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Text ©1990 by Sam Waring. All rights reserved.
Created: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 at 19:03:03 UTC
The liver has always been a source of much muddled medical speculation, since it was obvious even to the ancients that something that big inside you must have an important function, even if they weren’t too sure quite what it was that it did. The liver was one of the big actors in the pre-Enlightenment view of physiology, thought to produce black bile (or in late Greek, “melancholy”), one of the four governing humors, which made you—well—melancholy. (The other humors, just for reference, are blood, produced by the heart, phlegm, produced by the lungs, and choler, produced by the spleen.) Melancholy was supposed to be the humor which when present in excess, caused sadness and what we now identify as depression. The phenomenon of melancholy and its causes and remedies was studied at great length by a seventeenth-century English physician, Sir Thomas Browne, in The Anatomy of Melancholy. He came up with a great deal of fanciful material concerning the causes and treatment of the disease, a good deal of it from the materia medica and accepted wisdom of the time. His personal favorite cure for an attack was to go down the the Thames and listen to the bargemen swear at each other.
Browne’s curious notions aside, the liver is indeed one of the principal organs in the body. It generates bile for digestion, filters contaminants from the bloodstream, cranks out a host of enzymes necessary for one thing and the next, and just generally gets up to all kinds of antics. You’ve never seen a really good time down there in the abdominal cavity until you’ve been there when the liver, after a hard day’s work producing complex digestive doodads, puts a lampshade on its head and then gets up and starts dancing on top of the appendix. They have some wild parties down there, let me tell you!
Liver also has something to be said for it nutritionally. It’s loaded with vitamin A, and used to be a standard dietary treatment for anemia. Its main drawbacks are that its saturated fat, cholesterol and LDL levels are ungodly high, and it’s definitely not recommended for anyone on a restricted-fat diet. However, if you can afford it in your diat, it can be a real occasional treat.
A wise cook once said that the thing you want to do with liver is to dress it up so that it doesn’t taste too much like liver. Now some folks say that liver is something that you should put far away and leave it there, and others (a much smaller number) say that liver is wonderful, and the rest of us don’t quite know what to make of it. I’m a member of the third group, with strong leanings toward the first, and my wife is a member of the second group. The result is, I don’t make much liver, but when I do, it’s generally in something where it’s got to compete with something else that has just as strong a flavor. I may smother it with onions and tomatoes, or I may (as I do here) grind it up for flavor and texture in a sauce.
The recipe for this month is from The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, by Rex Stout. Nero Wolfe (for those who don’t read murder mysteries) is a prime contender for fattest detective ever. He’s usually described as weighing about a seventh of a ton (somewhere around 285). He keeps a brownstone on West 35th Street in Manhattan, stocked with ten thousand orchid plants in a roof greenhouse, a gardener to tend the orchids, a general secretary/assistant/wise guy, and a Swiss chef. Wolfe is equal parts gourmet and gourmand, and anything served in his house is likely to be wild and wonderful. He has definite prejudices (never put horseradish in any form on an oyster in his presence) and preferences (shad roe in season, as often as he can get it, and fixed every way he can, up to the point that Archie, his assistant, nearly rebels). Wolfe is very fortunate to have in Fritz Brenner a chef who can cook what Wolfe likes, and whenever the ingredients can be had.
Now Fritz is something else. He and Wolfe do have occasional fallings-out, notably one day when Fritz unexpectedly changed the recipe for starlings, without Wolfe’s prior approval, and Fritz is convinced that when he’s not there to cook the meals (which is practically never) that Wolfe will starve. Not that that’s very likely to happen; Wolfe is a good a cook as Fritz, especially under adverse conditions, as he proved in The Black Mountain, when he and Archie had to go to Wolfe’s native Montenegro to avenge a couple of family grudges—and that’s a story in itself, since Wolfe is also a contender for most immovable detective in the world; he hates to leave his own house on any errand whatever.
Wolfe’s il pesto, originally served (fictionally) in “The Zero Clue,” made even Inspector Cramer, Wolfe’s nemesis at Manhattan Homicide South, sit up and have seconds and thirds. Il pesto, in Italian, is “the paste,” and the recipe can be either a heavy cracker spread or a sauce for pasta, depending on how much it’s diluted. This is more of a summer recipe, isnce it calls for a lot of fresh basil (and no, dried basil will absolutely not do as a substitute. Get the fresh!), but I’ll even spring for the basil in the winter, if I can find someone who’s growing the stuff in a hothouse. It is absolutely delicious, very Italian, and is something to do for pasta that doesn’t involve drowning it in tomatoes.
| ¼ pound pig’s liver (calves’ liver OK) | 2 anchovy fillets (optional, but very recommended) |
| 2 tablespoons unsalted butter | ½ cup grated sharp white cheese* |
| 2 cups fresh basil leaves | 1 teaspoon salt |
| 2 garlic cloves | ½ teaspoon black pepper |
| ¼ cup black walnuts | ¾ cup olive oil |
| 1 teaspoon chopped chives |
* Wolfe’s original recipe calls for Canestrato cheese, described as “a very sharp white grating cheese.” I’ve never been able to find it, even at The Legendary Central Market. I wouldn’t be surprised to find you can’t get it outside of someplace with a massive Italian colony.
Sauté the liver in the butter; when cool, remove from the pan and chop coarsely. In a blender or food processor combine the basil, garlic, walnuts, chives, cheese, salt, pepper, and a quarter cup of the olive oil. Blend at low speed until a purée consistency is achieved. Slowly add the remaining oil, blending at low speed until the oil is completely incorporated and the consistency is that of whipped cream. Add the liver and blend another five seconds and no longer; the texture of the liver should be discernible. Serve as a spread for crackers or as a sauce for spaghetti; if the latter, increase the oil to 1½ cups.
Incidentally, Inspector Cramer isn’t the only liver-disliker who took seconds on this. I served it as a pasta sauce at a potluck, and one guest, who doesn’t react favorably to liver at all, said “This has got liver in it? Really???” and ate all of his.
first ran: February 1990
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Text ©1990 by Sam Waring. All rights reserved.