Calf's liver

Foie de veau

What it is

Venice built a whole dish on it — fegato alla veneziana, ribbons of liver under a weight of slow onions — and the sweetness of those onions is there to answer the iron. A milk-fed calf gives the palest liver of all: the darker the slice, the older the animal and the stronger it reads.

In the kitchen

Ask for it cut a centimetre and a half thick and peel the fine outer skin, or the slice buckles in the pan. Ninety seconds a side in a very hot pan, and salt only afterwards — salt on raw liver draws water and it steams instead of colouring.

Goes with

Onion Sage Butter Balsamic vinegar Smoked cured pork belly Lemon Black pepper

Same species

Abura-kasu Amourettes (spinal marrow) Spider steak Bastourma Flank steak Beef

Also used with

Raspberry vinegar Lingonberry

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