Category: On a Budget

Fegato alla Veneziana (beef liver, Venetian style)

A bittersweet and humble meal of beef liver and cornmeal for Good Friday

Serves 3

Time: 🕰🕰
Effort: 💪💪

Ingredients:

Section of beef liver from your butcher (a bit larger than the size of your hand)
2 onions
60g butter
Water
Salt
Pepper
3 sage leaves (or sprig of rosemary)
1 bay leaf
Rosemary for garnish

Method:

1. Peel and chop onions into strips
2. Add onions, half the butter, and some salt to a pan
3. Stir to coat
4. Cook on medium heat, covered, until bottom starts to burn
5. Add water (around 1/4 glass) and stir to release bits that may be sticking to the bottom
6. Continue to cooked covered until onions completely caramelised, around 25 minutes, while you do the next steps
7. Add the remaining half of the butter to a pan and melt on look heat
8. Remove top foam and any other milk solids, so that you are left with clarified butter, which has a much higher smoking point
9. With your fingers, poke a hole in the liver to release the skin
10. Continue to peel off the skin, which should feel like taking skin off a chicken
11. Once peeled, chop liver up into several narrow lobes, then into slices
12. Add liver to the hot clarified butter and cook on high heat
13. Add sage, bay leaf, plenty of salt, and pepper, to the liver
14. While liver cooks, check seasoning of onions, which ahold be soft and sweet by now
15. Once liver is browned and fragrant, check seasoning, then pour everything in the pan into the onions
16. Remove sage and bay leaves
17. Stir to combine the two elements
18. Add more water and simmer on medium-low until the sauce thickens
19. Check seasoning one last time
20. Serve with polenta and a sprig of rosemary on top

Salt-crust grey mullet

Some people add 2 beaten egg whites to the salt mixture, but this does nothing to the taste. If you’re making a quick dish, there’s no need to add this. If, however, you’re entertaining guests and are planning to bring the salt crust to the table to crack open, then do add the egg whites. A super simple dish that brings out the best of the magic ingredient: coriander!

Serves 2

Time: 🕰🕰
Effort: 💪

Ingredients:

1 grey mullet (烏頭. Tell fishmonger to leave scales on!)
2 packs coarse salt from market
1 bunch coriander

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200’C
2. Wash fish and pat dry
3. Stuff coriander into fish; set side
4. Mix the coarse salt with water bit by bit until it resembles “snow”
5. Line baking tray with half the salt
6. Place fish on top
7. Cover with rest of salt
8. Pack tightly to form a seal
9. Bake in oven for 2.5 times the amount of time you would if steaming – for a typical fish, that’s 20-25 minutes
10. Crack open salt crust
11. Transfer fish to serving dish
12. Peel skin back to reveal the succulent flesh
13. Garnish and serve hot or cold

Hong Kong-style tossed noodles 薑蔥撈刀削麵

Serves 2

Time: 🕰
Effort: 💪

Ingredients:

1/2 carrot
1/2 stalk celery
1/4 onion
5-6 nests of dried, knife-cut noodles 刀削麵
2 spring onions
1 small head of ginger
White pepper
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoon normal cooking oil

Method:

1. Finely chop the ginger and set aside
2. Cut spring onion into 4 equal sections
3. Take the bottom two sections and the top section, finely chop and combine with the ginger; set aside
4. Take the third section and further cut into one-inch long sections
5. Slice down the centre of each of these sections lengthwise
6. Using your fingers, flatten each of these section on the cutting board and they should magically curl up
7. In case they don’t curl up enough, soak these sections in cold water so that the inner-facing, moist layer expands even more, causing it to bend outward; set aside
8. Prepare the mixing sauce by combining sesame oil, light and dark soy sauce, and sugar
9. Prepare a pot of boiling water and maintain on medium heat
10. Put noodles into the boiling water to cook, checking from time to time that the bubbles don’t cause the contents to spill
11. In parallel, in a separate pan, quickly fry the finely spring onion and ginger from step 3 in normal cooking oil, along with a dash of white pepper
12. Strain the noodles once al dente
13. Divide noodles into serving bowls
14. Add the mixing sauce
15. Add the spring onion and ginger from step 11
16. Mix well
17. Place the curled up spring onion sections on top