Lamb Liver with Balsamic Thyme Caramelized Onions

Yesterday, at the farmers market, I picked up some beautiful local lamb liver from Stillmans at the Turkey Farm. I also picked up some lovely spinach. I had a few onions hanging around already. This morning I set about making an awesome breakfast!

The liver was frozen when I bought it, so I put it in the fridge to thaw overnight. Liver is easiest to cut when it's half-frozen, so don't worry about thawing it fully. Leave it a little frosty. If it comes to you not-frozen, pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up. You're going to want to slice it about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick. (That's between 1/2 cm and just under 1 cm for you metric folks.)

How many does this serve? Well, that depends on the size of your liver, and your appetites. It's two to three servings if this is all you're eating for a big meal, four or more if this is one course or part of a bigger meal, with some cauliflower rice, roasted squash, or even topped with a poached egg. Eat until you feel kind of 80% full, and you're happy and satisfied, then stop. Follow your appetite, not my rules! Save your leftovers for pate, or just for yummy snacks later.

INGREDIENTS

A couple spoons of ghee or other fat that tolerates high heat
3 onions, thinly sliced
Salt to taste
Fresh or dried thyme, a teaspoon or to taste
One fresh or frozen lamb liver
1/4 cup or more balsamic vinegar
Fresh baby spinach, washed and spun dry

METHOD

Heat a big Dutch oven or other large pan with one spoon of the ghee. Add the onions, and stir around to coat thoroughly with the fat. Let cook on fairly low heat, stirring only very occasionally, until golden brown all over. If you keep stirring them, they won't caramelize. Season with salt and thyme. This can take 15 - 20 minutes. Be patient. The slower you do this step, the deeper the flavor.

Heat your cast iron skillet on fairly high heat. Slice lamb liver into nice thin slices, and sprinkle on all sides with sea salt. Add a spoon of ghee to the pan, and fry liver in batches, about two minutes on a side, until medium rare. Transfer to a dish to keep warm while you cook the rest of the liver.

Deglaze the pan with the balsamic vinegar, and make the reduction. Pour the vinegar into the hot pan. It should boil and reduce right away. When it's down to half its volume, pour some of it in the onions and stir to combine.

To plate: put a bed of spinach on each plate. Scatter onions over spinach. Top with a lovely mound of liver and a dollop more of onions. Pour the rest of the balsamic glaze over top. Devour!

Salmon with Crispy Skin and Balsamic Glaze

Hello again!

We've already discussed the importance of iodine to your overall health, and especially the health of your thyroid gland. Here's a quick, easy recipe to boost your iodine intake! As a bonus, it is rich in super healthy omega-3 fatty acids, a fantastic source of easily digestible protein, and fairly low in overall fat.

It takes about ten minutes from start to finish. Can't beat it on a weeknight! Serve just like this for breakfast. For a heartier lunch or dinner, heat up some leftover soup or serve with roasted squash, sweet potato, or even rice if you are into that sort of thing.

Please try to choose wild-caught sockeye or coho salmon from Alaska. These are the healthier choices in terms of omega-3s, and they're also caught using much more environmentally sound methods than many other fish. Farmed salmon is less healthy for you, and far less healthy for the oceans.
 

This is how the fish looks before adding the sauce. Look how crispy!

Salmon with Crispy Skin and Balsamic Glaze

Two salmon steaks, about 6 - 8 oz. per person
Ghee, about 1 T in all, divided
Sea salt, to taste
Balsamic vinegar, about 2 T

Optional:
Romaine or your other favorite lettuce, as much as you like
Grapefruit or orange, one whole
Whatever else you'd like to enjoy on the side

Heat a cast iron skillet to medium.

While your pan is heating up, clean your romaine, chop it, and put it on plates. Make grapefruit or orange supremes: Peel fruit with a knife. Holding over a bowl, carefully cut each segment out by cutting along the membrane on both sides. Arrange sections on lettuce. Squeeze the rest of the juice out of the membrane and drink it! Or save it. If you have enough, you can sub the juice instead of vinegar in the glaze below.

Take your salmon steaks out of the fridge. Pat dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, both on the flesh side and the skin side. The salt on the flesh seasons the fish, and the salt on the skin allows it to stand just above the heat long enough to create a little pocket so the skin doesn't stick to the pan.

Melt about 2 teaspoons of the ghee in the pan, and swirl around to coat.

Lay the salmon steaks in the hot pan such that they don't touch.

Adjust heat if necessary - the fish should be sizzling but not going crazy.

Resist the urge to move the fish. Let it stay in one place. If you move it, it won't be crispy. Patience, Grasshopper!

Keep cooking just on the skin side until the fish has become opaque to about 2/3 or so of its thickness. This will take several minutes, but time will vary based on the size and density of the pieces, and the heat of your pan.

Flip, give it only a couple seconds on the flesh side, and plate next to or on top of salad and/or other sides.

Turn off heat, and immediately add balsamic vinegar (or reserved juice) to the hot pan. It will simmer and reduce. If it doesn't, your pan was not hot enough. Turn it back on. It's such a small quantity, this will take just a few seconds. When sizzling subsides and vinegar is reduced about half, swirl in that last teaspoon of ghee.

Pour the glaze over the fish and a little over the salad too. Enjoy!

Drool-worthy! Even though the glaze is kind of hard to see on a black plate...

Enjoy, and have a happy and healthy weekend!

Love,
Chef Mary

Even though it isn't Wednesday, linking to Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop!

Crab cakes, aioli, and clarified butter (ghee!)

I had a productive morning! Except my phone ran out of batteries, so there is no photographic evidence. Oops!

Last night, I soaked some sunflower seeds in filtered water. This morning, I drained and rinsed them and set them aside. I will continue to rinse and drain them for a day or three, until they have little tails, and then I will tell you how to make my famous raw vegan sprouted sunflower seed hummus!

Other things that have been accomplished this morning are not so vegan-friendly: Ghee, mayonnaise, and totally grain free crab cakes. Each deserves its own post, but I'm going to squish them all into one because it is my blog and I can!

First, ghee. Clarified butter. It is a traditional food from India and other regions. It has a very high smoke point, unlike regular whole butter, so you can cook with it at much higher temperatures without damaging it. Plus, it's the only dairy product allowed on the Whole30.

It is so easy. Are you ready?

GHEE

Take some organic butter from pasture fed cows. Put it in a saucepan large enough to hold it, but not too huge. Melt it over fairly low heat. Eventually, the water trapped inside will start popping and crackling as it evaporates out. If it doesn't, turn it up just a little. If it's too aggressive, turn it down a little.

Let it go until all or almost all of the water is boiled off, then pour it through a sieve lined either with 3 layers of cheesecloth or a nut milk bag, into a heat-proof glass measuring cup. Your cheesecloth or nut milk bag will catch almost all of the milk solids. Throw those away (or use in an extra rich brown butter if you are into such things.)

Now your measuring cup is full of golden, melty, lovely almost-totally-clarified butter. You may have a few super-tiny particles of milk solids still in there. Wait a few minutes for them to settle out, then carefully pour your ghee off into a heat-proof jar, leaving any solids behind at the bottom of the measuring cup. Now you're done!

Let the ghee cool to room temperature, then cover. Keeps for a very long time refrigerated, and believe it or not, at cool room temperature too. (I refrigerate mine.)

You can use it to fry the crab cakes I'm going to tell you about in a minute.

MAYONNAISE

Mayo is not hard. Don't be afraid! The instructions are longer than the whole process of making this. I promise.

Leave a couple eggs out at room temperature for at least a couple hours, up to overnight. Your mayo will work so much better if all your ingredients are at room temp! If you forget, rest the eggs for a few minutes in a bowl of warm water to warm them a little.

If you are pregnant or immune-compromised and don't feel comfortable using raw eggs, pasteurize them in a bath of hot water. If you are neither pregnant nor immune-compromised, make whatever decision you are comfortable with. I would not use eggs from a factory farm for this mayonnaise; I use eggs from a farmer I know and trust. Personally, I feel that raw foods and especially raw egg yolks have a lot of health benefits. And the risk of salmonella or other contamination is minimal when you choose good, real eggs from good farmers.

Choose your oil. Today, I used a combination of rendered chicken fat (schmaltz) and extra virgin olive oil. If you are using a solid fat like animal fat or coconut oil in winter, melt it gently over low heat. You can also use a cold-pressed sunflower seed or grape seed oil as part of the fat. I don't recommend soy or canola oil for your health, but if you insist on using them in your diet, they do work well here. If you are using only evoo and no other fat, know that the taste will be very strong and may be slightly bitter. Usually, aioli is made with a combination of evoo and another oil - refined olive or another vegetable oil. (Aioli also usually contains garlic, and the acid is lemon instead of vinegar.)

Decide if you want a little mustard (it helps get emulsification going but isn't totally necessary) and decide what kind of acid you want to use. Lemon juice is great, as is raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, but any vinegar will do.

Separate your eggs and put the yolks (or one yolk and one whole egg) in the bowl of your food processor. Whir them up. Add mustard if using, a pinch of salt, and a tiny splash of your vinegar or lemon juice. Blend really well.

With the motor running, very slowly pour liquid fat in. It's best to either start with the fat that is not extra virgin olive oil, and add the evoo last, or mix the oils together and pour them as a blend.

Keep slowly pouring and blending until it emulsifies. You will know when it does, because it will look like mayonnaise (but a lot yellower than the packaged stuff.)

If it doesn't ever emulsify, you can save it! Pour your runny mess out from the bowl of the processor into a jar or small bowl with a spout. Put a new egg yolk or two in the bowl of the processor. Process the new yolks for a couple minutes, then slowly start adding the messy stuff into the processing yolks.

Once it's all nicely emulsified, season it up. Add more salt, vinegar, or lemon, as needed. A great and super healthy addition here is a spoonful of probiotic whey drained from homemade yogurt, or some sauerkraut juice. It sounds so crazy, but it is fantastic for digestion. I know, me and my healthy bacteria for digestion. But it's important!

Now you're done! To develop the probiotics from the whey or kraut juice, and to actually improve shelf-life, leave at room temperature for a couple hours before refrigeration. It sounds insane, but it is true.

CRAB CAKES

Remember how we separated eggs earlier, and used mostly yolks? Well, now you have whites left over. You can save them for meringues, macaroons, macarons (they're different,) fish mousse, nuvolone, or use them right now in crab cakes!

Heat a cast iron skillet to medium.

Take some cooked crab - canned or frozen is fine. Mix gently with egg whites, salt, mustard, a spoonful of mayo, and seasoning you like - Old Bay or a similar seasoning mix works well here, or your own blend. Anything you like!

It might be pretty runny now. If you want to tighten it up, add a spoonful of coconut flour or some almond flour. Almond will add crunch, while coconut is super absorbent!

Taste, and adjust seasoning. It's okay - the crab is fully cooked and you're using eggs from a source you trust, right?

Add some ghee to your pan. Look how lovely and clear it is! Make small patties with the crab mixture, drop in the pan, and cook until brown on the bottom. Flip, finish cooking, and serve with a dollop of mayo and a simple, lovely salad.

Enjoy, and have a beautiful day!

Love,
Chef Mary