Always get the onions with the liver!

Hey congratulations on successful surgery by blogger and commenter BAGOH2O who talks about his successful journey through the health care industry.

He happens to mention his liver transplant and I suggested when you get the liver you should always get the onions.

You see my Grandmother loved to cook liver and onions for my uncles who worked on the docks. They would be unloading the vegetable and fruit boats sometimes for 48 hours straight in the freezing weather. So they needed hearty food filed with tons of vitamins. And calf's liver filled the bill.

Did you guys ever have real butcher stores in your neighborhoods? Well we did. It was a store that only sold meat. You would go in and order a couple of pounds of veal cutlets or an eye round or some chop meat. The butcher would go into the freezer behind the big wooden door and slam it shut as he picked out the meat he needed to cut. Then he would bring it over to the butcher block and cut the meat to your specifications. My grandmother used to send me to the one on Henry St at Degraw. I would order a pound of veal spedini and he would cut out small round medallions of veal and pound them with his hammer placing each separately and carefully on a piece of wax paper. Then he would weigh them (making sure he put his thumb on the scale) and then would tie them up in butcher paper and tie them up with a string. Then I would bring the meat to Grandma's house and she would whip up a delicious meal. But there was something funny about the liver!

You see the liver would be displayed in a big tray on top of the counter. He didn't refrigerate it. It sat there in a pool of blood looking scary. Now they weren't as worried about germs and refrigeration and stuff like that in the sixties. So you would say "Hey Grandma wants four slices of liver." He would stick a gigantic fork in it and put it on the butcher block. Sharpen up his knife on the rounded grindstone thingy and slice some liver for you. Dripping in blood.

So I would take it the Grandma and she would take it out of the wrapper and dredge it in flour. Then she would fry up three or four sweet onions in olive oil. When the onions were half way caramelized, she would put in the thick slices of liver and fry them up. Then at the end she would put in a cup of red wine vinegar to debride the pan and make a great sauce. You would get a big slice of liver smothered in onions with the red wine vinegar sauce. You would slice off a piece of liver, get some onions on the fork and swish it around in the vinegar.

Man that was good eating.

Always get the onions with the liver.