Throughout Food Month we will have a daily “Guilty Pleasure” feature where well-known faces share their secret treats, from the delicious to the daring to the downright strange. And you can win a great prize if your share your guilty pleasure with us. See below for details
Fegato alla veneziana con polenta (Veal liver with onions and soft polenta) is my guilty pleasure.
I first ate this in a small trattoria “Augusto” in Trastevere, Rome. We students ate here and paid at the end of the week. Each day the “piatto del giorno” (daily special) changed. I remember one particularly cold Autumn day and a fellow student from Northern Italy became very excited when he read “Fegato alla veneziana, buono”, while I grimaced remembering my mother’s slivers of burnt tough black liver resembling the soles of shoes.
Giorgio coaxed me to try and I will never forget the taste of that warm soft morsel of chocolatey liver floating on creamy polenta. When I was last in Venice I ate at a small restaurant, Il Gondoliere , for three nights running and had Fegato alla veneziana with soft polenta each evening, sheer heaven with a glass of Valpolicella.
Now why would I feel guilty about that? My children veer away from most meat dishes, one being vegetarian, the other three are very health conscious and Stefano eats only fish. At home we tend to cook tons of vegetables and prepare hundreds of salads.
I eat this when I am content; content to be in Italy (it is difficult to locate veal liver in Ireland), to indulge in a relaxing dinner with a glass of good wine. I am content to dine alone and read the local newspaper or simply to dine with Stefano. I probably wouldn’t choose this dish if I was dining with a group of friends and would opt for sharing plates which call for chat, gossip and laughter.
I cook liver myself and more than likely when I am in Rome alone. Otherwise I tend to cook fish for Stefano (Crescenzi). I love to wander around the fruit and vegetable stalls of Campo di Fiore, pop into the butchers and eye up all those wonderful meat cuts knowing I can have whatever I want. I must admit I am captivated by the butcher as he expertly cuts wafer thin slices from huge chunks of liver and places them delicately onto grease proof paper, flattens them with a bang of his huge knife and rolls my precious guilty bundle in brown paper. Time to head home with a focaccia from the fornaio, cook my liver, pour a glass of red wine and watch an old Marcello Mastroianni film on the TV.
For those readers who like eating meat but shy away from liver I suggest grilled lamb chops with mint pesto which is on page 137 of Festa.
Festa is published Gill & Macmillan and available now, priced at E24.99.
