Food Interlude IV: Chopped Liver

It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I don't understand the meaning of the old saying, "What am I, chopped liver?" I get it; liver is very cheap meat, and chopped liver mixes liver with even cheaper ingredients, resulting in a low-budget product.

My problem is that good chopped liver is delicious. As in, to-die-for delicious. There are times when I want nothing so much as a good chopped liver sandwich, or even just a bissel chopped liver spread on half a bagel, zeit azoy gut. So for me, that old saying recalls the song Tramp by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, in which Carla attempts to insult Otis by saying, "Otis, you're pure country," and Otis happily replies, "That's good!" What am I, chopped liver? That's good! At least I'm not turkey loaf, or Spam, or headcheese, or blutwurst (a food that truly puts the "worst" is "wurst").

Chopped liver is an elemental food for me, one that straddles two important strands in my life. The first is my upbringing in an insular Jewish community; the second is my later foray into the glorious universe of international cuisine. Until I encountered chopped liver in this second incarnation, I thought the first was the alef and the tof. Now I know better.

My 'traditional' chopped liver recipe comes from my Aunt Carole. She learned it from her mother, who is not my grandmother because my Aunt Carole isn't really my aunt; she's my mother's best friend from before I was born, so she's always been Aunt Carole even though, as previously noted, she is not my aunt, at least not genetically. Now, my Aunt Carole insists that this recipe can only be prepared with cow's liver, but--and PLEASE don't tell her this--I have made this recipe with calves' liver and even with chicken liver and no one has ever commented, "Gee, this tastes too young/avian." Zei gezunt.

Ingredients:
1 pound liver
1 pound onions, chopped fine
3 hard-boiled eggs
some butter, some oil, some ketchup, some mayonnaise, some olive oil, some salt and pepper

1) Sauté the onions in butter and/or oil. Butter isn't kosher, nebach, but it's sooo good! Shmaltz (rendered chicken fat) is most authentic and the surest path to a massive coronary. Olive oil works and transforms a lethal dish into an almost-lethal dish.
2) Throw the liver into the fry pan with the onions and fat. Cook until the liver is cooked through. Don't be afraid to brown the liver; the brown bits add plenty of deliciousness.
3) Dump contents of fry pan into a food processor. Add the hard-boiled eggs. Here is where chopped-liver-making becomes an art. Add enough ketchup, mayo, salt, and pepper to produce the correct consistency and flavor of chopped liver. Pulse a bunch of times, until puréed. If it looks too dry, add olive oil and pulse some more. Taste, correct, taste, correct, taste, taste, taste, taste. Serve whatever is left.

Yes, my instructions are hopelessly vague. I'm not holding out on you; I simply eyeball it every time. Perhaps this skill is encoded in my genes. Perhaps it is Kabalistic, in which case go ask Madonna. I don't know whether I'd trade this skill to be handy--which, like all Jews, I am not--but such is the fate of my people. We can make chopped liver without a precise recipe but we cannot figure out how to stop a hinge from squeaking. (Hint: WD-40).

For many, many years, this was chopped liver to me, and I was extremely satisfied. Don’t get me wrong; I still find this version rapturous. The taste of it transports me to innumerable family gatherings and to occasional visits to the Carnegie Deli, all very happy memories. And it's fabulous on its own merits as well, even without any Proustian overtones.

Years of living in marginal New York City neighborhoods, however, awakened me to the availability of an unimaginable variety of international cuisines, and before long I had joined the army of chowhounds, food enthusiasts who understand that a well-prepared dish is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God.

And so I became a devotee of Mario Batali, that rare television chef who actually cooks. I own most of his cookbooks (not the NASCAR one--oy!--and not the grilling one, but all the others) and cook from them fairly regularly, as they are pretty darn good. This is how I found the recipe for Chicken Livers Toscani, which I will not reproduce here for fear of copyright infringement, but which I can link here because it was reprinted in The New York Times (scroll about two-thirds of the way down the article). Batali's recipe balances the gaminess of liver with red wine, capers, anchovies, onion, and crushed red pepper--the final ingredient really puts this dish right over the top. I prepared some tonight, then cooked some fettucine, thinned the Livers Toscani a little with some pasta water and butter (Shhh! Don't tell God!!!!), then dressed the pasta with the Livers Toscani, and it was divine. As in, to die for.

So there you go.