Liver & Bacon with Onions

Liver & Bacon with Onions

I imagine some of you will be instantly put off by this recipe (and if not that, then by the accompanying picture, which does, admittedly, look slightly fecal), but this is my blog, godamnit, and liver and bacon just happens to be one of my most favouritest dishes. So there.
Most people's aversion to the dreaded liver probably arose at school – lumps of overcooked chewy rubber, swamped in insipid gravy and gloopy mash. Worse was to come if you ever managed to cut into a slice, where lurking among the dry, grey innards would be – and I'm actually starting to dry-heave just thinking about this – "tubes". What the fuck were they? Arteries? In all my subsequent years of eating liver at home or in restaurants I have never, never, never cut into a tube. So why were they staring at my innocent pre-pubescent eyes if they were so obviously alien to human consumption? Maybe the sadistic dinner ladies thought that if we were savage enough to eat liver in the first place, then a bit of artery here and there wouldn't do us any harm as well. And just where had our school sourced its ingredients? Considering liver is a ridiculously cheap piece of meat to buy, surely even the most penny-pinching of local authority wouldn't dare cut corners and serve its knowledge-hungry school kids the offal from, dare I say it, a horse? Or worse (come to think of it, the travelling circus did stop coming to town after a while). Those tubes were surely too thick to have come from a lamb, calf or pig. I'm sure I remember one kid even managed to wear one on his little finger, like you used to do with Hula Hoops.
So if this was my early experience of liver, why the hell aren't I scarred for life? That, dear readers (and forgive me if I get all Wonder Years here), would be due to my mum. Her liver and bacon was just brilliant. She would stick it all in one pot, with a delicious thick gravy heavily laced with tomato purée and onions, whacking great chunks of iron-rich liver, quartered potatoes, greens, the lot. Admittedly the liver would be a bit overcooked, but by god, the flavour that my mum would get into that dish was divine, and it was one of the first meals that I tried to replicate when I'd left home to go to university.
Since then my culinary knowledge has (slowly) developed and I've come to appreciate that liver needs to be cooked hot and fast, left slightly pink in the middle, and added to the onion and bacon mix at the last minute. It's a delight to see my two young boys tuck into a plateful with as much joy as I used to as a lad *wipes tear from eye*. Here's my take. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
450g lamb's liver, sliced
25g butter
2 tbsp sunflower oil
4 tbsp plain flour
1 onion, halved and sliced
125g rindless streaky bacon, cut into 2cm pieces
500ml beef stock
2-3 tbsp tomato purée
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
salt and black pepper to taste

Method:
1. Wash the liver in cold water and trim if necessary. Drain well. Season 3 tbsp of the flour in a large and bowl with salt and pepper. Add the liver and coat well.
2. Melt half the butter with the oil in a large frying pan. Shake off excess flour and cook the liver, a few slices at a time, on a high heat for 1-2 minutes each side until browned. Remove to a plate and set aside.
3. Turn down the heat on the pan to low-to-medium and melt the remaining butter. Add the onions and cook slowly for 5 minutes.
4. Add the bacon and cook for another 10 minutes until they become crispy and onions are golden.
5. Add the remaining tbsp of flour and stir well. Add the stock, purée and thyme and simmer until thick.
6. Return the liver to the pan for a couple of minutes to warm through and finish cooking. Serve with creamy mash and some greens.