Cleaning out the Freezer

This summer I'm going to be spending three months in the UK, where my boyfriend, Benson, is working his post-doc position. So prior to leaving (in two weeks!), I've been trying to eat all the consumables in my apartment that are sitting in my pantry, my fridge, my freezer. This has resulted in me eating and making some interesting dishes lately, just to get rid of various ingredients. This past week, this resulted in me making Matzah Ball soup (getting rid of a bunch of soup stock), pan-fried chicken hearts (getting rid of chicken hearts), and dark chocolate beet brownies (getting rid of both some frozen leftover beets AND my chocolate chips). I got the recipe for the beets from here, altering the recipe slightly by removing an egg, adding a bit of extra salt, and swapping butter in for oil, so if you compare to the website I got the recipe from, you'll see a few changes. The chicken hearts, I improvised after looking at a bunch of different recipes, none of which I liked completely. (And I'll leave the Matzah Ball recipe, recipe from my friend Abe but with bacon fat substituted in for chicken fat because I didn't have any chicken fat -- the most unkosher matzah ball soup ever -- for another time.)

Dark Chocolate Beet Brownies
2 large beets, peeled (~1 lb)
2 large eggs
2/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. white sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
1.25 c. cocoa powder
3/4 c. flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher or sea salt
1 c. chocolate chips

So as I said, I had some beets in my freezer (see "Death of a Lobster" - yes they were a year old - but you can freeze that kind of thing for ages and they're still just fine) -- basically extremely finely chopped beets, which had been through a blender, and which came from roughly 1lb of beets. Now, if you have your own beets not yet pureed, chop them up into a smallish dice, boil them in water until they're soft, drain well, then puree in a blender. If it doesn't blend well, add some melted butter from your butter reserve (as the butter is going to go in your brownies anyway!) so that it purees! You want the puree NOT to be hot (warm is ok, but NOT hot) so let that sit and cool a bit. In a separate bowl, mix flour, any remaining butter (melted), vanilla and sugars. Then add the beets and blend until homogenous. Next add the dry ingredients, mix again, then finally stir in the chocolate chips. Pour everything into a WELL GREASED, 9x13 baking pan, and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, then consume these delicious, rich and uniquely flavorful brownies at your will!


Pan-fried chicken hearts with garlic and rosemary
chicken hearts
a few cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
rosemary
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
chili powder (for an optional KICK)
flour
bacon fat (or other oil/fat to cook them in! Butter, chicken grease, or even more oil would work fine)

So as you can see, this recipe doesn't really have... proportions. I had a container of chicken hearts, and just kind of scaled accordingly. I sliced them up into strips (like 4 slices/heart - not quartered, but flattened slivers) rinsed and drained them thoroughly, then tossed with olive oil and the various spices to taste until they were well covered, then let them sit in the fridge for a couple hours (though honestly, 30 minutes would probably be fine). After that, I simply tossed the heart slices in flour and pan fried them in bacon fat (because everything improves with bacon fat!) for maybe 10 minutes, until they were cooked through. Then I popped them in a bowl and ate them as is. These turned out REALLY well - I tend to be ...non-discriminating when it comes to what types of food I'm willing to consume, so eating hearts doesn't bother me. Especially considering that my family always eats the chicken innards when we roast a chicken (or turkey, or other fowl beast) anyway. My dad's even made chicken heart soup. So eating chicken hearts is nothing new. However, when cooked this way, rather than baked to death inside a roasting chicken, they turn out extremely tender and juicy, much better than I've had them before (again, boiled or roasted to death). 10/10 would recommend for the more adventurous eater!