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Chickens' Livers en Brochette
Cut each liver in four pieces. Alternate pieces of liver and pieces of thinly sliced bacon on skewers, allowing one liver and five pieces of bacon for each skewer. Balance skewers in upright positions on rack in dripping-pan. Bake in a hot oven until bacon is crisp. Serve garnished with watercress.
A short entrée from the era when skewered morsels were served as a separate course. The whole thing turns on the bacon: it has to crisp before the liver overcooks, so slice it thin.
- "A hot oven"Generally read as somewhere in the region of 400-450F. The heat is what crisps the bacon fat before the liver dries out.
- BrochetteSimply the French for skewer. No special equipment is implied beyond metal skewers; soak wooden ones 30 minutes if that is what you have, though they will scorch at this temperature.
- Balancing upright on the rackThe point is that fat drips away and the pieces cook on all sides without sitting in grease. In a modern kitchen it is easier to lay the skewers across the rim of a rimmed sheet pan or on a wire rack set inside one.
- Bacon must be thinStandard supermarket bacon is often thicker than this recipe wants and may still be flabby when the liver is grey. Ask for thin-cut, or stretch each rasher with the back of a knife before wrapping.
- Liver donenessCooked to firm and uniformly brown they turn chalky, which is the usual reason people say they dislike liver.
- Prep the liversTrim the connective tissue and any green-tinged bile-stained patch, which is bitter. Pat them very dry or the bacon will steam rather than crisp.
- YieldOne liver and five bacon pieces per skewer means roughly two skewers per person as an entrée course, four as a light main with the watercress and bread.
- The watercressNot decoration only. Its pepperiness cuts the fat, so dress it with a little lemon or vinegar rather than serving it plain.
Skewered bits of liver and bacon browned at high heat belong to a whole family of en brochette dishes that appeared in American cookbooks in the 1880s and 1890s, when French service and French terminology were the mark of a well-run table. In The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book they sit in the Entr tes chapter, meaning a small made dish served between fish and roast in a formal dinner rather than the main course the word now implies. The recipe also reflects plain thrift: chicken livers were a by-product of drawing poultry at home, saved up and stretched with bacon into something that could be presented as company food. Watercress, cheap and widely available from spring watercourses and market gardens, was the standard garnish of the period for anything rich.