Chicken Livers

A roommate walked in on my cooking and asked, "Whatchya makin?"
"Chicken livers", I said, as I pulled these out of the oven where they were keeping warm.
"Omigosh they're so tiny!!"

I was so happy to know this love of tiny things is not a trait found only in Asians!

I'm not exactly certain why or how, but I've really gotten into eating chicken livers these past few months.

I usually dip them in a mixture of flour, salt, garlic powder and black pepper; then fry them in bacon fat thinned out with sunflower oil because I find bacon fat smokes easily.  (Or perhaps more accurately, sunflower oil flavoured with a bit of bacon fat.)

Handling the raw livers felt like handling a giant blood clot: kind of morbid, but really cool!  I don't like finding tough sinew in the finished product, so I do like to remove the yellow-white sinews, even if it takes extra time.  I haven't found a good way to remove them, other than to hold a paring knife in place and tug, but this affects the texture slightly.  I'm told this step is optional, though.

Chicken livers with red wine sauce and
caramelised onions with balsamic vinegar.

I absolutely love the livers with just a big sprinkle of coarse salt and a grind of black pepper at the end, or just tossed with freshly minced garlic; but sometimes, I like to have condiments, too.

If I'm not using a lot of oil, I'll sometimes deglaze the pan with whatever red wine I have open (lately it's been Merlot), thicken with a bit of flour, and add a big scoop of blackcurrant jelly.  Yes, blackcurrant jelly.  I find I need a BIG fruity flavour to contrast with the good-bitter, slightly metallic flavour of the livers.  I usually like a thin red wine sauce with meat, but the livers need a thick sauce that will really hold on, so this sauce usually takes on a gravy-like texture.

I also like them with caramelised onions in balsamic vinegar.

A while back, in late January, I noticed a bag of onions had been sitting in the kitchen for maybe two months, and were starting to actually mould!  I left a note to my roommates, "If those were your onions, I used most of them because they were starting to go bad.  If you had plans for them, please let me know and I'll buy you a new bag!"  Actually, I left three, because I figured that was a good number of onions to leave.

I made a small mistake of cutting the onion slices longitudinally instead of latitudinally.  The fibres run longitudinally, which tends to result in unappetising strings of onion pieces later.  I sauteed them in a Dutch oven with little oil and salt, then put the lid on and over the next hour or so, would pause my homework to stir them a bit and add a little splash of water to help them soften.

After tasting, I decided they weren't as sweet as I had dreamed, so I added a big splash of balsamic vinegar.  That hit the spot!



What didn't fit in the jar, I ate that night on a slice of homemade bread, with a smear of butter.  Mmm!

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