Pan-fried calf’s liver, bacon and caramelised onions with buttery spinach, parsley Pommes Château, crispy shallot rings and a rich red wine sauce

Well this is an old classic, init! Liver’n onions. A hearty supper and everyone’s favourite, or nightmare. These days we don’t appreciate offal enough but this saucy and sumptuous incarnation is a right head-turner. I mean, come on! Tell me that meat doesn’t look delicious. And look at those onions! And the shine on that sauce—it’s like a cabaret glitter ball; you could do your make-up in it.

Like all sauces this one’s a labour of love and well worth the effort. It’s stonkingly rich, a little sweet and would work well with venison or some beefy beef like onglet or a steak dry-aged for 35 days or more. Being honest, this whole dish is rich. Liver is a rich meat and the onions are sweet and sticky, caramelised in their own sugar. That said, liver is a nutritional powerhouse, low in calories and packed with protein, vitamins and minerals. It is high in cholesterol though but that’s not an issue for many people.

“Sauces help the cook feed our perpetual hunger for stimulating sensations, for the pleasures of taste and smell, touch and sight. Sauces are distillations of desire.’”

— Harold McGee

There’s no rushing a sauce. And creating one isn’t simply throwing complementary ingredients together. A sauce requires time and TLC. Depth of flavour comes from building layers of flavour compounds through careful treatment of each ingredient at different stages in the process. This can be to bring out sweetness, heighten acidity, add some bitterness or develop umami. Only then does a sauce become greater than the sum of its parts. Flavour first and appearance follows. How does it feel in the mouth? How does it look on the plate? Texture. Clarity. Colour. Sheen. There’s just no compromising with a sauce. It’s gotta taste fab and look frikkin’ awesome.

And on that note…to the sauce.

Beef bones were roasted then beef trimmings were added and browned in the oven. The bones and trimmings were drained from the pan removing the excess oil. Diced onion went into the pan, heat down low and lid on. The onion steamed, lifting the sucs from the bottom of the pan. Lid off. Heat back up. Carrot, leek, celery and pancetta were added and caramelised. Star anise in. Mushrooms too, cooked to brown and their liquid evaporated. At this point all the vegetables were decanted and reserved with the bones and beef trimmings. Next, port, Madeira and brandy went into the same pan and were reduced by half. Red wine in and reduced by half again. The browned vegetables, beef trimmings and bones were added back along with tomato concasse, chicken stock, black peppercorns, fresh thyme and bay leaf. The stock infused just below a simmer for around 3 hours, diligently skimming all the way. The sauce was passed through damp muslin cloth and returned to the hob in a clean pan with chopped parsley and lemon juice. Once it had reduced to a coating consistency it was passed again and set aside until service.

With the sauce happening, the liver was cut into 1cm thick slices and any veins or tube walls carefully removed. Into the fridge. The liver would be cooked à la minute. Don’t forget to pull the liver out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking to let it come up to room temperature.

It’s Jersey Royals season. Woohoo! Such a beautiful potato with a uniquely nutty flavour, firm texture and delicate skin. For me they’re most delicious when treated simply. Ok I went a bit cheffy and turned them into Pommes Château—7 sides, 6cm long and 3.5cm wide in the middle, but basically they were plopped into cold salted water and brought slowly up to a very gentle simmer; barely bubbling. Once cooked they were air dried and reserved in the fridge.

Thinly sliced onions were sweated down in butter over a low-medium heat with the lid on—until tender and translucent; stirring occasionally. I like to add a pinch of salt at the start to encourage the juices. The lid was then removed and the heat turned up to medium so the onion juice evaporated and the onions started to caramelise. It’s a good idea to stir every few minutes to prevent burning and ensure the Maillard reaction is distributed. Veal stock was added and reduced until the onions were brown and melted and sticky.

Pancetta was cut into lardons and cooked slowly over a low-ish heat in a dry pan. This gently rendered the fat and gave the lardons a little colour as they just crisped up. You don’t want crunchy bacon bits. You want tender, juicy and ever so slightly crispy cubes of bacony goodness.

Right, almost there.

For service, the potatoes were warmed through in clarified butter and a squeeze of lemon juice, lightly seasoned and sprinkled with parsley. Frankly awesome on their own, hot or cold. Yum. Meanwhile the lardons warmed up in the oven. The liver was seasoned, dusted lightly with flour, and fried in a little olive oil over a high heat for 1 minute. The liver was then turned over and basted with foaming butter for another minute before resting out of the pan. Go another minute on the first side if you don’t want your liver pink. At the same time, spinach leaves were wilted in butter and seasoned with salt and white pepper. Spinach likes pepper. The plate was garnished with crispy shallot rings freshened up with a few broccoli sprouts, just for the hell of it. Boom. Cue mic drop.

Calf's liver, onions and bacon