Being a good Scot and general inhabitor-of-rural-and-hungry-regions, I am not a picky eater. In Newfoundland we ate moose meat pie, and as a decent Newfie kid, I was always delighted to find an egg sack in my fried capelin. On Black Mesa, we stopped at the trading post on snowy days and wolfed down hot grilled mutton wrapped in fry bread, which was only dodgy when you paused to consider you didn't know if it was sheep or goat, or who killed it and under what conditions. Doesn't matter. Greasy and delicious. Here in Hawaii, I've eaten every plate of shredded jelly fish, dried cuttlefish, smoked meat, unidentifiable fish, and pungent produce put in front of me. So I thought I would be adventurous at the Japanese BBQ joint this weekend, and order the liver. Because I have never tried a piece of proper liver, but pate is pretty great, and haggis is the food of the burliest beer-loving gods.
And so I discovered why people grind it up and hide it in other food.
If I didn't even know that creatures had organs, I would have known it intuitively after biting into this. And I would realize, with deep and primal certainty, that this were something that should still be in the animal, and never seen or smelled outside the body.
It should have been a clue when the waitress asked, "Do you want the liver with miso or garlic?" and when I asked, "Which do you recommend?" she sort of bared her teeth in desperation for a long moment before saying, "People usually go with the miso." And then take it home for their dogs, she did not add.
Gavin, who has never seen me not eat something, had to nab it off my plate and nibble a corner.
We tried lightly searing it, cooking it through, and scorching it into spongy leather. Verdict: liver is for people who are dying of anemia or starvation, and who have somehow gotten to a liver without encountering any meat along the way.
My dad was a big fan of liver, so I tried it. Once.
ReplyDeleteForty-odd-years later, I can STILL remember that experience vividly. Unfortunately.