Love Ridge

Please excuse the posting gap - blogspot.com has had problems here in LA and I have been unable to post.

My maternal grandmother, who recently passed on into the afterlife, was born in rural Kentucky, one of the most beautiful states within our national borders. Her husband-to-be courted her on the aptly named Love Ridge, where they watched cows swoon in the moonlight, drunk on sour mash dregs which farmers regularly dumped in the hills from their illegal stills. My grandfather was restless, so he and his new bride left the family tobacco plantation, and they bought a small farm in Ohio where they prospered together, and were blessed with five children. My mother was the fourth child, and the only girl in the bunch, and somewhere along the way her parents bought a larger farm in a pastoral spot a half hour west of Dayton with a creek and good soil. I have mixed memories of my times there as a child, where I would often be placed while my parents traveled. More fun were the family reunions back in Nelson County, Kentucky,close to various famous-name distilleries and Stephen Foster's Old Kentucky Home. In these more innocent times, we youngsters would play in amongst the huge gray, green and yellow tobacco plants after the jellos and turkeys, hams and kool-aid had been consumed at such occasions back then there in the early sixties.

My Grandmother's fried chicken has not been matched by anyone I know, including her daughter, my mother, who makes her own excellent version. Even though Grandma gladly shared the recipe with all who asked, including marinating the meat in salt water for a short time before flouring it, no one has duplicated the end result. Her chicken was one of the strongest arguments I know for the sleight of the human hand making a difference in every activity including cooking. You can give the same recipe to twenty people and have them execute it exactly, and you will always get 20 different results. Some folks just have better hands and correspondingly quirky brains and produce a better fried chicken dinner. I'm not going to pass on the family recipe as that's just for us.

Using hints from my Grandmother's fried chicken recipe, I do make chicken livers into paté and into small delicacies that I love served cold . Buy the best livers (so inexpensive) and cut out the fatty membrane and wash in cold running water. Discard any yellowish livers they should be richly red brown and glistening. You will be left with two lobes which can be cut and divided into two pieces. Drain them, flour them all while still damp (don't pat dry) in a combination of flour, salt and pepper, mixed dried herbs, and a small amount of home made breadcrumbs. Turn the livers in the flour mixture again and again and let some of the juices coagulate in the flour. Heat a liberal amount of canola oil in a deep skillet and turn down to a medium heat and then add the coated livers. As they cook sprinkle some of the flour mixture lightly on top. Turn after five minutes and then cook for another five. Do not over cook.

At this point I let them cool on a towel in a bowl and put them in the fridge, covered. I snack on them or add them to light lunches. The livers are incredibly rich but with a little home made mayonnaise they are fantastically so, or gingerly dip them in dijon mustard for a more spicy accompaniment.

This now - paté, sweetbreads and kidneys, later.