Dinner invitations (particularly business ones) are often accompanied by the query: "Is there anything you don't eat?" My answer to this has always been "Liver", on the assumption that no host would be so cruel as to serve kidneys or heart without warning. It's the combination of the almost bitter flavour and the grainy smoothness of the texture that is so unappetising; grainy smoothness is not an oxymoron in this case, because what is objectionable is the way that it melts in your mouth, coating it entirely with the tiny nodules of ultra-meaty dark flavour. Yeuch.
Recently (and partly inspired by Jeffrey Steingarten's 'The Man who Ate Everything'), I decided that I had to learn to love liver. Mostly I've been doing this by thinking how much I admire and respect Fergus Henderson of St John, whose motto "Nose to Tail Eating" does so much to amuse and disgust the fainthearted and weakstomached.
Last weekend I got to my local butcher's and realised that I didn't have any meals coming up that could legitimately involve delicious roasts or huge stews. Pondering the best cut for a single eater, I realised that a truly dedicated foodie would use this opportunity to experiment with liver. (And the advantage of doing this on my own would be that I could always throw it out and order pizza if it was too disgusting).
So I bought a small amount of lamb's liver, on the assumption that it would be less strong and liver-like than calves' liver, and took it home. An afternoon with my cookbooks produced mostly recipes for liver and onions or liver and bacon, most of which seemed to be predicated on the assumption that one likes liver (bizarre). I did find one recipe for sweet and sour liver, which sounded like it might be less offal than the others, so that was what I went with.
I managed to quell the nausea induced by handling the liver - just don't think about your own liver inside you, is my tip - and served up something that was definitely edible. Let's not get carried away here, the mushroooms that I experimentally fried with fenugreek, cumin and chilli were much nicer, but I didn't gag once while eating the liver. In fact, I might even consider trying again with a less cowardly recipe, but just don't expect me to salivate!
[This post is specially for my cousin Ed, who's not able to eat much at the moment. I thought it might be nice for him to read about disgusting food.]
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5 comments:
There's a horse butcher around the corner from my apartment in Paris, if you want to push the envelope sometime!
Well, your original description of why you don't like liver was much more vomitous, but I still am unenlightened as to why anyone would eat a liver if they didn't have to.
Shudder.
Good offal joke opportunity though, well done.
Strange as it may seem, I have always liked liver and I can't understand why anyone would find it revolting. Having just spent a week in hospital where the food was unbelievably dull I am actually salivating just thinking about it and am amused by the thought that reading this would induce exactly the opposite gastric response.
On the grounds that it is good 'invalid' food I cooked liver and onions the other day for the family lunch. The butcher is obviously a big offal fan as he gave me a huge quantity (of calves liver). It was also sliced quite thickly and in taking care not too overcook it - i didn't cook some of it enough. However as we had so much this didn't really matter, although those of delicate constitutions would not have liked the scene on the serving plate (and may be interested to know that the cats rejected the morsels passed to them - but maybe it runs in the family). Our conclusion was that it was pretty tasty and I will definitely do it again - but a smaller quantity and thinner slices.
Does chicken liver count ? I bought a packet of frozen chicken livers from our local butcher the other week and made pate. It was absolutely delicious. Liver rocks.
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