Black Sauce Liver

Liver!

I know, I know, most people hear or see liver and they panic. I used to do it, too! But honestly, liver is not bad at all, it can actually be pretty awesome! So far I’ve eaten lamb, calf and beef liver, each one stronger than the previous one. While I’ve found lamb liver to be the most palatable, the calf liver paté is pretty awesome with nut crackers.

Today’s recipe is lifted from the book “Secretos de la Buena Cocina”, a cooking book published in Mexico by Reader’s Digest. My grandma (R.I.P) got it and wrote notes in lots of the recipes, so I consider this my grandma’s cookbook. I got it as a present from my grandpa before I moved to Boulder.

We start by chopping the liver, bite sized pieces, and sprinkling it with salt and pepper. LOTS of salt and pepper. Like, I almost run out of pepper again lots of pepper. And salt.

Then we make the crust. The original recipe calls for flour and thyme. I usually just substitute the flour for almond flour but this time I had to use almond meal and basil, since I was out of the two. We coat all the liver with the crust. I’m usually pretty liberal about the amount of crust I prepare, since I like my liver well coated with herbs.

The trick with liver (and any organ meat, except for brains, those have special preparations) is to cook it through. In this case I fry it in butter for a long time, at least seven minutes. I prefer to overdo it a little bit, so it’s soft and easy to eat inside, rather than barely done and stringy.

We remove the liver, and in the same pan (remove the remnants of crust if you want) we put some water to boil, not too much. We add butter, and let it melt, low fire. When melt, we remove from fire and add aminos. I thought I had bought coconut aminos but I ended up buying the Bragg soy ones, which are not paleo but I use them so little I’m not sure it matters. Coconut aminos are best. I f you are interested, the original recipe calls for Worcestershire sauce, so if you have a paleo substitute that can go as well.

I like to strain the sauce.

I serve it in a bowl, with parsley for garnish, and since it’s in bite sized pieces I eat it with chopsticks!

The shout out of the day is to my grandma’s cookbook. The original book is old. Way old, and probably out of print. If you can find it it’ll be at a second hand store. It’s worth it.