What would you do if you love chicken livers and the rest of your family doesn’t? Well, never do nothing! Being a mom working from home for a couple of years now, I spent a lot of lunches alone. I … Continue reading Crispy Chicken Liver with Orange-Apple Sauce
Last weekend was bacon galore. A “kitchen situation” such as this happens when you haven’t done your weekly visit to the market and all’s left inside your ref is bacon, asparagus, chicken liver and half a kilo of mussels. Hors … Continue reading Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Livers
Awful offal, I assume, includes heart, liver, lungs, animal’s entrails, plus tails, feet, and heads. This practice or custom of preparing offal dishes may (or may not) be a reflection of a culture’s economy and resourcefulness.
When we were young, Dad maintained a poultry farm in our backyard and distributed dressed chickens to wholesalers and neighbors. So just imagine offal overload. Our meals were full of chicken parts – not only the prime and choice parts. Think of adobong paa ng manok, chicharong isaw ng manok, chicharong balat at taba ng manok, dinuguan using chicken blood. (Chicken feet cooked in vinegar, salt, garlic, pepper and soy sauce, chicken chitlin/skin/fat cracklings, chicken blood stew.) The best would be adobong atay at balunbalunan – the most widely eaten lamang loob. A lot of people say that in chicken nothing is wasted. But of course, not everybody likes what it offers. I for one wouldn’t dare touch a chicken head. I’ve tried it and I don’t wanna ever look back though I would lovingly go to the nearest dim sum restaurant for chicken feet.
So it was like our meals were full of chicken feet than we ever wanted – adobong manok with adidas (dish cooked in vinegar, salt, garlic, pepper and soy sauce), tinolang manok with adidas (ginger stew), fried whole chicken complete with adidas. You name it we had it that for years I couldn’t bring myself to eat chicken until I was about 16. The chicken feet? Till the time I discovered dim sum in my early 20s.
I’m not one of those who stay away from offal dishes though I seldom cook such as I tend to be the only one who enjoys ‘em. Lasang Pinoy 9, hosted by Cia over at Pabulum, is all about lamang loob or innards and again I was tempted to buy the intimidating chitlins (check out my adobong isaw for LP6) but decided to cook the less controversial chicken liver instead. Chicken liver steak – mala bistek. (Read: Too busy with work I have no time to go to a decent supermarket to buy ingredients.)
Bistek is a Filipino-style beef steak typically made with strips of sirloin beef cooked in soy sauce, calamansi juice and onion rings. Sometimes we substitute beef with pork while using liver makes a good appetizer. Here’s how I did mine as I remember it the way my sister cooked it the last time she visited me here in Beijing.