This is the whole pork liver I cured this past February. It was interesting to cure; curing
an organ is very different from curing skeletal meat. The biggest difference is the huge amount of
liquid the liver let out when packed in the salt cure. I think I had to drain off the large pools of
liquid at least three times during the curing.
Reapplying the cure, I worried this would make the liver overly salty,
but I erred on the side of caution and went with more salt rather than
less.
I followed Fergus Henderson’s recipe for a salad with cured
pork liver and balsamic vinegar. This
involved quickly searing strips of the cured liver, then topping the peppery arugula
salad with the live and a light drizzle of balsamic vinegar. At first I liked the salad, but searing the liver
seemed to bring out the stronger flavors of the organ. On the plus side, the cooking did soften the
cured liver…briefly. After eating about
half the salad I stepped away to get some water. Coming back the seared liver had cooled and
become incredibly hard and tough.
Clearly the key phrase is “serve immediately.” With a whole liver I doubt I’ll eat the entire
thing as a salad topping. But there’s a
lot of potential in this cured liver. The
strong, salty nature reminded me of Italian bottarga, which is dried, cured
tuna or mullet roe sacs. The bottarga is
normally shaved fine over pasta or salads to bring a strong, sea-brine flavor
to dishes. I think this pork liver could
be used in the same way. Or I could do a
twist on Momofuku’s shaved foie gras, where a torchon of frozen foie gras is
grated into a fine fluffy cloud with a microplane. It makes for a very intense, but light and
powdery hillock liver.
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