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Veal Liver in Gravy
(Fegato di vitella al sugo) Chop fine a scallion or an onion, make it brown in oil and butter, and when it has taken a dark red color, throw in the liver cut in thin slices.
When half cooked season with salt, pepper and a pinch of chopped parsley. Make it simmer on a low fire so that the gravy remains, and serve in its gravy, squeezing over some lemon juice when sent to the table.
In this and in similar cases, when using scallions or onions, some advise putting these in a cloth after being chopped and dip them in cold water squeezing them dry after. 84
A short, unmeasured Italian home preparation of the kind that assumes the cook can judge a pan by eye. The whole dish stands or falls on how briefly the liver stays over heat.
- The hinge: cook it barelyThin slices of calf's liver need only a few minutes in all, and the recipe's "simmer on a low fire" is aimed at keeping the gravy rather than stewing the meat. Liver held past faintly pink in the centre turns grainy and metallic and no amount of lemon will bring it back.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four people, figure about 1 lb (450 g) of liver, one medium onion or three or four scallions, and roughly 2 tablespoons oil with 1 tablespoon butter.
- "Veal liver"Fegato di vitella is calf's liver — pale and mild. Beef liver is the usual substitute but is stronger and coarser; if using it, slice it no thicker than 1/4 inch.
- SlicingAsk for it cut about 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick and peel off the thin outer membrane, which shrinks and curls the slices in the pan. Pat the slices dry so they colour rather than steam.
- Salt timingThe instruction to season only when half cooked is deliberate and worth keeping. Salt draws moisture to the surface and prevents browning, and early salting is traditionally blamed for toughening liver.
- The onion in a clothWrapping chopped onion in cloth and rinsing it in cold water washes away some of the sulphur compounds, giving a milder, sweeter result. A fine sieve under the cold tap and a hard squeeze in a towel does the same job.
- "A dark red color"This means the onion cooked well past translucent to a deep russet — several minutes over medium heat. Take it slowly; scorched onion will make the finished gravy bitter.
- The gravyThere is no added liquid, so the sauce is only the pan juices, fat and onion. If the pan runs dry, a spoonful of water or dry white wine off the heat will loosen it; the lemon goes on at the table, not in the pan.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written to introduce American households to everyday Italian cooking, and much of it reads as a condensed English rendering of the domestic repertoire codified by Pellegrino Artusi a generation earlier. Liver cooked simply with onion is one of the oldest and most widespread of those dishes — the Venetian fegato alla veneziana is its best-known form, and versions using oil, butter or both appear across the peninsula. The finishing squeeze of lemon is a common Italian treatment for offal, its acidity cutting the richness of the organ meat, and the recipe also calls for rinsing the chopped onion in a cloth.