Liver, Bacon, Mash and red cabbage

Hello!

Happy weekend to all of you; I hope a few of you tried last night's emergency burgers. Mine turned out stellar (IMNSHO) :P

See below for the full recipe for this Saturday's evening meal. Hope your cabbage is settled in the fridge nicely; if not a) shame on you for not listening to me, b) shame on you for not listening to me, c) there's still a few hours to get it done in, so start ASAP.

Post how it went in the space below; don't forget to select a profile to post as. Anon, google+ etc. I look forward to hearing how it went!

Yours in food, 

BenY

Liver, Bacon, mash and red cabbage.

Overview:

This is a real favourite of mine. It’s earthy and metallic from the liver, salty from the bacon, sumptuous from the mash and the red cabbage cuts through the richness and adds a really great sauce. Let’s clear some things up first; liver is not scary or disgusting. It is genuinely delicious; if I can convert my own mother to eating liver, you’ll be fine. If you follow the steps below, you’ll have perfect liver with crispy floury crust. If you decide to wing it, cook it for ages or generally be disobedient bloggers, expect no sympathy when you sit your husband/wives/friends/victims to your meal of Clarks leather in-soles with mash and bacon. (That was for you Charlotte Payne)

Serves 4.

Ingredient list:

Ox/calve’s liver 1 pack

Bacon 8 rashers

Maris Piper Potatoes 4, largest size

1 red cabbage

Larder list:

250ml of red wine, cheap is fine (keep a bottle in your larder for future use…or drinking if you’re a student/ignorant like I am)

2 Shallots

1 chicken stock cube/Knorr stock pot …with 100ml water

Butter

Sugar (to taste)

Vinegar (a wine based vinegar is best. Always have it in your cupboard.)

Salt & Pepper…obviously

Flour

1 standard pack of liver from your super market will feed 4 with ease. If you want to be posh, get calves’ liver. If you’re normal, get Ox liver; Calves’ liver is £5-6 per pack, Ox liver is about 80-90p per pack. You do the math(s). Do NOT use lamb’s livers because lamb’s liver tastes foul. Pig’s liver can work instead if there is no ox liver. Maris Piper potatoes are being used here as I like to add quite a large amount of butter, so no need for too waxy potatoes. The red cabbage can be made in advance and can be frozen indefinitely. We had red cabbage from 3 years ago for Christmas last year, tasted great and no one died. On the bacon front, try and get really good quality bacon. Avoid anything with the word value on it, you may as well be buying tap water as that stuff is full of it to bulk out the weight. NU-UH!

READ THE RECIPE THROUGH FIRST BEFORE YOU START COOKING! I’m not Jamie Oliver so I’ll cover my bases the first time round, rather than wait for a sack full of complaints from mums with insecurities about cooking.

Cabbage: AT LEAST 1 day before (that’s Friday to you and me)

Chop the shallots finely, as fine as you can get them without them being classed as a liquid. Add 1 knob of butter in a cold pan to get it started. Let this melt down over a gentle heat before adding the shallots. Sweat these off before adding the cabbage. The cabbage should be SLICED thinly into even strips so it will cook fairly evenly. To this, add the wine, a table spoon of white/red wine vinegar and a little chicken stock; cube is fine, Knorr stockpots are better. Quote Marco Pierre White; “your choice.” Leave the lid off and reduce the cabbage down. This is the point where I let you loose with the sugar. Can I trust you? 3 tea spoons of sugar normally does it for me, but depending on the wine you choose it may vary. Keep reducing until the cabbage is dark and the liquor is deep and velvety. Add a knob of butter to assist the velvety-ness. Leave to cool, seal in a Tupperware and set in the fridge. It needs an overnight stint in the fridge to let the flavours get to know each other a bit.

Mash:

People always moan to me about lumpy mash. There is no excuse not to be able to make decent lump-free mash. There are children in India who can make shoes; not hard.

Dice your 4 potatoes into even 1cm cubes (obviously these are approximations. Don’t go all Heston and get your ruler out…) and put in boiling, lightly salted water. Cook these until you can fish one out with a fork and apply gentle pressure, watching the cube crumble into light, fluffy crumblets. Strain these off immediately and leave the lid on for 5 mins or so to let them rest. The steam will continue to break down the potatoes until they are perfect. Add a good pinch/tea spoon of salt and large knob of butter. Then mash furiously with a masher; if you have a silicon masher which won’t ruin your pans, alternate between whipping the mash in a figure of eight and mashing downwards. After this, take a wooden spoon and figure of eight it again. By this point it should be smooth as Alex Lanyon’s dance moves. (The answer is VERY smooth)

Liver: WHILST THE POTATOES ARE BOILING

Take the liver out of the packets and dry each piece individually with kitchen paper. This will take out the excess blood, leaving the liver nice and dry for flouring. Then dust the liver in flour and give it a good coating, before removing the excess. DO NOT SEASON NOW!!! It will make the liver go all porous and draw the moisture out, by moisture I mean blood and water- messy and will form a claggy layer around the liver when it mixes with the flour. However, the flour won’t look perfect by any means so do not worry if you think it MAY be going claggy. Chances are you’re fine.

Sort your bacon out at this point.

Heat a pan with some sunflower oil. The pan should be for frying, wide based and heavy bottomed. I think the Americans call it a ‘skillet’ so whatever comes up on Google Images if you search skillet, use one of those. Don’t over crowd the pan as the liver will start sticking to each other; cover the surface of the pan, but not so liver is sitting on top of liver. Fry for 90 seconds each side, adding butter after you turn the slices. Baste the liver with the browning butter-oil mixture to keep the top cooking. This will result in succulent, not too pink liver, which is best compromise for the foodie and the squeamish.

Bacon: best grilled, good fried.

Heat your grill and stick that bacon on a greased tray. Sunflower oil is best as it has a higher boiling temperature than butter. This will turn your bacon into glass-like shards of salty crunch. Yummy! Don’t forget to turn half way; also note that there is a fine line between burnt and golden brown. See Google Images for details. This should take around 8 minutes in total, so do this before frying the liver and before mashing the mash.

To serve: doesn’t matter what it looks like, just not like a dog has been sick on a plate.

Reheat some of your red cabbage and spoon some onto the plate, the mash should go next to it. On top, put your liver with your bacon-glass sitting proudly on top. Season the liver at this point, rather than before cooking for reasons mentioned above. If you have soggy liver, it is your fault for not reading this recipe through first. Drizzle over some of those delicious Red-Cabbage juices and serve hot.

Enjoy! Do let me know how you got on. I’ll post some pictures of mine if I get this bloody phone to work.

BenY