Liver & Onions

Classic! Although no gravy ... but chestnut mushrooms alongside.

Liver is a fantastic offal, full of all manner of goodness, but most importantly, a great pack of vitamin A.

While it is suggested that one errs on the shy side of vitamin A consumption, I'm not sure you can really have too much of a good thing. As with all things truly paleo, don't weigh it, don't measure it, eat it, enjoy it ... don't worry.

This is lamb's liver ...

First, the onion, which just wants shredding and softened over a low heat with some butter, coconut oil or your favourite cooking fat until they begin to brown and caramelise.

At this point just scrape them to the side of the skillet and fry off a few mushrooms. I went with large chestnut mushrooms which I found at my local Farm Shop, large, almost portabello in size, so sliced through and cooked off in more butter, turned to soak up all the fatty goodness.

Serve out the onions and mushrooms onto a plate and then, raise the heat under the skillet, settling in a few slices of liver.

This will cook through quickly, certainly before the onions have time to cool.

Turn the liver once one side is done, giving each side a final flash at the end.

Serve over the onions and mushroom, garnishing with fresh herbs: parsley, in my case.

For a really sumptuous dish, pour some thick gravy over, then garnish.

Either way, what a perfect breakfast!

And, what a fantastic day - cold, bright and just right for a great walk.

Beef Stuffed Peppers

My Farm Shop had the most gorgeous looking peppers (capsicum in American English?) and I got carried away ... I bought too many, hence this is the first of two stuffed pepper dishes.

These are stuffed, simply with beef mince.

The beef mince is simply prepared, based on softened onions in beef dripping, some garlic, then the minced meat, beef stock and tomato purée  then settled on a low heat for a couple of hours.

When ready to eat, cut the peppers in half, scoop out the middles and pop them into the oven for about 20 minutes at 200C to cook through and soften.

Fill 'em up, top with cheese and return to the oven for the cheese to melt.

Serve out with a glob of soured cream on top.

Dairy not float your paleo boat? Leave it out. This is a fine meal as just minced beef stuffed peppers.

Enjoy!

Chips! [Redux]

Catch up ... Chips!

Yes, that's Fries, French Fries or Pommes Frites in other popular languages - the key difference is, the English Chipped Potato (Chip) is cut much thicker than its European and North American counterparts.

Chips represent a huge pack of carbohydrate and fat energy with a potentially high glycemic load ... unless they're eaten with fat.

Simply put, fat slows the digestive process dramatically lowering the glycemic load. Want to know more? Check out J Stanton's article on Fat and the Glycemic Index: The Myth of Complex Carbohydrates.

To work ...

Peel and slice up a good sized potato per person into thick chips.

Par boil by placing into cold water and raising the water to the boil. As soon as the water begins to boil, drain and set the chips out to steam off - we want them dry, so pat them with a kitchen towel, too.

In a large skillet, soften a good helping of goose fat. Goose fat is perfect for frying, with a high smoke point and a great flavour.

Normally, chips are deep fried - I'm shallow frying them here (hence, the redux) so they're more like sauté potatoes, but still have that outside crunch and powder softness in the middle.

And, these are more fun - they're crinkle cut!