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Calves Liver

During war time or times of real poverty causing food scarcity, it was imperative to be an inventive cook ..... either that or starve.

In those times of hardship, nothing was left to waste ... a pigs trotter here, a bag of ox tripe there, a lump of ox liver now and again and people appreciated the value of food and were glad of it.

Whilst we all love to watch celebrity cooks in action on our screens, there are precious few people that are prepared to actually spend any time trying out ingredients and techniques. We have become faddy and lazy in our eating experiences, relying upon supermarkets and fast food and takeaway joints to sustain us with mass market foods.

Today I am very disappointed both in our Western society's abilities to cook and to explore ingredients, but even more strangely ... people tend to decide that they already dislike something without necessarily being prepared to taste it on a single occasion. They may dislike it, but a refusal to taste something simply means that they are denying themselves some wonderful new flavours in the future.

Offal gets an undeservedly bad reputation and what a bad start it get's off to with its generic name - automatically suggesting that it is something 'awful'?

The truth is that Offal comes in many forms :
heart, lungs, kidney, sweetbreads, tripe, tails, feet, head and giblets (when referring to birds entrails), and you will find some very good information and recipes at http://www.offalgood.com/site/what-is-offal/.

Given the variety that offal offers, it is hard to believe that someone will dislike offal in every form it is available, and I am sure that many people simply have a stigma around eating it.

I was personally disinclined to return to liver in the past having eaten school liver and bacon casseroles with leathery, dry and powdery ox liver, overcooked and unable to be redeemed by any amount of gravy.

However, calves liver sliced around 1cm thick and lightly pan-fried in butter leaving it slightly pink in the middle, seasoned with a little twist of salt and pepper is a succulent revelation when compared to those school (and mum's) dinners.

Drizzle those buttery calves liver infused pan juices over the top and serve alongside a few Jersey Royal potatoes and some chantenay carrots and you have a veritable feast.

So ... please ask your local butcher for some offal and some tips on how to cook it and start giving Offal a good press and leave its 'awful' tag behind.

If your local butcher cannot provide you with Calves Liver, then a good mail order source of supply is Donald Russell . Food with Passion has used Donald Russell many times in the past and continues to do so. You will find a Food with Passion review of the Donald Russell Guinea Fowl Capon here and a full review of their calves liver will follow soon.

Food with Passion raved about Donald Russell's Guinea Fowl Capon .... although a full review of their calves liver is outstanding, the sneak preview is that this article was based upon the product as supplied by Donald Russell ..... scrummy!!