Delicious Lies Our Parents Told Us - Lamb's Fry

G'day, Bert here, reporting from 1930 and the depression is in full swing. Not the Depression we know and love today as the scourge of almost everyone with an active Twitter account, no, the Financial Depression that wiped out stockmarkets worldwide. It was a time of empty pockets, threadbare clothing and cheap, dubious meats.

Well, calling them "meats" might be taking liberties, I'm not sure where offal falls into the meat categorising system, somewhere near the bottom, no doubt. But it was nourishing, which is the important thing because it kept out grandparents alive. And without that we wouldnt be here to enjoy the shit out my hilarious blog, so good on them for that.

OK, so just to update you, in case you don't follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram or aren't one of my real life friends, I have moved to Perth. It's not terrible but I don't love it. I genuinely miss Melbourne's abundance of amazing food. And as such, I have a plan in motion that will start to take effect later in the year that I will tell you about later in the year as well. 

IN the next couple of months I have some ridiculous stuff happening, including my new job on a TV series called Surfing The Menu. I'm literally driving the cast, crew and equipment around the entire country for about 9 weeks and it is extremely exciting for someone like me to be involved in. You know, with the food and everything. And the touring and the driving and all that. It's basically my dream job. So that's us caught up, what have you been doing? Look, no time for that now, I'll just tell you about my dinner.

So as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself for what was actually quite a riveting catch-up, my grandparents were depression people. Like with everyone else during that particular period of time they made do. That meant fixing and going without and eating things like offal, which as it turns out, they would acquire a taste for and continue to eat long after the world got back in the black. Now, offal is a pretty broad term that covers a lot of disgusting stuff and I am going to cover a few things from the pile including Kidneys and today's edition and my personal favourite; Lamb's Fry. Otherwise known as Liver.

The name is a bit contentious, sure. But you have to understand that our parents lied to us heaps when we were growing up and most of it was for a good reason. I mean, no kid would have put Tripe in their mouth unless it was called something as creative as "Angel Meat", would they? So I get it. The Easter Bunny, Santa and Jesus things, I still don't quite get but when I do have kids I have a feeling it will all make sense. Maybe not the Jesus thing.

SO, Lamb's Fry. Delicious, nutritious, rich and irony. Iron-y, meaning full of Iron, not Ironic like a song about Irony that contains no examples of irony. It's an acquired taste and I understand that its not for everyone. Although I do think that The Fonz did the reputation of Liver absolutely no favours and that it is worth another look if you have bad memories of it as a kid. The bad memories of kids often permeate adulthood unfairly as I am certain that a lot of our parents were not great cooks. I myself used to think that Pork Chops were a dry, terrible waste of stomach space only to realise in adulthood that my Dad always completely over-cooked them to the point they were almost inedible.

So I think you should give Offal a chance and Lamb's Fry is a great entry point into The Magical World of Organs as it's cheap, quick and easy to prepare and simple to cook. It's rich, has a pleasant texture and goes with mashed potatoes, gravy and bacon. It doesn't get much better than that. BUT it is definitely an acquired taste, so if you don't like it, I get it. All I'm asking is that you keep an open mind and give it a go.

I bought a Lamb's Fry from Coles for $3.89 which provided about 700gm of liver; enough for 5 decent sized portions AND some leftover for the dog. The bacon I bought cost more than that and I got the fattiest bacon I could, which I suggest you do too, as after you render the fat from the bacon, you will fry the Lamb's Fry in it.

Easy as you like, put the Liver into a bowl of salted water and leave for a few hours at least. It just helps to seep the remaining blood out of the liver which makes it less rich/more palatable. Drain off the water and pat the liver dry with paper towels and then slice the liver into strips or pieces roughly the thickness of chicken nuggets. Put the liver, about half a cup of flour and a generous amount of salt and pepper in a plastic bag (one with no holes in the bottom), hold the bag closed tightly and shake it until the liver bits are each coated in seasoned flour. Easy.

Now cut some fatty bacon into strips and fry at a medium heat in a frypan until the bacon starts to go brown and a lot of the fat is left in the pan. Remove the bacon and put ni the oven on a plate to keep warm.

Magical Bacon

Take the bits of Lamb's Fry, shake off the excess flour and lay in the pan in the juicy delicious bacon fat and fry on all sides until brown. This should only take a minute or so on each side. As they cook, take them out and put them on the plate in the warm oven with the bacon. If you cook them too long, it will taste quite bitter and be firmer. You want a consistency that isn't tough to chew through.

Shake off the excess flour

Cook up some vegies to go with it, steamed/boiled/mashed potatoes, carrots, whatever you like that goes well with gravy. Now chuck some butter in with the pan leavin's, which should be some crusty brown fried flour bits, and cook up some sliced onions, adding some hot water and a sprinkling of flour and a stock cube and maybe some herbs and scrape up all of the bits in the frypan to make yourself some delicious bacony fried up onion gravy. Divvy up the Lambs Fry, bacon, vegetables and onion gravy and there you have a delicious Depression-era delight, just like Gram and Gramps. 

And then, in the next few days, while your blood is chock full of iron, go and give blood, good on you.

Sweet Ass Slow Cooked Meaty Stuff

Americans. It's either super-fast, like a shitty burger from a drive-thru (or a gun that can rip out 1200 rounds per second) or it's super-slow, like the intelligence of whoever runs the NRA (or delicious meats of the slow-cooked variety). And when it comes to guns and meat, they seem to love both with a zeal that would suggest they could do a Gun buy-back scheme if they offered slow-cooked BBQ ribs or perhaps pulled pork. IDEAS, they're free.

The other week I was in Coles Broadmeadows (Broady) and I saw one of those boxed dinner sets in the meat dept that includes almost a Kilogram of pork shoulder and a sachet of spiced BBQ sauce on special ($9 down from $12) as it had an expiry date of the next day (who would have guessed that in Broady, which is heavily populated by Muslims, pork wouldn't be a big seller?). So I rolled the dice and bought it, cooked it as suggested on the box and five hours later had one of the most delicious things I have ever cooked. Praise Allah. It was tender, it was moist, it was sweet and bbqy and there was too much of it. ALL GOOD THINGS. The next day I made a pizza with the leftover meat HOLY PORK BALLS it was brilliant.

Pulled Pork. CHORTLE.
But seriously, when I finally go on a murderous rampage,
I want this as my last meal before I am put to death

So since then, I have been buying a variety of different meats and trying a few different things. Unfortunately, I forgot that I also write a food blog, so I haven't been documenting any of this. What an total fucking IDIOT.

THEN, the other night when I was stumbling around Safeway Brunswick with $12 left in my bank account looking for the cheapest things ever when I noticed a cheap little semi-offcut product called "Lamb Ribs". They were also on sale, down from $2.07 to $1.89. I grabbed two packs of these and also a bottle of this fantastic stuff called "BBQ Rib Sauce" by Three Threes (also on sale at $1.84). I repeated the recipe with the lamb and cooked them for 3 hours this time (they were a lot smaller than the pork shoulder and with the bones in, cooked quicker), turning them twice at regular intervals and re-saucing. UH-MAZING. The bones literally fell clean out of the meat. Massively recommend.

Three Threes brand did not pay me to promote their product, but they can if they want. I'll accept more of their awesome sauce. btw, this is the only context I will accept the term "awesome sauce" without going into a murderous rampage.

THEN I found some very cheap Pork Ribs ($5.63) and repeated the process as I think I am addicted to meaty, BBQy, heroiny awesomness. Check this shit out. So easy.

Do this.
Pre-heat your oven to just 150C.
Put your chosen meat on a tray.
Spread your chosen sauce all over it, but dont use all the sauce as you will need some for re-saucing as it cooks.
Chuck it in the oven.
Go watch one of those movies on your hard-drive that you've been meaning to get around to, (I recommend Cowboys & Aliens), make sweet sweet love to your life-partner, wash the sheets and voila its time to turn the meat over and re-sauce (that's what she said).
With some of the Chosen Meats, cooking time will vary because of the thickness of it, the bones in it, the quality of your oven and other contributing factors, so keep an eye on it as it may cook quicker than it takes to make sweet sweet love to your chosen life-partner, especially if you're into that tantric lovin'. I'm not, I tend to be a 6-7 minute kind of guy but that's not important right now, so forget I said anything about it. Certainly don't go telling all your buddies about it at the urinal or wherever men tell each other stuff. Please, it would ruin my otherwise impeccable sexual reputation. Oh, wait, actually, I don't care if you tell dudes. Just keep it a secret from the ladies.

Here is another pic of the ribs, after I cut them up. HOLY FUCK THEY WERE SO GREAT, I don't even mind that this picture ruins the formatting. THAT SHOULD GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW GREAT

Lamb Stew with Parsley Dumplings

I'm unemployed at the moment and I don't have much cash. So when I go to the supermarket, I only have a general plan. I tend to look for the things that are on special or that are close to their use-by dates so that they are a little cheaper. I can freeze them when I get home if I need to.
Which is what I did yesterday. I was at Woolworth's and I saw a cut of meat called "Lamb Offcuts". They were really cheap - one packet was 96 cents, another $1.45 and the most expensive one $1.95. I picked them up and knew I would make a Lamb Stew straight away. I grabbed some other basics - potatoes, carrots and took off home to bust out the Slow-Cooker.

As a general rule, I'm not a fan of food gadgets like rice cookers or popcorn machines.We've got by without them til now, haven't we? But I do have a slow cooker and I'm not averse to using it.
I wanted a big, hearty lamb stew with melt in the mouth lamb and a rich sauce. And here's how I got it.

I started by browning the lamb in a frypan. It just gives it a good colour and gets some of the fat off. Then I cut any excess fat away and put the lamb in the slow cooker . Cooking it with the bones in gives it an even heartier flavour.I added two potatoes and a carrot that I had cut into chunks as well as a tin of chopped tomatoes (I'm an advocate of fresh, but right now the tomatoes are looking a bit off and they're expensive AND I had this in the cupboard). I covered it with passata (about half a jar)and threw in some dried herbs like Rosemary and "Mixed Herbs". Then I added a teaspoon of minced garlic and a cup of chicken stock and gave it a bit of a mix around in the pot. You can muck around a little bit here with different root vegetables, herbs, that kind of thing, depending on your personal tastes. Salt and Pepper are vital though, so make sure you throw in a bit of both.


Lid on, I put it on High for about an hour. Then I gave it a stir and switched it to Low and left it overnight. When I got up this morning, it looked like this

It was pretty much ready to eat - the lamb was falling apart and the sauce was delicious and rich. But there was still something I wanted to add. I plucked out the bones and left it on Low.

I love the traditional foods that I grew up with, so I added Parsley Dumplings to the mix. This is the simplest way to make your food reach a little further - especially if you have a family. Dumplings cost next to nothing and are made with stuff you should already have in the cupboard - Milk, Butter, SR Flour, an egg and salt. And parsley, of course. I have a parsley plant in the backyard so I used that but you can use dried if that's what you have. This is my mum's recipe.

Parsley Dumplings
120grams Self Raising Flour
25 grams Butter
1 egg
125mls milk (Soy milk works just as well)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tbs chopped parsley

How To
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
Rub in the butter using your finger tips (HINT - If the butter is cold, melt it over a low heat first, it will rub in in no time.)
In a small bowl, beat the egg into the milk and then add the parsley.
Pour the egg milk mixture into the flour and mix (I use a long-pronged fork) into a smooth batter.
Scoop it spoonfuls of the batter and place on top of the stew. Start in the centre and drop around it. It will look like this.

Put the slow-cooker back on High, put the lid back on and give it about half an hour and the Dumplings will be ready to serve with the stew.

Bam! 

This meal (although it took time) took very little effort at all and it is magnificent. Its hearty, its rich, it is perfect on a cold winters night and the family will love it!
It was cheap too - looking at the receipt, I can tell you that I spent $1.45 on carrots (and I only used one, so lets say 20c), $2.30 on four potatoes (I used two, so $1.15) and because I used offcuts, the meat was $4 all up. Everything else was in the pantry and I would bet your place is much the same. This would easily feed a family of 5 and the total outlay of $5.35 makes this a thrifty one! As a bloke living alone, I will be eating this for the next three days.
The ingredients for the dumplings would hardly make a dint in the stocks either, but lets guess that it was about $3 worth of ingredients. Cheap!

I hope you enjoy the recipes, let me know how you go!

COMING UP - More Cheap, Hearty Winter Fare with Pea & Ham Soup