Calf's Liver with Little Onions, Sage and Aged Vinegar.
Last weekend I picked up my
meat order in our local Taco Bell parking lot. Yeah, kinda ironic when you think about it. When I picked it up though I asked Elisa if she had any extra meat that we could buy. She told me about the rib steaks and them mentioned that she had some liver as well. I was so excited!!! She actually gave me 3 packages of liver for FREE!
I had just picked up the book that I had ordered from Barnes & Noble and was reading it on our way and their seemed to be a really cool recipe for liver! Check out this book,
The River Cottage Meat Book
For anyone who is interested in meat and the way that it should be, not the way it is. This is the book for you! In the first couple of chapters I was able to learn things that made this book so worth the money!
Now, just to let you know I grew up with a Mom that was from England during wartime. When we ate meat it was cooked. Dammit was it cooked!!! I remember eating liver as a child boiled up in some tomato type sauce. If I didn't eat it that night guess what was waiting for me at breakfast??? Needless to say I hated liver!!!
My oldest daughter always loved it and as a baby it was probably one of the first foods that she really ate. T. would cook it up for her and the 2 of them would just chow down. Personally the smell of it always made me a little nauseas!
Anyway, tonight T. Actually cooked it up for us and it was delicious! Nothing like I remember it being. The texture was still a little odd (creamy as my oldest one described it) but not entirely bad!
Would I do this again? You bet. I truly liked the flavor of it. I will need to get used to the texture only because it is something different!
Calf's Liver with Little Onions, Sage, and Aged Vinegar (from the
The River Cottage Meat Book)
Ingredients:About 1 pound very fresh calf's liver
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
2 dozen baby onions, peeled but left whole
about 5 whole garlic cloves, peeled but left whole (we added this, not original to the recipe)3 Tbsp all-purpose flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
Scant 1/2 cup aged vinegar (I used balsamic)
2 dozen sage leaves
Directions:- Cut the liver into slices 1/3 inch thick and trip out any course tubes, then set aside.
- Heat 2 Tbsp of the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over a low heat.
- Add the onions and sweat gently. They mustn't take color quickly but should brown gradually as they cook, so that after 20 minutes the outside is nicely caramelized to a dark brown color and they are sweet and tender all the way through. Transfer to a warm dish and keep warm.
- Add a touch more oil to the pan and turn up the heat so that it sizzles.
- Lightly dust the liver with the seasoned flour and lay them in the pan. For liver nicely pink on the inside, turn after 2 minutes and cook the second side for just 1 minute.
- Transfer to a warm plate while you finish the sauce.
- Deglaze the pan with the vinegar, scraping up any crusty morsels from the base as the vinegar bubbles and reduces.
- When you have about a Tbsp of sauce left, trickle it over the liver.
- Heat up another small bit of oil and fry the sage leaves, turning them as they become crispy (this only takes a few seconds).
Here is something totally off the liver thing...pictures of the dogs!!!
See how much the puppy has grown...he's the 6 month old on the right!!!
This is why we have dogs...kids and their dogs have an incredibly precious bond. This is my youngest one just cuddling with the puppy!
Doesn't that salad looks great? Pitted kalamata olives, tomatoes, lettuce, red onion and lots of feta cheese!
