Unfortunately, Bossy III was one of those cows who comes without giblets. Fortunately, though, for our now-annual Valentine's Day tradition, we had plenty of liver left from Bossy II which needed to be eaten, so I decided that it would be our meal tonight (Hubby worked Sunday, so we postponed until today.)
I'm still not keen on the liveriness of beef liver, so I did a bit of googling about, and found
this post on the
French Laundry at Home blog, which I decided to use as my starting point. I had other ideas about what to do, but I began by sweating my aromatics in a large pot and then adding my first cheat, a packaged glace du veau I found at whole foods, then covering them with wine (instead of the wine vinegar suggested in the recipe)
I added about 2 cups of water and maybe a cup of chicken stock, and the fresh herbs and let it cook slowly for about an hour until it was thick and luscious.
This was strained off and set aside. I then cut up a large leek and a large shallot and sweated them, allowing them to color a bit as they became tender. They were added to the sauce in place of the onion confit in the recipe. The liver had been soaking in cream overnight - a process which did greatly reduce the ironiness and made it much more like calf's liver. I rinsed it off, dusted it with flour and sea salt, and sauteed it in a good amount of olive oil.
I decided to make heart-shaped beet chips as an accompaniment, so I cut beets with a mandolin (they should have been a bit thinner,) coated them with olive oil, sprinkled them with salt and garlic powder and placed them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven until they started to curl at the edges and smell good.
For a starter, I made cookie-cutter shapes of fried
Queso Para Freir Dinner turned out to be delicious - the liver tasted fresh and delicious, and the rich sauce really set it off. Hubby fortunately quite enjoys my sense of humor, and appreciated the finishing touches on the meal:
(BTW - I don't tend to be a fan of astringent wines, but this Chianti was not only fairly inexpensive, but quite nice. Good match for such a rich dish.)
To finish, I took a stab at
this recipe, using an excellent frozen blackberry puree I got at a Mexican market. but something went wrong converting the vanilla sponge cake to US measurements. It required a steak knife to navigate. Fortunately,
I have some tricks up my sleeve, and slid the mousse off the bad cake and onto the good with only minor mishap.