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Cured Pork Liver Crackers

Written By Culinary Pen on Friday, July 26, 2013 | 2:33:00 PM

I've been thinking of ways to use my dry cured pork liver, aside from searing it and topping a salad.  The more I look at it, the more it reminds me of bottarga, the salted and cured egg sacs of tuna and mullet that's a classic ingredient in Sardinia.  Due to its intense, salty flavor, bottarga is normally shaved or grated over dishes.  This seemed like a perfect way to serve my pork liver, too.
Traditionally, a classic accompaniment to pork liver pate is bread and chutney.  This got me thinking about working the grated liver into the bread and serving it with chutney.  Mulling the idea over in my head, I moved towards making a cracker dough, then topping the dough with grated pork liver before baking.  As Fergus Henderson talked me through the curing of the liver, I figured he would be best to guide me through baking crackers from scratch.
It was actually pretty simple, like making pie crust cookies.  Just flour, water, olive oil, salt and baking powder, mixed up, rolled thin, and briefly baked.  Carla loved the plain crackers, and seemed to hint that there was no need to start adding cured pork liver to them.  But I carried on and made half the crackers plain, then made the other half with the grated pork liver on top.

The crackers came out light and crispy, with a slightly meaty/savory saltiness from the liver that went very well with an onion chutney.  Although I grated the liver on to the crackers before baking, I found it still flaked off the crackers easily.  I think if I were to make these again I would mist the crackers with water, which should help the dried liver adhere better without making the dough too wet.
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