Offal? Awful
Lily-Livered
 |
| “Foie”. Nouveau Larousse illustré, circa 1900 |
Morning tea time. Those present are
mostly retirees, volunteers. They’re almost but not quite over the weakness of
the way I like my tea—still get the occasional comment on it. I could comment on their dark orange brew—
Just shut up and try to blend, Katy!
How the topic of offal comes up do not
ask me. It's not something I'd have raised, I don’t want to stick me neck out.
The word “liver” is mentioned.
“UGH!” they all go, shuddering.
What? It's not even as if they’re all members of the Anglo-Saxon
majority! Oh, forget it. It's the nice middle-class syndrome. Goes with the kitchen
drawer-liners.
Since Gégé showed me how to cook liver—in a past life, right—I’ve been a
great fan of it. In France it was always foie
de veau and I never asked if it was milk-fed, because the nice English
papers were already very down on that concept—it seemed to get coupled with
fox-hunting, not sure how—and I'd have had to get on my Anglo-Saxon high horse
about it, if it was. He very kindly spared me the horse-meat “steaks”
(paper-thin slices), however: he knew the British Commonwealth did not eat horse.
It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that liver, for
centuries a British favourite, along with tripe and other sorts of offal, fell
out of favour in the Antipodes. Today most people shudder if you mention it, my
nice ladies are merely representative of the vast majority.
The Written Word
Trace the history of liver since the
middle of the 20th century through the English-language cookery books, and it’s
a real laugh. Doesn’t relate to perceived reality, at all. The writers kept on
advocating it, meanwhile the public was avoiding it more and more...
I'm not talking about pâté, mind
you. Since about the 1980s that’s become very
nice. The slimier the better. One serves it on unspeakable crackers as
God-knows-what, um, hors d’oeuvre?
Stan the Man (that past life again) used to call them “horses’ doovers,” and he
wasn't far wrong. It also features at really foul parties where you don’t get
to sit down. I’d call them cocktail parties only I don’t think the expression ever
reached the Tropic of Capricorn—the drinks certainly didn’t. Red or white wine,
possibly not technically Château Cardboard, but that level.
You don’t believe pâté’s still very nice in the 21st century? Then get a load of “Grilled Brioche with Pâté
and Caramelised Fig” (Donna Hay Magazine,
Issue 42, Dec. 2008-Jan. 2009). What you do, see, you slice up a brioche, toast
it in a pan, having brushed it with butter, bung the pâté on, type unspecified,
so it’s bought slime from a plastic carton for sure, slice up some fresh figs
and caramelise them in a bit of sugar and pop them on the top. Very nayce
indeed. Especially the brioche, wot has to be translated for youse yobs: “Brioche
is a slightly sweet bread made with eggs and butter. You can buy loaves of
brioche from supermarkets and bakeries.” (Not in my local Foodland you can't,
but these days you can’t even buy bread there unless you belt in at 9 in the
morning. Dunno who they think they’re serving, but it ain’t the public.)
I'm not exaggerating—though, true, this is one of the nuttier canapé recipes
in this mag. God knows what was the inspiration. As if to prove brioches aren’t
that available, the accompanying pic has used what looks very like sliced white bread: the substance is much, much
closer-textured than cooked brioche dough should be. This is a glowing example
of an extremely la-de-da vision of modern Australian middle-class life. Yuck!
Please don't rush out and buy an up-market brand of potted pâté just to
prove me wrong about the slime thing. I tried some just the other day—my online
grocery sent some freebies with my last order, desperate to get rid of the
stuff, one can only presume. The thing was so-called duck with orange. The pâté
itself was very, very, very smooth (slime, right), highly scented (best bet,
juniper berries with some thyme) and extremely—extremely—sweet. Where the orange came in was not discernible to
the taste buds, though the half-centimetre of stiff jelly it was covered in was
certainly a fruity dark orange colour. You couldn’t taste the liver, though
maybe that was the object of the exercise. Yeah, thanks for that, posh lady
that gave your name to it.
No, I’m talking about liver qua
liver. In large blobby damp lumps, very raw.
In the Far-Distant Past...
Isabella’s Liver
Of course Isabella Beeton is going to tackle
liver, she tackled everything, bless her. She has several recipes for pork
liver, including “PIG'S LIVER (a Savoury and Economical Dish)” which bakes the
liver and “lights” (lungs) with some bacon, onion, parsley and sage. Most of
her liver recipes, however, are in the section on veal. This one is definitely
the most appealing:
CALF'S LIVER AUX FINES
HERBES & SAUCE PIQUANTE.
880.
INGREDIENTS.—A calf's liver, flour, a bunch of savoury herbs, including
parsley; when liked, 2 minced shalots; 1 teaspoonful of flour, 1 tablespoonful
of vinegar, 1 tablespoonful of lemon-juice, pepper and salt to taste, 1/4 pint
water.
Mode.—Procure
a calf's liver as white as possible, and cut it into slices of a good and equal
shape. Dip them in flour, and fry them of a good colour in a little butter.
When they are done, put them on a dish, which keep hot before the fire. Mince
the herbs very fine, put them in the frying-pan with a little more butter; add
the remaining ingredients, simmer gently until the herbs are done, and pour over
the liver.
Time.—According
to the thickness of the slices, from 5 to 10 minutes. Average cost, 10d. per lb. Sufficient
for 7 or 8 persons. Seasonable from
March to October.
Boot-Liver in the Antipodes
At the end of the 19th century the
Antipodean cook wasn't afraid of liver, though perhaps she should have been. Here’s
Mrs Wicken’s take on it (The Art of
Living in Australia, 1894):
Fricassee of Liver
Half a
Calf's Liver; 1 1/2 oz. Butter; 1 Carrot; Lemon Juice; 1 Onion; 1 oz. Flour; 1
pint of Gravy; Parsley; Pepper and Salt
Total Cost—6d.
Time—One Hour
Wash and
slice up the liver, and dip in the flour; fry very lightly and quickly in the
butter and lay in a saucepan. Slice up the carrot and fry in the same butter.
Stir in the gravy, boil up, and pour over the liver; simmer very gently for one
hour, then dish carefully. Season the gravy with salt, pepper, and lemon juice;
boil up and pour over it. Serve hot.
Gégé would have had a fit at the idea
of simmering liver for an hour! If you want little bits of
greyish boot-leather, this is the way to go. Sorry, Mrs W., you bombed here.
Liver à la Bourgogne à l’Américaine
The American book, 365 Foreign Dishes: A Foreign Dish for Every
Day in the Year (Philadelphia, 1908) has three recipes for liver, including
this one:
Liver à la Bourgogne
Season a
calf's liver with salt and pepper; put a few slices of bacon in a saucepan; let
get very hot. Add the liver, 1 onion, 1 carrot, 2 bay-leaves and 2 sprigs of
thyme minced fine; cover and let brown a few minutes. Then add 1 glass of
sherry wine, salt and pepper and sprinkle with flour. Let simmer ten minutes.
It doesn't cook the vegetables long
enough, obviously. And sherry is Spanish,
nothing to do with Burgundy. Oh, well. Not a bad try. But slice and dry the
liver first!
Canopian Liver?
This book’s other two recipes are “German
Liver Dumplings” and what would be a pâté
en croûte, “Egyptian Meat-Pie,” if only it was to be eaten cold, not hot!
No, I can’t see what's Egyptian about it, but apparently “liver” meant Egyptian
in traditional cordon bleu-inspired
English-language cookery books right up into the 1960s! The Larder Chef, by M.J. Leto and W.K.H. Bode (London, Heinemann,
1969) offers a gem of an Egyptian salad with chicken livers:
Meanwhile, Back in the
Home Kitchen
The books of course represent the
literate end of the spectrum. Liver and onions, or liver and bacon, simply
fried, were standards in the British home cookery tradition for years.
In fact, these dishes were such everyday fare that it’s a surprise to
find Australian cooks being offered an actual recipe in the Green and Gold Cookery Book around 1949.
It’s listed as a breakfast recipe. We didn't have fried food at home, the
occasional fritter was as fried as it got, but throughout the 1950s and well
into the 1960s liver and onions or liver with bacon remained standard fare to
such cooks as Mrs D. down the road, but not for breakfast, for tea (“dinner”
these days, in refined circles). It is not easy to cook liver well and this
recipe for “Liver and Bacon,” in common with most recipes of its time, assumes
that you have a lot of background knowledge:
Liver and Bacon
One lamb's
fry 1/2 lb. bacon
1 oz. flour 1 teaspoon salt
quarter
teaspoon pepper parsley
Soak the fry
in cold salted water for half an hour. Cut in pieces one inch thick, wash well
and dry thoroughly. Coat with seasoned flour. Remove rind from bacon and scald
if necessary. Heat fryingpan and cook bacon in its own fat. [Remove.] If necessary add more fat and
cook liver 10 to 12 minutes. Place liver in centre of dish, bacon round edge.
Pour over gravy and garnish with chopped parsley.
To Make Gravy: Carefully drain off fat,
stir in the remainder of seasoned flour, and brown well. Add gradually half
pint stock or water and boil for three minutes. -A.L.S.
If you forget to remove the bacon you
end up with bits of salty cardboard. And “A.L.S.” doesn't specify how hot the
pan should be: I’d say medium heat. When she talks about seasoned flour she means
mix the salt and pepper with the ounce of flour. NB, if you add this amount of
salt the dish will be far too salty—not that the modern Australian diet isn't.
Going Up-Market
Robin
McDouall’s Cookery Book for the Greedy,
1965, a reprint of his 1955 Collins
Pocket Guide to Good Cooking, was a vain attempt to reintroduce the post-War
cooks of the Commonwealth to really good food. A small minority would have read
it and adored it—the same people who were reading Elizabeth David, and could
actually afford, not to say find, the ingredients. The rest never knew it
existed.
It shows its origins in the
traditional chefly, vaguely cordon bleu,
Escoffier-inspired approach of the much older cookery books in English written
by men, but as well many of the recipes are either traditional British food (to
be reprised by Jane Grigson some years later in her English Food) or the cream, so to speak, of the European cuisines.
Thus “Gaspacho” and “Avgolemono” jostle “Cocky-Leeky Soup,” and “Cèpes à la
bordelaise” neighbours “Cauliflower Cheese.” For pudding we can choose “Pets de
nonnes,” “Zabaglione (Sabayon),” “Prune Mould,” “Flower Fritters” or “Rice
Pudding”! Many of the recipes are simple, others are quite complex, and there
are lots of instructions for the basic preparation of various foodstuffs.
Here’s his very simple recipe for calves’ liver. It suffers from the
English parsley syndrome, but otherwise it’s not bad. Try doing it as Gégé
often did, with a little dried thyme added to the pan. (Well, French thyme: it
comes in tiny dry bushes, and you strip the leaves off the twigs straight into
the pan.) Again, the pan shouldn’t be too hot or the liver will burn on the
outside and not cook through. It should be still moist and just pinkish in the
middle.
Calves’ Liver (Foie de
veau)
(Serves
4)
Cut a pound
of calves’ liver into slices about a quarter of an inch thick. Wash them and
dry them; season and dip them in flour. Fry them on both sides in butter or
bacon fat. Take them out and drain them. Garnish with chopped parsley. Serve
with them, if you like, rashers of bacon, cut very thin, fried in a very little
fat or grilled until they are crisp, and then drained of all grease.
Robin McDouall also has a recipe for
“Foie de veau au vin rouge”, but as it makes a sauce and then simmers raw bits
of liver in it I don’t recommend it. Maybe he could bring it off but I doubt
that anyone else could.
And More So: Not
Cookery, Cuisine
By the 1970s the kweezine syndrome had
begun to rear its ugly head: to be good, food had to be fancy. Josceline Dimbleby’s
“Calves' Liver with Gooseberry Sauce” (A
Taste of Dreams, 1976) fries the liver, adds gently fried onions and
tomatoes—not bad so far—and then souses the lot in a sauce made with tinned
gooseberries, sherry, mint and, as if your taste buds weren’t already shrieking
in pain, capers! A dream? More like a nightmare.
Ya see, to be up-market, it’s gotta be mucky. The up-market cooks of the
21st century would learn that lesson off their up-market mums and grandmas.
Of course, foreign cuisine was also up-market. Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food was first
published in 1968 (London, Nelson), republished in paperback in 1970 and
reprinted in the middle of the 1970s, by which time it had become the
English-language authority on the cuisine of the Middle East. She's got several
recipes for liver, including two which use vinegar in the sauce (one Sephardic,
one Lebanese), and one for fried liver which marinates the liver pieces first in
an oil and vinegar mixture which is a dead ringer for a vinaigrette. Don’t ask me why vinegar is associated with liver—Mrs
Beeton does it, too. I’ve had this book for years but I've never been game to
try liver with vinegar, thanks all the same, Claudia. Her Albanian recipe is
better: small pieces tossed in flour and paprika before frying, then extra
paprika in the hot oil drizzled on the result.
Judging by the cookbooks which
followed, none of these efforts to reintroduce liver in a fancy frame had any
result.
Back to Basics?
Huey’s “Lamb’s Fry & Bacon” (on Huey’s
Kitchen, http://www.hueyskitchen.com.au,
2011) is a classic English-style version of liver and bacon. This is an
exception to the desperate modern attempts to make liver up-market. “Huey”
frequently offers old-fashioned standard recipes like this, alongside his much
trendier, more up-market ones. He is a New Zealander, though based in
Australia, and his recipes often reflect his heritage. The so-called “lambs'
fry” was always available in New Zealand butchers' shops when I was a kid,
because hogget and mutton were standard fare.
Lamb’s What?
By the time Huey was calling liver
“lamb’s fry” the usage had entered into the vernacular. But don’t be misled by
Mrs Beeton’s recipe for “lamb’s fry”: this is “fry” in the intensely
mealy-mouthed sense given in the OED, “the product of lamb castration”—balls,
Inspector. The method of cooking them is very similar to the standard method
for brains, which is to boil lightly first, then you can fry them, with or
without seasoned flour or breadcrumbs.
How the phrase came to be used solely for lamb’s liver in Antipodean
butcheries, I cannot tell, but I do remember our butcher having liver under
this name when I was a kid. Ruder parts of the animal had disappeared entirely
by the middle of the 20th century: the recipe above from the Green and Gold Cookery Book is already
using “Lamb’s Fry” to mean liver in about 1949.
Going, Going... Gone. Totally
Up-Market
Today offal is typically revived only
in very up-market recipes with lots of fancy ingredients, like this shocker: “Seared
Calves Liver with Persillade and Parsnip Mash.” What? Yep, this appears in The
Australian Women's Weekly's 680-odd-page, 2006 compendium Cook: the one recipe they can dredge up
for liver (p. 242). (Don't buy this book! It's dreadful.)
Where do I start? Well, for
one thing, parsnip and asparagus? The two tastes swear at each other! But
calves’ liver? Pull the other one. It's almost impossible to get calves’ liver
in Australia. It’s nearly always ox liver, not properly cleaned and trimmed,
with giant veins left in it. No wonder most people are put off for life.
From the Ridiculous to
the Sublime
How do I eat liver? (When I can get
it, yeah.) Well, the method I got off Gégé in Paris is still the best: fry the
slices quickly in oil on a medium-high heat, adding a little thyme or garlic if
available. Then remove the liver from the pan, add an excellent tinned
vegetable, well drained—petits pois
or salsifis were his favourites—rapidly
heat through and serve together. Or you could lightly boil or steam some young
green beans and add them. But for variety, try this:
Hot Liver with Sweet
Peppers
(Serves
2)
250 to 300 g
beef or pork liver
1 sweet red
pickled pepper (capsicum) (or 1/2 big one)*
1 chopped
onion 2 cloves garlic
1/2-3/4
teaspoon hot pepper sauce (e.g. Tabasco)
2-3
tablespoons oil salt &
pepper
1. If using
Australian liver it will be very poorly butchered. Clean it of all veins, thick
skin and stringy bits. Chop into pieces about 2 by 4 cm.
2. Warm the
oil in a frying pan or electric frypan on a moderate heat, add the chopped
onion and sauté gently till transparent.
3. Add the
chopped garlic and mix well.
4. Add the
liver and stir until all sides are coloured and lose their raw look. Keep pan
on medium-low heat, cook about 10 mins or until liver is cooked but still
softish inside.
5. Add
sliced pepper, Tabasco, salt and pepper, stir in well to warm through.
* You could
use a fresh capsicum, grilled, with the skin removed. The effect is different
but nice.
