Nigeria Content Online

I have already
anticipated the disdain with which the word “liver” will register in
the reader’s mind. Liver indeed! Of all the choice parts of meat that
one can eat and enjoy, why would anyone choose liver! Because it has
potential that’s why; potential for hot satisfying moorishness if
cooked just right.

For a few moments,
banish all the associations that your mind makes when it encounters the
word, like cod liver or food prescribed for geriatrics; cubes of
leather in party fried rice; meat in “poverty stew”; dejected looking
airline pate that tastes like plastic.

Think instead of
new yam, out of the ground for a few weeks and not so very bitter
anymore, just a little hint of bitterness in the back of the tongue,
not as flavourful as old yam, but texturally nice; falling away when
overcooked or cooked with a little salt.

Some people think a cube of sugar in the water for boiling the yam improves its taste. I disagree.

Now think of my
liver stew to go with new yam on a Saturday morning. This is one of the
only meals that I think back to my childhood and am totally,
completely, unabashedly nostalgic about.

On Saturday
mornings, my mother would cut up plenty of onions. This is the secret
of good liver stew; heaps of onions. The way the onions are cut matters
immensely; not chopped but cut in slivers, thin slivers, moderate
slivers, fat slivers because textures matter. Thin slivers will merge,
moderate slivers will curl appealingly in the stew, fat slivers will be
highlights, translucent with a slight bite.

The type of onion
also matters; not white but purple. One also needs some julienned green
pepper, one or two hot peppers chopped and some grated garlic and
ginger.

I tweaked my
mother’s recipe a little by first quartering half of my onion, and
putting it in the oven with half a leek, sprinkled with olive oil for
about thirty minutes. Waste of gas you might say, but this gives the
stew a fuller charred sweet onion flavour since roasted onions are
sweet and mellowed.

From the oven, I
transfer the roasted onions to a thick-bottomed frying pan with more
olive oil and some butter, along with my slivers of raw onion, my
peppers, garlic, ginger and salt and stir everything over moderate heat
for about twelve minutes. The frying mixture has to be moved around so
that the onions don’t burn or go brown.

My liver goes in the stew with more stirring and some salt.

One can’t dare to
leave it and go in the other room! It first greys on the outside
firming up, but the inside remains blood red. With more stirring (about
five minutes) and the gradual addition of small amounts of water, a
stew is formed. I add two bay leaves and some thyme. One needs to keep
watch over it to make sure that there is no sign of blood in the meat,
that the stew doesn’t dry up, and that it cooks to the texture of well
cooked red meat.

This does not
equate to endless cooking but to a point where the liver is both well
cooked and still soft. The stage after this is hard, leather like
texture. The only way to do it right is just to be vigilant. One good
marker; if one’s sense of smell is acute is that the liver will be
perfectly cooked when there is no smell of blood.

Some people are put
off not only by liver but also by onions, so that the very thought of
combining the two is torture. But I guarantee that even the avid hater
will change his mind once he tastes the liver, cooked, rested in the
umber coloured stew.

The other way to accompany my stew apart from freshly boiled slabs of yam is thickly cut bread dipped with fingers.