Soul food, again...calf liver recipe

My pan gravy success from my previous blog entry had me thinking about typical soul/Southern foods. One of my favorite soul foods growing up was calf livers. Back in 1995, I suffered from severe anemia. One of the suggested foods I could infrequently eat in order to get more iron was liver. I recently had a physical and my iron levels were low, so I decided to eat some livers. Of course, liver isn't the only good source of iron. I just wanted some livers and getting the iron was an added bonus. 

I rarely take the time to fix livers myself even though they are very simple to prepare. I think one of the reasons so many people don't like the taste of liver is that they choose beef liver over calf liver. Beef liver has a strong flavor, whereas calf liver is milder. Due to this strong flavor, beef liver reminds people of its purpose more than calf liver does. Calf liver can sometimes be hard to come by, forcing people to select beef liver. I was lucky enough to find calf liver in the freezer section in the grocery store. Another reason people may be turned off by livers is that they have no idea how to fix them. Well, now you know how to prepare the delicious dish at least one way. So here we go...

Pan fried calf liver with onions and pan gravy

This dish is an old school classic. Whether you call it soul food or simply Southern food, it’s definitely comfort food. The wonderful thing about this dish is that it can be cooked in just one pan. If you are slightly anemic, as I am, this dish if chocked full of iron. Calf liver goes great with biscuits, hash browns, and eggs for breakfast. It also goes great with biscuits, mashed potatoes, and veggies for dinner.

1 package of calf liver

1 large onion (can be any kind or combination of kinds you enjoy as long as it’s the equivalent of one large one)

1 cup of milk (can be any amount of fat content)

1 cup of flour (2 Tablespoons reserved) 
3 Tablespoons of butter

½ cup white or red wine (cooking or regular) OR beef broth (each will have distinctly different flavors)
6 Tablespoons EVOO(extra virgin olive oil)

1 cup of water

Salt

Pepper

                                           The ingredients you will need (sans the water)

Defrost the package of calf liver. 

 
Place a large non-stick pan over medium high heat and add 3 tablespoons of EVOO to it. 

                                                          Olive oil in the pan heating

While the pan is heating, put the 1 cup of flour in a shallow dish, sprinkle with pepper, mix, and set aside. 

 Put the milk in a different dish. Thoroughly wash the livers and place them in the dish with the milk. Make sure the livers are completely covered with the milk, cover the dish, and set aside.   

Cut both ends of the onion off and remove the skin. With a large knife, slice the onion into round slices. Separate the slices. 

By now, your pan should be hot enough. Add the onion slices. 

                **You have a choice to make here. If you prefer to just have your onions “sweated” for a more mellow flavor, you can turn the heat down a bit, cover the pan with a piece of foil or a lid, and cook for about 1 to 2 minutes. You don’t need to move the onions around the pan with this method. “Sweated” onions have a gentler flavor and this method brings out the sweetness. If you prefer to cook your onions more, you can “sauté” them. This will give them a deeper flavor. If you want to sauté them, you will leave the pan uncovered, keeping the heat at medium high. Make sure to stir them periodically to assure that they don’t burn and are evenly cooked. You will see the onion slices turn from “cloudy” looking (raw) to translucent. Another option is to caramelize them. This will take more time. Reduce the heat down to medium. Don’t fuss with the onions until they start to brown. At this point, you should stir them so that the raw portions start to go through the browning process as well. Continue this process until the onions are brown all over. You may have to add more EVOO and lower the heat if they start to get too dry or start to stick to the pan (yes, food can stick in a non-stick pan). Make sure to stir the onions more frequently as they get darker in color so that they don’t burn. The caramelization process may take 20 or more minutes. OR, the last way you can cook your onions, is to just do what feels right to you. I tend to saute’ mine until they are slightly golden and somewhat similar to caramelizing, but not quite as brown as caramelized onions.

Once your onions are prepared the way you like, remove them from the pan, cover in a dish, and set aside. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of EVOO to the pan and make sure the heat is turned to medium high. Uncover the milk covered livers. As you remove the livers from the milk, lift them up and let as much milk as possible drain off. After each liver is drained, dredge it into the flour dish. Make sure each liver is completely covered in the flour. As you remove each liver from the flour dish, shake it a little to remove the excess flour. 

                                                     Livers getting coated in flour

Place each liver in the pan.

**Depending on the size of your livers and pan, you might have to fry them in batches. If you cram them all into the pan at once, they will not fry, but will steam. We want to fry them so they can a slightly crispy “crust” on the outside while sealing in the moisture. Over- frying them will make them too dry and possibly tough. If you crowd the pan, they will steam leaving you with a mess of flour in the pan. If you do prefer to steam them, you would omit the flouring process and cover your pan. I prefer to fry them and therefore sometimes have to cook them in two batches.

Fry the livers for approximately 5- 6 minutes on each side. With the heat at medium high and the thinness of the livers, this should be enough to cook them thoroughly. If you are not comfortable with that amount of time, you may add more time. Just remember that you don’t want to overcook them. Also, remember that eating under- cooking meat can be dangerous.

Once the livers are cooked, remove them from the pan, place in the dish with your onions, and cover. 

Now, you will make the gravy for your liver and onions.  Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of flour in the bottom of the pan. 

Add the 3 tablespoons of butter to the pan. As the butter starts to melt, move it around in the pan and over the flour.  

Once the butter is melted, start to scrape the bits from the bottom of the pan and make sure that the flour, butter, and bits are mixed. Stir constantly for two minutes. 

The concoction will start to brown. Even if it takes longer than the two minutes, just keep on stirring and make sure the mixture starts to brown in the pan. Add the wine, broth, or just water to the pan. 

**If you don’t have cooking wine you can use regular drinking wine, any kind of broth, or just water. The broths or wines will add a different layer of flavor to the gravy. Experiment with different things and create what flavors you enjoy.

 

As the gravy starts to bubble it will also start to thicken. This is when you add the 1 cup of water, a little at a time. You need to consider how much gravy you want to make and how thick you want it. Add enough water to make as much gravy as you need and the consistency that you want it. Keep stirring.

Once the gravy is the consistency and amount you want, add the liver and onions to the pan. Stir enough to make sure the gravy is completely covering the onions and liver and that everything is heated up.

You’re done!!! Serve with biscuits to “sop up” the gravy.

Enjoy!!!

Soul food...more than just food

Last weekend, Mr. Bourne went home to southwest Virginia for a visit with his family. During a call over the weekend, Mr. Bourne advised me that he had purchased a head of cabbage. When he returned to Charlottesville, he brought with him the largest head of cabbage I had ever seen. He showed me the cabbage and proudly declared that we would be having "soul food" one night this week. I knew the cabbage would take quite a while to prepare, so I decided to have soul food night on one in which he would be home later. This ended up being on Wednesday. We rarely have "soul food" and I wanted it to be a special experience. I immediately started planning what I wanted to prepare. Soul food night isn't one of the healthiest. I don't feel too guilty about that being that we do it so infrequently. I decided that we would have fried pork chops, fried cabbage with bacon, and refrigerator biscuits.

Wednesday morning I made my daily phone call to Mr. Bourne on the way to work. I started singing my daily song to him, but something was wrong. He usually laughs at my terrible singing. Since when had he become a music critic? I asked what was wrong, but he just said it was nothing. Feeling hurt that he didn't want to share what was truly wrong, I abruptly ended the conversation. Great...my morning was starting off just great. You see, when Mr. Bourne is in a good mood, it tends to put me in a good mood too. I have less to worry about when all is well with him. I wrote Mr. Bourne an email when I got into my office to tell him that if he wanted to talk about whatever was wrong, that I was there for him. He eventually said that he was just in a bad mood, had a lot to do, and was dreading the long work day ahead of him. Having resolved that, I decided to do something special for him. I added something to my soul food menu--sweet potato casserole!! For many years, Mr. Bourne and I celebrated Thanksgiving at home in Charlottesville. In recent years, we have gone out of town on the holiday and therefore my sweet potato casserole hardly ever sees the light of day. I knew this was going to do the trick and make his bad day improve by 100%.

Long story short, the meal was great. Everything was perfect. But, there was one particular part of the meal that I'm the proudest of. The gravy. I've never been able to successfully make "pan gravy". I can use a mix to make gravy. I can open a jar or can and heat up someone else's gravy. I have never been able to make my own gravy. Just like homemade biscuits, edible homemade gravy had eluded me...until this past Wednesday. For about two hours I sat at the computer researching how to make gravy. After looking at countless recipes online, I took the most common features and did a mash-up to experiment with. First of all, I would start by frying the pork chops (which were coated in a rub consisting of Cajun seasoning, garlic powder, and paprika and then coated in flour). I fried the pork chops in EVOO on medium high heat until they were golden brown on each side and then removed them from the pan. It was now or never. I lowered the heat just slightly, took a deep breath, and sprinkled enough flour in the bottom of the pan to coat it. I put in about 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter and moved it around in the pan with the spatula until it melted. Then I started the process that I had always failed at. I started scraping the bottom of the pan to mix the butter, flour, and left over drippings and bits from the fried pork chops (fancy folks call those bits of leftover stuff "fond"). From my research I learned to mix the ingredients around for two minutes. I don't know if you've ever really evaluated two minutes before, but it really can seem like a long time depending on the situation. I put Mr. Bourne in charge of keeping track of the two minutes, yet I asked him over and over if it had been two minutes. As if there was some magic going on, at about two minutes the concoction in the pan started to turn brown. This was something I had never been able to do before. My attempts at gravy had always left me with this terrible, floury, nasty gunk in the pan. But, not this time. This time everything was going great. Once the flour, butter,"fond" concoction started turning brown, I put in about 1/2 cup of white cooking wine. With the liquid in the pan, the ingredients started to bubble a little and thicken. I got nervous because I could see that there wasn't enough liquid. I put about 1 cup of water in a measuring cup and started to add a little bit at a time until it was the consistency of gravy..REAL, ACTUAL gravy!!! I put in a can of drained mushrooms and continued mixing.

I know this is going to sound corny, but I think I wanted to cry when I looked into that pan and I saw what was unmistakeably a mushroom gravy. I hadn't tasted it at this point, but it looked like the real thing, at least. This was the farthest I had ever gotten to having my "gravy" actually look like gravy. We plated up everything and I waited for Mr. Bourne to try the pork chops and gravy. I HAD DONE IT!!!! It was great. The white wine and mushrooms took my gravy to an entirely different level of goodness. I remembered every single detail of what I did so I could recreate it in the future.

OK...big deal, right? Why yes it is. There are a few reasons I told this story. I have tried and tried over the years to make gravy. Perhaps the planets were just aligned perfectly on Wednesday. I don't know. All I know is, I did it this time. Had I given up, I would have never known the satisfaction of making something so delicious. Although gravy is a simple thing to make, I had never been able to do it correctly. This time I did. How many times have you tried and tried only to fail and get discouraged about something? Did you give up or keep on trying? If you gave up, you may be missing the one time when it all falls into place, whatever works, you succeed, and learn the lesson that all of the trials were leading up to. Gravy may seem like a trivial thing to most. But, as my LONG tale shows, sometimes the little things mean so much. I have been smiling from ear to ear about this gravy. It was a small accomplishment, but a significant one to me. My gravy failures have been intertwined with so many other things. When I couldn't make that gravy over the years, I thought something was wrong with me. It's gravy for goodness sake! Something must have been wrong with me if I couldn't mix flour, water, and greasy bits together correctly. What I learned is that it was my patience that was being tested. That two minutes of mixing seemed like an eternity when waiting for something to work or not. In the past, those two minutes broke me. This time I saw how important it can be to be patient- great things can happen if you are. The last reason I wanted to tell this story is to share the recipe for making gravy. I know a lot of people my age who have no clue how to cook. Many of them don't know how to make some of the basic things. I think we get so bogged down in the failures that we are afraid to try. It's easier to pop open a can or jar than to watch a lumpy mess in a pan not even pretend to be gravy. It's hard on ones self esteem to fail. Successful cooking can be a real ego booster. To know that you can take care of yourself by cooking your own meals is empowering. As I learn, I'm going to pass this knowledge on through this blog. If nothing else, you all now know how to make gravy!