Chicken liver appetizers

Where I come from we eat most parts of a chicken. The neck of the bird is cut, the blood is drained into a clean bowl, covered and refrigerated. The bird is then dipped in nearly boiling water. This softens the skin and allows for the feathers to be plucked.

Once the feathers are plucked, the little, hair-like things are burned off over an open flame. Burning keratin generates an interesting, not terribly pleasing smell.

Next the legs and wings of the chicken are removed. Then the torso of the bird is cut along the length of the body, toward the neck. This will allow for opening the chicken. Once the back and breast are separated, the guts are tossed out along with the contents of the gizzard. The actual muscle tissue of the gizzard, the heart, as well as any 'unripe' eggs are saved. The liver is one of the most tasty organs, but it needs to be skillfully separated from the gall bladder. The content of the gall bladder, bile, is bitter. It needs to be cut off from the liver without spilling its contents onto anything you desire to eat later.

From the head the beak is cut off, and from the neck the esophagus is pulled out. Everything else is eaten.

The blood clots in the fridge. It's a weird tissue, liquid while you are alive, but the proteins in it form a solid matrix when the reaction is set off. So once it solidified one can slice and dice it, just like meat. In fact, my grandmother used to dice it into 0.5 inch cubes and fry it with black pepper and salt on sauteed onions. Served with fresh white bread it's a delicious meal. And high in iron :-)

The focus of this post was meant to be arguably my favorite organ from a chicken: the liver. While goose liver surpasses it in quality, well-prepared chicken liver is not to be scoffed at. And while you might be repelled by the idea, let me just share with you the fact that every person in the US I served this to liked it. (Of course I did not tell them what they were being served, only after they tried it).

Ingredients
10-12 chicken livers
oil
salt
ground black pepper
ground marjoram
baguette slices
1 tbsp butter
1 yellow onion

Preparation
Wash the livers and allow them to drip off a bit.

Preheat a pan to medium-high heat and add enough oil to cover the bottom. Add the chicken livers to the hot oil and dust them with black pepper and marjoram. Hold the salt, it will make the livers hard!

Cook the livers until done (not red and bloody inside). Salt them in the last two minutes. Do not overcook! Allow to cool.

Toast both sides of ~24 baguette slices in butter. Cut the chicken livers in half and place onto freshly toasted baguette slices. Top with thinly sliced yellow or red onion. Serve!

Nope, this is not meant to be elegant or super fancy. As you might have gathered from the beginning of this post, this is not exactly fancy-restaurant food. But it IS delicious!