The Inner Organs of Beasts and Fowls

The one part of James Joyce’s Ulysses that has stuck most persistently in my mind since I first read it about fourteen years ago is not its famous ending, but rather the opening pages of chapter four, in which we are first introduced to the book’s principal character…

I couldn’t explain how it came about, but, any mention of Ulysses will evoke, for me, the phrase ‘made him feel a bit peckish’ before anything else.

Unlike Mr Bloom, I seldom partake of offal, although I like the flavour of some of it well enough. I suppose I share in the latterday squeamishness that, I would hazard, makes ‘variety meats’ a considerably lesser part of my generation’s diet than that of Joyce’s. On Sunday morning then, confronted with the piece of calf’s liver we’d picked up the day before, I wasn’t at all sure what to do with it, having never once before tried cooking the stuff myself.

The Conran Cookbook came to my aid with a recipe for Foie de Veau à la Lyonnaise. This required I sautée some sliced onions in butter admixed with a little lard until they were very soft, and then, pushing the onions to one side, fry slices of the liver, pre-seasoned with salt and pepper, alongside them. As a final step, a couple of tablespoonfuls of red wine vinegar were to be sizzled in the pan for a few seconds - having none, I used balsamic vinegar instead, which turned out just fine. The liver, served with the onions on top, was very tasty. To add insult to artery-clogging injury, I’d fried up some bacon and sausages too, and some hash browns… it made for quite the breakfast.