Lamb Liver and Leeks

Phil is sick, and I'm (hopefully) fighting something off, so I thought liver would be good for tonight and to balance it a crisp salad of leeks and small tomatoes. Found out Lane is also having leeks tonight, and will be interesting to see what he does with his. But the main dish of the day was liver, this the liver from the lamb I got Tuesday afternoon. Picture above shows the whole of the lamb liver after I've sectioned/sliced it.

The recipes I have call for you to slice liver 1/4" thick, but that seems far too thin to me, and the smallest slices I made were more on the order of 1/2". I'm still new to this crosswise slicing of slimy things endeavor, so my slices tend to be thick in any event because I don't want to lose fingers in the process.

I cooked all of the liver and used a little less than half for dinner; the rest I'll make chopped liver with for tomorrow. Instructions for liver: Preheat griddle on medium heat. Melt approx 2T lard on griddle. When lard is melted and griddle is hot, add thick-ish liver slices and saute 4 min total, flipping to be sure both sides are nicely seared. Remove liver and plate. Melt 1-2T ghee on the griddle. Add a couple of mushrooms, sliced fairly thin. Saute until just starting to get transparent, and add 1/4 c cranberry liqueur or port. Continue sauteing, scraping up bits strenuously, until the liquid is reduced to a medium-thick sauce. Pour mushrooms and sauce over liver. Picture below shows it done and plated. The thin sauce to the right of the liver and musrooms is sauce and a bit of blood, becuase the liver should still be fairly rare in the middle when you pull it off the griddle.
Served here with leek salad. Instructions: Thinly slice a leek (green and light green parts; save the rest for scrap salad) into a bowl. Halve 8 - 10 pearl/cherry/grape tomatoes and add. Halve 4 -6 Japanese pickled onions (rakkyo; they are sweet, not like cocktail onions) and add. Mix 2T lime juice, 1T olive oil, and 1T hot prepared mustard (I used Colmans) and add. Let marinate at least a half hour.

Eating Notes: We don't like liver as much as Kitchen Goddes Nadja (see below with laser eyes) but we sure like it a lot. The mineral notes of the liver are well-balanced by the cranberry liqueur and the whole thing set off well by the salad.

Simple Food, Simply Cooked

Woke up this morning not feeling hungry, so fasted until dinnernoms. Then felt like having simple food, simply cooked, so settled on some seared salmon following (mostly) Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home (Amazon link here)and adding pine nuts and a second course of salad with a complimentary dressing. The Salmon follows the Julia and Jacques recipe except that I used ghee instead of butter; added about 1/3 cup pine nuts at the same time as the onion; and cooked the salmon for only 4 minutes. Picture above shows the mis en place. Picture below shows the finished fish with the sauce poured over.Instructions for the salad dressing: For each serving, mix 1T olive oil, 1t horseradish, 1t hot mustard (I used coleman's) 1t dried sage and 1T buttermilk. It is the perfect foil after having had the fish. Sage, mustard, and horseradish are critical. You could substitute yogurt or sour cream for the buttermilk. Picture below shows the salad.

Eating Notes: Phil and I both felt like we could taste each of the components really well and that they blended perfectly. While musical piece traditionally come in three movements, this dinner was in two. The first movement was the salmon, with capers, pine nuts, onion and ghee all contributing distinct notes but coming together cohesively. The mustard-horseradish-buttermilk dressing of the salad provided a direct link back to the first movement of the fish course, but the leafy crunch of the salad left us feeling decisively satisfied at the end.