When we lived in Pennsylvania and again when we lived in Louisiana my father was separated from us for months for additional training in Biloxi Mississippi. As kids we just hated these prolonged separations. Our whole family order falls apart. The posting in Louisiana allowed for us to travel to be with him because it's like, what, one state over and very near on the Gulf coast to New Orleans, actually. Heck of a vacation that, we all went there a couple of times, and boy, did we ever get an eyeful. We saw the base, of course, and played on the beaches, went through all the shops, ate out all the time, had fantastic seafood, but one particular scene among many others sticks out for our childhood impressions. We didn't know what we were seeing.
The scene is an old Southern wooden house with very large stacked porches. It reminds me of Streetcar Named Desire. We're looking down at the activity on the street from a screened porch. It's hot and airy up there if not actually breezy. It's noon. Suddenly my sister goes, "Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Look it! Look it! Look it. Bobby, come over here and look it this." She was very repeaty when she got excited. We both peered over the edge to a skinny man in his twenties, old to us, rather poor in appearance, barefooted, t-shirt, loose pants rolled up, sitting on the hood of a car and smearing peanut butter from a jar onto an onion and eating the whole thing like an apple.
Like an apple!
Smear, chomp. Smear, chomp. Smear, chomp. We watched him devour the whole onion. It was a very large white onion. And that was his lunch.
It blew our minds.
The bizarre sight left a lasting impression. Years later we still couldn't get over that Mississippi guy eating a raw onion.
How could he even do that? Imagine his breath! We had no concept of Georgian Vidalia onions. And had we just known we'd have been a lot smarter a lot earlier. Those onions are very sweet.
But I learned they do not store very well. When you buy them you must use them rather quickly. No sitting around the pantry in a bag for a month.
And they lack the onion essence that make the whole allium family so useful in cooking. Although very good raw. They're less interesting cooked.
Now a lot of places hopped the sweet onion bandwagon, notably Walla Walla Washington and Maui Hawaii, Imperial Valley California is one of the leading growers, Carzalia New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, North Carolina, and these here are from Colorado. They're not so sweet as some others but they sure are good and they lack the sulfur component that make your eyes sting.
After searing in butter then chicken stock is added to the pan and covered until the onion is cooked through. The remaining liquid becomes the base for the sauce. Heavy cream is added to that along with additional seasoning.
The same pan is rinsed out and butter added again to fry the livers. That takes only a few minutes until the livers become firm.
The livers were trimmed and cut into pieces and coated before starting the onions and boiling the pasta which also takes only a few minutes. The activity in the kitchen is rapid for these few minutes. The longest things are the onion halves softening in broth and bringing water to boil for pasta. After that, it's on.
Don't you hate getting down to the bottom of your box of corn flakes to find tiny bits and flake dust, then have to just throw it away? You can relieve the stress of corn flake waste by saving it in a jar. Box by box until you have enough to do things like this with it. It contributes an appealing crunchy texture to an otherwise texturally uninteresting protein. It's also useful for cookies. Imagine brownies with a crunch to them. This crunchy duck liver is very good. I'm glad that I thought of this.
I love it when the liver is included with whole chickens. I was surprised to see it inside the frozen duck. I appreciate that. It amounts to another whole separate dinner.
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