Liver Hoagies

All together now... yuck!
For most Americans, liver is right up there with Brussels sprouts in the hall of childhood terrors, and harder to find in the supermarket. On top of that, due to its function as a waste-processing plant, most commercial liver represents a compaction of all the unhealthy pesticides, antibiotics and unnatural additives that found their way into our food's feed.
But if you can avail yourself of chemical-free or preferably pasture-raised liver, it is an unparalleled source of vitamins (A, B6, B12 and C), copper, folate, iron, niacin, phosphorus, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin and zinc - depending on the animal's diet, of course. I would expect a grass-fed cow liver to have more folate than a corn-fed chicken's, for example.
Stephen's reactions to the first few times I made liver were like finding out that Christmas was canceled. The first breakthrough came when I marinated lamb liver in teriyaki sauce and stir-fried it with bell peppers. Stephen actually liked it. This time, I employed a two-layer flavoring technique, first marinating the pieces in a Chinese sauce, cooking them with browned onions, and then tossing them in a Dijon vinaigrette. Served with crunchy cucumber slices on crusty sourdough bread, chicken liver finally became delicious. Stephen loved it.

The Marinade:
1/4 lb. chicken livers, chopped into 1/4" strips
1 Tbs hoisin sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp Chinese Shaoxing wine (or sherry)
1 Tbs brown rice vinegar
1 tsp dark Muscovado sugar or honey
1/2" ginger, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped

Rinse the livers, then combine all marinade ingredients and pour over in a shallow dish. Cover and refrigerate about 6 hours.

The Vinaigrette:
1 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon-style mustard
1/4 tsp salt

Whisk together ingredients and set aside until the liver is cooked. While you're at it, cut four slices of hearty sourdough bread, and toast them if you like.

The Assembly:
1 onion (if you like it 'wit')
1 tsp organic lard, olive oil or butter
1/2 cucumber, sliced

Slice one onion as thinly as possible (I used a mandolin for gorgeous paper-thin slices!) and saute over medium heat. When the onion is browned, remove the liver from the marinade, taking care to discard any chunks of ginger or garlic. Add the liver to the pan and reduce heat to low, stirring constantly just until the pieces are no longer pink. Remove from heat and toss with vinaigrette. Lay the bread slices on two plates, topping them with the fresh cucumber slices and a generous heap of liver and onions. Enjoy them hot! Were I to make it again, I would add some thinly-sliced hard cheese (not Wiz!) for a more-or-less proper Philly experience. You won't find this one at Geno's!

A New Year Tradition: Bundt Cake

Once a year, the world comes full circle in its orbit. That is probably not what our forefathers were thinking when they designated the circle as a symbol of the New Year, but I'm sure they were quite pleased when they found out about this cosmic coincidence.
So to continue celebrating the New Year, I baked a delicious chocolate Bundt cake - without a grain of sugar. Impossible, you might be thinking, or perhaps, you're lying about the delicious part. No, really. No sugar. No honey, no maple syrup. No artificial anything. And Stephen loved it.
I got the recipe from Stevia Sweet, a whole foods cookbook centered around the little-known, seldom understood title ingredient. Stevia is a sweet herb that's been used for thousands of years in South America and has been gaining popularity around the world as a sugar substitute for the last three or four decades.
Cooking with stevia is a tricky business. It isn't as boldly sweet as table sugar, and if used in excess, has a bitter metallic aftertaste. It is only used in tiny amounts (a teaspoon of stevia has about the sweetening power of a cup of sugar), and lacks the structural, textural and preservative qualities of sugar. On top of that, some brands of stevia are sweeter than others, some contain fillers, some are liquid, others powder. In Stevia Sweet, Jeffrey Goettemoeller has gone ahead of all of us, navigated these pitfalls, and developed many reliable recipes like this one:

Chocolate Date Cake

6 oz water
8 oz dried pitted dates, chopped

4 oz buttermilk
10 oz freshly milled soft white wheat flour, sprouted if possible (or 5 oz each whole wheat and white flour)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup carob powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp stevia powder (I used Sweetleaf brand)
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a Bundt pan or two 9-inch cake pans.
Boil the water, remove from heat, add dates and cover. Let the date mixture cool to room temperature, then add buttermilk and puree in a food processor. In a small bowl, sift together the flour with the other dry ingredients except the coconut - cocoa, carob powder, baking powder, baking soda, and stevia powder. Add the coconut flakes and pecans.
In a medium bowl, beat butter and egg yolks until fluffy. One at a time, add vanilla, applesauce and date puree, beating well after each addition. Add the buttermilk-flour mixture and stir gently. Add half of the dry ingredients, stirring gently until incorporated, followed by the other half.
In a large, scrupulously clean bowl, beat egg whites to stiff (but not styrofoam) peaks. Fold into rest of batter, which is quite thick.
Pour batter into prepared pan(s). For Bundt pan, bake 60-70 minutes; for 9-inch cake pans, 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy! We had ours with yogurt, but it would be delicious with ice cream, whipped cream or any kind of frosting, ganache, syrup or glaze, especially of the chocolate persuasion. It would also be fantastic with dark chocolate chips mixed into the batter.
There is a magically satisfying texture that comes from the combination of carob powder and whole grain flour. I find this cake tastes sweeter cold, but shouldn't be refrigerated because it is a butter cake. Refrigerated butter cakes turn dry and tough.
From all of my experience with stevia, I think it performs best when combined with one or more sweeteners that actually taste good on their own, like dates, honey, maple syrup, applesauce, and unrefined cane sugar. One gets into trouble when approaching stevia from an all-or-nothing stance. Its slight bitterness seems well-suited to lemon and other tart fruits, but clashes with cinnamon. I would like to play with some regular cookie and cake recipes, substituting stevia for up to half of the sugar, based on the 1 teaspoon per cup substitution. I will let you know how that goes!

A New Year Tradition: Noodles

I wanted to prepare something traditional to celebrate the New Year. After perusing options like sauerkraut and black-eyed peas, I decided to make homemade sourdough noodles, which are symbolic of long life. I also made a delicious all-natural sugarless chocolate Bundt cake (circular cakes being traditional for the New Year), but that is another post.

For the pasta:
4 ounces freshly ground wheat
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 tsp organic lard
2 ounces sourdough starter
1 egg, beaten
white flour for dusting

Mix the flour and salt, then cut or rub the lard into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix in the starter and egg, then let the dough rest for 8-24 hours. It should be quite dense and not sticky.
On a lightly floured work surface, with a lightly floured French rolling pin (there are special rolling pins for pasta that resemble broom handles, but I do not have one), roll out the pasta to a thickness of 1-2 mm. For noodles, roll it up like a tube and cut the narrowest possible slices. Carefully unroll your noodle slices and either dry them on a rack or cook them right away. For lasagna, cut into wide strips and lay flat to dry. When dried first, fresh pasta cooks in about five minutes. When fresh, it cooks almost instantaneously.

This was my first ever experience with making fresh pasta by hand. It was really gratifying to roll out the pasta, cut it into noodles, dry them on a cookie rack, boil and finally eat them, lightly dressed in butter, fresh tomatoes and cheese. Fresh pasta is one of the greatest and simplest of life's pleasures.