Maybe it’s the Southern living thing or something, but we had it once a week growing up because my dad was a fanatic about em (also they are cheap.)
Dip them in milk, lightly bread them in flour with seasonings. Fry until crispy. They are small, by the time they are crispy they are done. I have never had them made any other way, so seeing Eric’s take on them was very enlightening.
Beef liver though, I have no idea how to cook properly.
I grew up on fried chicken livers, pully bones, cream corn and chocolate cream pie on Sunday after-church lunches. Can’t find that kind of food around anymore.
Once one of the parents left the chocolate cream pie on the roof car and drove off. We never really got over that as a family.
I am so sorry for your loss.
!! Oh, that’s so sad. Yeah, that’ll leave a mark.
I found the key variable with beef liver is the liver itself. Fresher is always better, calf’s liver is milder, and a soak in milk will also take some of the edge off. I haven’t done it for ages, though. I love the first mouthful, but I rarely want much more. Those rumaki appetizers would be perfect.
One good thing is that it’s easy to prepare: clean, slice, then saute or grill, and don’t overcook. Some onions and bacon, and a robust green vegetable, and you’re good to go.
I’ve found that beef (calf) liver at Korean BBQ places is pretty amazing as well. They’re obviously cleaned and scored, and then put out for you to take. Place it on the hot grill for just under a minute each side, add whatever sauces and sides you want to it - awesome.
So I did a little more Japanese-inspired cuisine, this time trying to replicate my favorite hibachi joint back home:
Fried rice with lots of butter, soy sauce, and sesame seeds, plus chicken breast cooked in much the same (but also some lemon and sesame oil) and a mix of onions, zucchini, and mushrooms given similar treatment. Then tempura fried mushrooms, sweet potatoes, zucchini, and broccoli. Oh, and a handmade tempura dipping sauce with dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and grated daikon and ginger. Tasty!
My sole regret is not letting the chicken fry in oil by itself a little longer, so it didn’t take much color before the seasoning mixture was added in. I fixed that on my second plate by searing it at high heat to warm it up, but alas, no pictures :(
Then for this week, it’s back to an old standby with Mediterranean cuisine!
Panini-griddled wrap sandwich stuffed with chicken shawarma, mozzarella, feta, sundried tomatoes, and pesto aioli, with fries, turmeric-and-cumin-infused rice covered in a zesty white sauce (mayo, yogurt, lemon, parsley, sugar, and a ton of black pepper) and hot sauce, then a spicy slaw on the side made with white and red cabbage, carrots, japalenos, and cilantro, with a dressing of lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, canola and olive oil, pepper, salt, sugar, and celery seed.
This isn’t really worthy of this thread, as there are no good pics, but I roasted some sunflower seeds that I harvested from the plants I was growing.
The flowers had gotten maybe ~10ft tall, and the flowers themselves were around 12 inches in diameter. I harvested one, and it produced around 4 cups of seeds.
I boiled them in salt water with old bay for around 10 minutes, and then roasted them in my toaster oven.
Turned out very well… a few got a bit scorched as I went maybe a minute too long, but overall they are good.
That’s incredible to me to imagine. Damn, sunflowers.
How obnoxious is the harvesting process?
Super easy.
Step one: cut off head of flower
Step two: rub head with hand to loosen seeds (took maybe 15 minutes?) into a bucket.
The sunflowers in our garden got up to maybe 7-8 ft tall. Once the seeds formed, they morphed into backyard bird feeders.
Ya, I had heard horror stories about how birds were gonna eat all the seeds… but I didn’t have any trouble with that at all for some reason.
My seeds are probably deadly, deadly poison.
So how were they?
Do you need to wash the harvested seeds, or can you just go straight to the roaster with seasonings?
You probably want to wash and dry them before throwing them in the roaster. Maybe even give them a boil if you are worried about anything (though this may be overkill if you roast long enough).
Well, like I said, I boiled them first.
You boil them in salt water and old bay, which makes the shells flavored… This basically does the job of washing them. I mean, I grew them, so I know they weren’t sprayed with any weird chemicals. I generally go the route of “You are on your own, plant dudes.” when growing my stuff… If a plant dies without me caring a ton about it, then it’s not meant to grow there. The sunflowers did well though.
Here’s a pic of one of the sunflowers. Bear in mind that I have normal sized, non-trumpian hands.
That sounds like something someone super defensive about their abnormally tiny, Trumpian hands would say.
Meat Pie.
Ground beef and pork. Worcestershire, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, sage, clove powder, smoked paprika. Chives, carrots, onions. Mashed potatoes. One egg. Frozen pie crust. Serve with gravy. Or not.
Edit: Forgot the grated cheddar cheese.
I’ve had pot pie and shepherds pie, but not plain meat pie. It looks like a drier version of the former? I love everything you just mentioned as an ingredient, so I might have to try this.
Looks solid. I’d hit it.
I would like to go to there. That looks gorgeous, @RichVR. I actually like the idea of a shepherd’s pie-esque pot pie, which is what that reminds me of.
Last night was character creation for a twice-monthly demi-campaign of Starfinder being run by one of my best friends, and all six players + GM made it out, so I helped everyone to some of the Mediterranean cuisine I made this week.
Overall we had chicken shawarma, falafel, spicy slaw, spiced basmati rice, garlic-and-paprika hummus, tahini sauce, tzatziki sauce, the zesty-tangy-sweet “white sauce” from SeriousEats’ halal cart recipes collection, two kinds of homemade pita chips (salt-n-pepper and italian-herbs-and-cheese), and pocket pitas and whole wheat flatbreads to serve. Plus some romaine lettuce, roma tomatoes, red onions, and sliced cucumbers and feta for salad :)
I also grilled up more of the “zaki” sandwiches that combined the chicken (why there’s so little in the photo) with sundried tomatoes, pesto aioli, mozzarella, and feta in a wrapped up tortilla and were then panini-griddled.
