Oct 08 2008
Feeling Liverish
A step outside our comfort zone, with limited success.
- Liver with Bacon and Charred Onions
I don’t mind liver. It is something I remember eating regularly if not at all often as a child. Both liver and kidneys featured on our menus and I don’t recall them seeming especially unusual. My dad particularly likes one of them, although I can’t remember which (perhaps it’s both!). Dougal, on the other hand, does not care for liver. I think he has probably only eaten it a handful of times in his life (chicken liver salad earlier in the year, for example) and finds the texture most off-putting. This meal was always going to be a challenge to pull off. I bought chocolate eclairs for pudding as insurance.
For what it’s worth I think this was quite a nice recipe. The liver was cooked in garlic oil that had previously had both bacon and onions cooking in it. The soft, slightly charred onions were themselves cooked in garlicky bacon fat. I took Nigella’s suggestion of a Radicchio salad as best I could with a bag of waitrose Italian salad dressed with a simple balsamic dressing and a generous scattering of pomegranate seeds (yum!) which I felt was a nice juicy fresh contrast to the strong flavours of the meat and onions.
I probably over-crisped the bacon- it was more like pork scratching and didn’t, I felt, add much (apart from lots of flavour to the pan!) but otherwise this was all right. I was starving at tea time and so this filled a hole most satisfactorally. We probably won’t revisit it but equally if I were to meet a liver fan, I might point them in the direction of this dish. Can’t be ravingly foody enthusiastic all the time, it seems.
I did this a while back. I agree, the bacon, if crisped this much, doesn’t add much… and that’s how much I crisped mine.
Historically, I think I have gone down as a BIG fan of kidneys, as I started on Heinz Kidney Soup “with lumps in” as a small child and graduated to rognons in piste-side howfs. I do enjoy liver but as Lizzie, who is not usually squeamish about things, doesn’t like preparing it, liver fell off the domestic menu a while back (there were other awkward child-friendly food issues too).
For various reasons I now cook more than I did and those awkward child things are somewhere else, so liver may appear more often…. though I don’t greatly like preparing it either. It’s not squeamishness really, it’s just a bit of a slitter.
Your food pictures are pretty tasty looking these days. Well done!
High praise from the man who took such lovely pictures on his hol! We owe most of our food picture success to my old flatmate mike who told me his golden rules of picture taking: get in closer than you would normally, switch the flash off and once done, crop ruthlessly. There were other rules too but I forgot them. Perhaps now that I’ve got the hang of those three I should try taking on board some more ideas. I would like to start playing with things like shutter speeds and exposure. Perhaps I ought to invest in a book or a wee day course- now that I’ve got some basic skillz I can build on.
I really want to make this dish, but unfortunately my husband isn’t into eating liver. Something to do with a bad childhood experience. I explained to him that this dish would no doubt be miles away from the over cooked piece of leather he ate as a child, but he won’t be persuaded.
Maybe I should just show him your picture. If that won’t change his mind, nothing will.
My mom once gave me a huge bite of her ’steak’. It wasn’t steak.
Try calves liver in the Venetian style – sliced paper thin – you need a good relationship with your butcher here, or very, very sharp knives of your own – and frightened in the frying pan with butter. Onions prepared anyway you like – crisply fried, pureed, jammed etc – are the traditional complement. Serve with lots of lovely salad. Should convert all but the most anti-liver eaters.