Le Foie de Veau – Veal Liver & Petits Pois à la Française – French Green Peas

The Backstory

This recipe combination comes from a grandmother named Gaby, a native of the Bordeaux. She is the paternal grandmother of my pal Chef Fred here in Bordeaux, who demonstrated these recipes for me. Chef Fred worked in several famous restaurants in Paris before returning to his native region of Bordeaux about 10 years ago. He taught cooking at an atelier in Bordeaux and has plans to start a food truck on his own, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for that! You can follow him on Instagram at FREDO_TRUCK_

For the Veal Liver

• 1 thick piece of Veal Liver per person
• Sea Salt
• 1 tbsp Butter
• Red Wine Vinegar (Vinaigre de Banyuls used here)

Heat pan on medium-high

Salt one side of the veal

Put salt side down onto heated pan, turn once when colored on bottom

Put pat of butter into pan

Use spoon to drizzle the liver with butter several times to avoid the butter from burning

Remove from pan when cooked through (remove earlier for a less cooked version) and slice

Add vinegar to pan, then spoon this sauce sauce onto sliced pieces of liver

For the Green Peas

• 1 kg (2.2 lbs) pea pods per 2-3 persons, peas removed from pods
• 1 tsp Duck Fat
• 1 Medium Onion, finely cut (or else Green Onions, as shown above)
• Sea Salt
• 2 tbsp Butter
• 2 ladles of Bouillon (Chicken Stock or Bone Broth)
• Young Lettuce, finely chopped (Sucrine is used here, in season in summer)

Add peas to boiling, salted water, boiling them for 5-8 minutes total on high burner (Boil them longer at the end of the pea growing season)

Quick-cool the peas in a bowl of ice water to fix the chlorophyll in the peas (maintains green color)

Heat a pot, add duck fat and allow it to melt

Add onions over medium-high heat, allowing them to sizzle (this is called “sweating the onion” – “suer les onions,” when they release their water)

Add sea salt

Add butter, which will help bind the bouillon with the onions

Add peas

Add 2 ladles of bouillon

Add chopped lettuce at the end and remove from heat

 

A Word on Liver

Liver is one of the most nutritionally dense foods we can consume. Liver from a healthy, grass-fed, grass-finished animal is the best, of course. There is some debate over whether peas (legumes) can be part of a “paleo” style diet. Some eat legumes and others don’t. If you do not, this liver dish can of course be prepared with other seasonal vegetables of your choice! Which brings me to the next topic…

Seasonal Eating

By following the seasons we eat what is in season in our area at any given time of year. This limits carbon costs of shipping products (often picked while still unripe) across the world, encourages the support of local farming, and keeps our bodies in the natural rhythm of the earth. If you are eating certain fruits year round, for example, you may be accelerating your body’s aging by telling it, here, it’s spring again, let’s eat this fruit for the fourth time this year, when the natural cycle of life is to only have that fruit available during a certain season. (For more on this check out T.S. Wiley’s work Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival). Enough for now, more next week!