Icarus's blog: "Somantics"

Hang on I gotta chug at least a liter of water after I take these pills...
makes me real full since I gotta take em on full stomach.

Blachk!

There were two things I'd never do as a child

three things.

1. Take naps/go to bed on time.
2. Eat cooked vegetables except starches and peppers.
3. Drink water.

Juice was better tasting and always had vitamins in it >>
it only made sense
but since I can't exceed a certain amount of vitamin C in a day, I can't drink cranberry juice and orange juice in excess ...
wait I can now!

Sweet.

Stupid regimens.

Anyway

Tonight I made stir fry beef liver.

Oh my god it was good.

I'm gonna play around with it a bit but I got the recipe from an online source

Its filipino apparently, but where they used tomato- I omitted it completely in favor of a slight squeeze of chinese ketchup (hot sauce)
where they said garlic- I put in more onion (because I've been out of garlic for over 2 months)

You basically saute the liver for about 2 minutes
then you braise it in soy sauce (4 tblspoons soy sauce with some hot sauce and mustard powder)
add onion and bell pepper and then you cover it for five minutes
then add 1/4 cup of water

I thought this part was nutty.

"Why am I adding water here?"

bring to a boil- simmer for five minutes

my only theory is that it keeps the soy sauce from getting too gummy and it helps the liver retain moisture, deglazes the pan

without it
I could see the liver getting that ... powdery liver texture :P
and the soy sauce definitely would've got sticky.

I managed to cut my liver pretty thin and pretty small so I avoided a lot of the veins being in one clump.
Had I thought ahead I probably could've removed it entirely ahead of time. The vein does add some bitterness- and a texture interrupt.

Now
if I hadn't made this
and I hadn't had liver before
I would've liked this.

I would've said "what cut of beef is this? It's really soft and tastes a little different"

Funny thing is its pretty similar to fajita in flavor compounds- just a change in delivery methods.

Instead of using a highly flavored marinade you're using a pan sauce.

High heat
quick cooking with aromatic vegetables.
Eat.

I'd totally eat this stuff in a tortilla >>

Anyway-
the recipe says "serve on rice" and I did- but as usual I dumped about half of it into the pan and stirred it around a bit to give the rice some flavor.

That wasn't a bad idea at all.

Anyway- the stirfry came out a touch more chinese than filipino I think due to the swap out of the tomato and no garlic
I'm okay with that >>

Your key flavor components are pepper and spicey soy sauce.

If I were to do it all over again...

hmm...
I really wouldn't screw with it much more than that- I mean, that's my goto on beef stirfry.
Its pretty much how my mom makes bell peppers and beef but she uses cornstarch and more water in her sauce, so its less intense, but there's a lot more of it.

I think this recipe would be great with some mushroom broth, sliced mushrooms, and ...
...
...
I'd be pretty happy with just a few mushrooms if I were keeping this chinese. Chili oil and pepper flake would be a nice addition though >> maybe some horseradish-mustard in the sauce.

I'm wondering how my standard flavor provile would work with it which is cumin/paprika/onion/bell-pepper/garlic
I kinda want to find a good dirty rice recipe for an alternate cooking method and just swap the chicken liver for beef.
That might be the pinacle dish and application for my flavors.

What else I got?

I dunno- next couple days are liver. Wanna use it before it spoils.
Weeee!