at the butcher and ask him to slice it very thinly
2 tablespoons flour seasoned well with salt and pepper
Groundnut oil or butter to fry
1/2 an onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon of pomegranate molasses stirred into a cup of water (or 1 pomegranate squeezed - distinctly more messy)
A ciabatta roll, sliced lengthways
Method
Soften the onions slowly in a frying pan for about ten minutes. When nicely golden, add half of the pomegranate molasses water, and cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the onions have fully absorbed the water and are a sumptuous, slithery mass. Remove from the frying pan onto a heated plate and cover to retain the heat. Start to toast the ciabatta.
Re-oil the pan and coat the liver with the seasoned flour, then fry briskly for about three minutes on both sides, before the liver cooks through so that it retains pinkness.
Load the toasted ciabatta up with the liver and the onions, and meanwhile deglaze the pan with the rest of the pomegranate sauce, and pour over to soak into the crusty ciabatta roll.
It was a real treat: the perfect, comforting, lunch for one on a cold and crispy late Autumn day. The soft sweetness of the liver is stopped from being overbearing by the mass of caramelised onions, and that particular tart sticky sweetness of the pomegranate sauce. I mopped up the sauce with the ciabatta and a crisp, simple chicory salad and had to rouse myself from a trance at the end of the meal.
Friday, November 7, 2008
A load of old (w)offal
Cor, blimey guv'nor but I've been eating an offal lot of awful recently. I mean, erm, offal, OFFAL.
Those of a weak constitution I suggest you look away now, as I'm about to get grizzly on you.
Now, I should probably start off by telling you that I have a remarkable tendency to faint dead away at the sight or mention of blood, or indeed insides of any description. I must be one of the few people ever to attempt to donate blood and to FAIL. I failed to give an entire pint of blood in the allotted time - I was so tense that my blood omitted to flow fast enough for the requisite 15 minute maximum. Nurses across the world have had to rouse me from dazed stupors of such a description.
So it might come as a surprise that I am also, somewhat paradoxically, the sort of girl who wants, and indeed proactively seeks, to eat such (to some) grizzly innards as kidneys and liver. I'm also researching what other body parts I've yet to try. Ma Pea is eternally perplexed at how she has managed to produce an offspring who, rather than requesting sweets, manicures or undies, instead requests animals' insides.
In these penny-pinched times (yes, you've guessed it, this is another of my frugal goodies), eating the whole of the animal is not only not wasteful, but also terribly kind on your wallet. Calves' or lambs' liver and kidneys provide a very cheap and nourishing meal, jam-packed full of iron and nutrients. Some of you may find this abhorrent, but don't knock it until you've tried it! With a very particular, slightly creamy texture, it might take a little getting used to, but I think it is well worth persevering with educating your palate. It is also worth saying that, should you be funny (like I am - I know, wimp) about handling the slithery organs, ask the butcher to remove whatever needs removing, and then you needn't touch them at all. See why not below!
Inspired by an excellent article in Waitrose Food Illustrated interviewing Fergus Henderson, he of St John fame, and a vociferous advocate of 'nose to tail eating', I decided to try Ma Pea's own version of Devilled Kidneys. As Fergus says, rather considerately I think, "Once an animal has been knocked on the head, surely it's only polite to eat it all?". Well, quite.
Starting with the kidneys.
Devilled Kidneys
Serves 2
4 Lambs kidneys, skins removed and chopped into mouthfuls
2 tablespoons flour, seasoned with plenty of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of English mustard powder
Groundnut oil to fry
tsp Gravy Granules
Splash of Sherry
The Perfect Piece of Toast
Put all of your seasoned flour mixture onto an A4 sized piece of tin foil, and plop the kidneys into the middle of the mixture. Coat the kidneys by pulling the foil from either side so that they are rolled around in the mixture in the middle.
Heat the oil in a frying pan on a high heat, and lift the coated kidneys out into the frying pan, moving round in the pan until the kidneys achieve a brown crust. At this stage add your gravy granules and a small dash of water (you can at this stage add some cream and some dijon mustard if you are feeling really swish) and season generously. Once the kidneys are curled but not overcooked, serve them on your buttered toast. Deglaze the pan with a dash of sherry, and pour the decadent mixture over the kidneys and toast.
I feel rather like a squire or a count when I eat this dish - there is something naughty and decadent about it. Offally good show ol' chap. I say. Wot wot.
Those of a weak constitution I suggest you look away now, as I'm about to get grizzly on you.
Now, I should probably start off by telling you that I have a remarkable tendency to faint dead away at the sight or mention of blood, or indeed insides of any description. I must be one of the few people ever to attempt to donate blood and to FAIL. I failed to give an entire pint of blood in the allotted time - I was so tense that my blood omitted to flow fast enough for the requisite 15 minute maximum. Nurses across the world have had to rouse me from dazed stupors of such a description.
So it might come as a surprise that I am also, somewhat paradoxically, the sort of girl who wants, and indeed proactively seeks, to eat such (to some) grizzly innards as kidneys and liver. I'm also researching what other body parts I've yet to try. Ma Pea is eternally perplexed at how she has managed to produce an offspring who, rather than requesting sweets, manicures or undies, instead requests animals' insides.
In these penny-pinched times (yes, you've guessed it, this is another of my frugal goodies), eating the whole of the animal is not only not wasteful, but also terribly kind on your wallet. Calves' or lambs' liver and kidneys provide a very cheap and nourishing meal, jam-packed full of iron and nutrients. Some of you may find this abhorrent, but don't knock it until you've tried it! With a very particular, slightly creamy texture, it might take a little getting used to, but I think it is well worth persevering with educating your palate. It is also worth saying that, should you be funny (like I am - I know, wimp) about handling the slithery organs, ask the butcher to remove whatever needs removing, and then you needn't touch them at all. See why not below!
Inspired by an excellent article in Waitrose Food Illustrated interviewing Fergus Henderson, he of St John fame, and a vociferous advocate of 'nose to tail eating', I decided to try Ma Pea's own version of Devilled Kidneys. As Fergus says, rather considerately I think, "Once an animal has been knocked on the head, surely it's only polite to eat it all?". Well, quite.
Starting with the kidneys.
Devilled Kidneys
Serves 2
4 Lambs kidneys, skins removed and chopped into mouthfuls
2 tablespoons flour, seasoned with plenty of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of English mustard powder
Groundnut oil to fry
tsp Gravy Granules
Splash of Sherry
The Perfect Piece of Toast
Put all of your seasoned flour mixture onto an A4 sized piece of tin foil, and plop the kidneys into the middle of the mixture. Coat the kidneys by pulling the foil from either side so that they are rolled around in the mixture in the middle.
Heat the oil in a frying pan on a high heat, and lift the coated kidneys out into the frying pan, moving round in the pan until the kidneys achieve a brown crust. At this stage add your gravy granules and a small dash of water (you can at this stage add some cream and some dijon mustard if you are feeling really swish) and season generously. Once the kidneys are curled but not overcooked, serve them on your buttered toast. Deglaze the pan with a dash of sherry, and pour the decadent mixture over the kidneys and toast.
I feel rather like a squire or a count when I eat this dish - there is something naughty and decadent about it. Offally good show ol' chap. I say. Wot wot.
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