Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Livers and Mistakes



With the surprising liver within my chicken from recipe #7, I decided to make this recipe from Epicurious.

Chicken Liver Crostini

7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 anchovy fillets
1 garlic clove, minced
12 ounces chicken livers
1/3 cup dry white wine (I left this out cause I didn't have any)
1 cup canned low-salt chicken broth
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel

1 French-bread baguette, sliced into 1/3-inch-thick rounds

Heat 4 tablespoons of the oil. Add onions, anchovies, and garlic, until tender over medium heat. Turn up heat to medium high, add liver and brown. This is where you are supposed to add the white wine, and wait till the liquid is absorbed. I skipped straight to adding the chicken stock and sage. Let the meat simmer till fully cooked and liquid is reduced. Pull meat out once it is done, and keep simmering stock if necessary to reduce. Place meat and some of the liquid in a food processor, and process by pulses until chunky. If needed, add more liquid (but I doubt you will, the recipe calls for way more liquid than is actually necessary). Add lemon peel, and salt and pepper to taste (do not forget this step! I ate my first couple of bites without the lemon, and it made a huge difference).

Brush the rest of the oil on the bread, and toast. Spread the liver on the bread, and eat.

While I was preparing this, I was really worried that I wouldn't like it, because I could not remember ever having eaten liver. And as soon as I tasted it, I was like, oh, I've had pate like a million times, and fois gras too, silly Ana. But, cooking it was nonetheless an interesting activity. I didn't really have 12 ounces of liver, I just had one, so I roughly cut down the recipe to make the amounts correctly. Like I said above, the first few bites I had did not have lemon, salt or pepper, and it made a huge difference. I don't think I'll go out of my way again to make this dish, but if I come across liver again, I will now what to do with it. :)

So in the interest of multitasking, I also had pinto beans and garbanzo beans cooking on the stove because I'd run out of refried beans and hummus. The pinto beans came out perfectly, better than last time. But the garbanzo beans took a little too long, and the cooking time ran into the finale of Project Runway. I heard some sizzling, but I thought water had just spilled out of the pot. During the second commercial break, I went to go stir the beans and I realized that they were completely dry. Zero water. And of course, the beans had burnt. So I had to throw away a cup of garbanzo beans and 1/4 of an onion. Boo. I blame Project Runway. Lesson: make sure beans have enough water!

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