Katie's Back! Feast

Katie, my partner in complicated cooking crime (see our past feasts: sushi, offal, around-the-world, & summer), is visiting from Scotland, where she's been living for the past year and a half. We designed a meal that highlighted seasonal ingredients, since she's been missing California produce. Unfortunately we were a bit too ambitious; we prepared 8 courses but our guests could only stomach 6. Nixed courses were a salad with arugula, heirloom tomato, avocado, and black radish, and a cheese course pairing Iberico with Bosc & Comice pear and Fuyu persimmon. We did manage to eat the following:

Spanish White Gazpacho with Grapes

Seared Duck Liver with Fig and Rosemary

Bay Scallop Ceviche with Avocado and Smoked Turkish Pepper

[photo missing]

Crispy Calamari, Baby Artichokes, Eggplant

Wild Mushroom & Goat Cheese Puff Pastry

Skirt Steak with Spicy Roasted Pepper Sauce and Savory Chimmichuri

Chicken Liver Spread, Cheese, Olives & Tomatoes

Sometimes all you want is just bread and cheese. In fact, if it were up to me, I'd probably have bread and cheese for every other meal. Luckily for my stomach (and for this blog), I don't. Tonight I did just that-- and added a little liver for variety, olives because they go so well with the liver, and tomatoes because I felt guilty for not having any vegetables. This would also make a good lunch.

Chicken Liver Spread

This is a "low-fat" version of the chicken liver mousse we made last week. Somehow I couldn't justify adding 2 sticks of butter and a cup of cream to my already unhealthy meal. And, although that mousse was incredible, this was damn good.

You'll need:

1/2lb chicken livers, washed, dried, and cleaned (remove all the sinewy stuff)
2 shallots, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2T fresh thyme, minced
1/3c Marsala wine
1T butter
1T olive oil

Salt and pepper the chicken livers. Saute them in the hot oil until browned (5-7 minutes); remove and let drain on a paper towel. Add the shallots, garlic, and thyme; saute until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add wine and reduce until there is only a little liquid left. Toss the livers, shallot mix, and butter in a food processor; process until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. For best flavor, refrigerate a few hours before eating.

All Offal, All the Time

All Offal, All the Time

February 29, 2008

Our offal dinner-- the somewhat belated Winter Feast of the series Katie & I have been doing-- was held, somewhat appropriately, on Leap Day. I think I can wait til the next Leap Day (or bissextile day) to do this again. It was rather rushed, labor-intensive, and (at least partially) kinda gross (yes, even I can't handle prolonged exposure to gooey, goopy brains as I pull the membrane and veins out...).

I didn't help that our old meat standby, Verbrugge's, completely let us down. We were supposed to pick up the brains and kidneys the morning of the feast (they should be eaten as fresh as possible). Verbrugge's decided to call us that morning to let us know that they couldn't get them. After some very frantic phone calls, I located frozen kidneys at Andronico's (who knew? they also have hearts, tripe, and sweetbreads), and beef brains (we wanted lamb or calf) at Mi Ranchito Bayside Market (Berkeley). But when I went to buy the brains, it turned out that all they had was a frozen 5-lb tub. A little too much for this party. So, a few more calls later, we located pig brains at 99 Ranch (Richmond) and I went off in search (thanks for the company, J). 99 Ranch is a simply fantastic asian market, but they don't really speak English, so trying to get something specific is pretty difficult (I once tried to get seafood stock. Don't even try. They don't have it.). But eventually I found the pig brains, below the tocino and next to the pig uterus and bung (intestines)-- here's a good post on those products, fyi. They were fresh, not frozen, which was a little worrisome, but they were only $2, so we decided to give them a try. We had, after all, promised brains to our delighted guests.

Unfortunately, our recipe depended on lamb or calf brain-- the kind that stays together-- and this poor piggy brain fell apart as soon as it left the container. So, instead of making nice fried slices, we fried the few clumps I'd managed to clean and had them as pre-dinner snack. They were as good as anything deep-fried is, but the brains themselves didn't have much flavor. We'll try again though-- stay posted.

Thanks to Karen for the dessert and photos and to Ridwan for coming early to help (and cleaning too)!

So, the menu:

Chicken Liver Mousse
with pickled red onions


Deviled Kidneys


Braised Tongue with
Caper, Cornichon, and Caperberry Sauce
and
Potato-Chard Gratin


Blood Orange Sorbet
with candied peels
and phyllo crisps

Cooking Pictures (view at your own risk):

The Brains

uncooked, uncleaned

uncooked, cleaned

fried up in tasty clumps

The Tongue

looks like a tongue. feels like a tongue.

bubbling away with aromatics
(notice the brand!)

cooked and sliced, soaking up sauce

The Gratin

This was so pretty uncooked,
topped with chopped chard stems
in red, orange, and yellow

The Dessert

beautiful blood oranges, and a lime

candying the peels