At the risk of turning this into the world’s worst sales pitch, I rather like the idea of eating offal. In the same way that hardcore recyclers feel smug about turning the ring pulls from coke cans into necklaces, I always feel somewhat smug about the idea of making myself a dinner based on what other people would consider to be rubbish.
In fact, lambs liver is one of my favourite bits of meat (after the duck breast, lamb chop and beef ribeye) and is probably the one most frequently hated due to really awful school dinners.
Liver, by avlxyz, under Creative Commons
Lambs liver cooked properly is moist, tender, and flavourful. Add bacon and a few spices and it’s just fantastic…
This should serve 4 people, although we tend to cut down the veggies a little and have it for 2 with a little leftovers.
- half a packet of streaky bacon
- 600g lambs’ liver
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1tsp garlic salt
- 1tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1tsp freshly ground nutmeg
- Some oil to fry in…
And for the gravy
- Some butter
- 3/4 cup apple juice
- 2tsp Worcestershire sauce
Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl. We’ll use this to flour the liver before it’s cooked.
Cut the bacon into thirds and then fry them in a little oil until they start to go crisp. Take them off the heat, but put them somewhere to keep warm.
Slice the liver, on the diagonal, into slices 5-15mm thick. The thicker you cut it, the longer it will take to cook, but the thinner you make it, the more batches you will need to cook. Since I like rare meat, I tend to go for something over 10mm.
Now, the next bit needs to be done fairly quickly because of the speed the liver cooks. Take pieces of liver and coat them in the flour. Put each piece of liver into the hot, oily frying pan, and cook it for between 30 and 60 seconds. As soon as it is looking cooked, turn it and do the other side for a similar time. When you can prod it without red juices seeping out, whip it out and put it with the bacon. You can cook quite a few pieces at once but don’t try and cook the whole lot at once.
Once all of the liver is cooked, add a couple of tablespoons of the coating flour to the pan with some butter, and add the juice and Worcester. scrape the pan a little to pick up some of the burnt on juices and you should end up with a rich sauce the colour of a pepper sauce you’d have with steak.
Server it up with the vegetables you already had waiting…
Tags: apple juice, bacon, liver, nutmey, pepper, savoury, worcestershire sauce
