Liver and Onions

As a child this meal was received with more than its share of trepidation. The featured entree was always tough, dry and overdone. The only way to choke it down was to cover it in bacon and onions. Ketchup may have been involved too. Jill and I both recall a macabre preoccupation with tapeworm - the result being a well done childhood. 

Anyway, as an adult I’ve acquired a taste for this as long as it was delicately sautéed, not over done, served with bacon and onions. And in a restaurant. 

Before the lockdown I purchased a package of frozen calf liver on a whim. I was thinking - ‘this might make for a fun experiment.’ I have never prepared it myself. Ever.
As a consequence of the emergency we’ve been living off of whatever we find in the freezers and Jill suggested I make this. 

Using my Mom’s 1941 Settlement Cookbook (The Way to a Mans Heart) as a guide I knocked this out of the park. A delicate sauté (medium to medium rare) with lots of garden onion and Marchant’s smoked bacon. Of course bacon fat was involved and the spuds were done in duck fat. So this man’s heart gets two statins at bedtime. 

I would also point out that Mrs. Simon Kander specifically says in the book: ‘too long cooking makes liver tough and dry.

Raising a toast to quarantine cooking. May we all emerge on the other side of this svelte and fit.

Sunset tonite is bonus!