Chicken livers are coated with all purpose flour and corn meal seasoned with salt and pepper and oregano then fried in shallow oil.
The pot is rinsed clean.
One small onion is cut and sweated in unsalted butter using the same pot. The onions are combined with the liver pieces.
Flavored rice is reheated for 1.5 minutes in the microwave.
Grated cheese and cilantro is combined with the liver and the onions and then carefully placed gently, lovingly, artistically, appetizingly, architecturally, photogenically, on top of the spread rice. What? It is.
The chicken liver is the half tub remaining from an impulse buy earlier. You don't just dump a tub of chicken livers into a pile of flour for coating. The individual and irregular pieces of chicken liver are trimmed of all their weird messed up portions and cut into manageable reasonable bite-size segments. The coating is quite easy; 50% all purpose flour and 50% corn meal. The corn meal imparts an interesting texture and moderates the somewhat oppressive liver flavor. The flour and corn meal with its seasonings are tossed around a small bowl. The trimmed pieces are tossed into the combined powders and then dropped into very shallow hot oil to fry until crisped.
The rice is held-over from yesterday. The rice is short-grained white rice cooked the traditional way in 1.5 part water to 1 part rice, steamed covered for 25 minutes on low gentile heat and then left covered to steam for an additional 10 minutes off the heat. So 35 minutes total steaming. The pot cover is not lifted until the very end so that no steam escapes the pot. The steaming water is flavored faintly with corn meal, and bonito flakes, Japanese sake, a slight amount of sugar, salt and pepper.
You say "steamed" rice. Is the rice not actually immersed in water? Please explain, as you also say
ReplyDelete"cooked the traditional way" which would mean rice in boiling water then simmered.
Anon, the rice is covered with water and brought to a boil. In those first moments when the rice boils it is also rapidly absorbing the water and swelling. It must be stirred and the pot scrapped because it tends to stick to the bottom. The heat cut down to the minimum so that it no longer boils but continues to steam. The lid clamped on within that first minute. At that point, about one minute, the steaming action is started, the boiling stopped, the risk of burning avoided, and most of the water already absorbed, so the bulk of the 35 minutes is gentle steaming action. Inside the pot the rice is absorbing evenly what remains of the water.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Just a twist in semantics.
ReplyDelete