We fancied liver last night, but are getting bored of the usual way of cooking it - plain pan fried with bacon & onion gravy. So I grabbed a pack of pancetta from the fridge and a half a pack of roasted tomatoes I had left over; still unsure how it would pan out.
Pancetta is an Italian mildly spiced bacon made from the pork belly and often comes in cubes. It also comes in thin strips, which is what I have used here.
I ended up cutting the liver into strips and wrapping each strip completely in the pancetta (I think it needs plenty of the salty flavour) and fried them on a high heat. The roasted tomatoes from last week (recipe here) were simply seasoned with salt and pepper along with 2 tsp. sugar and 100ml water and blitzed into a thick sauce. Spinach and garlic seemed a nice accompaniment. It was lovely!
Ingredients:
300g lambs liver, cut into strips
1/4 cup flour
80g pancetta
1 tbsp. oil
Method:
Simply coat the liver strips in flour (this helps the pancetta to stick) and roll up in the pancetta. Put in the fridge to firm up the parcels for 15 minutes and then pan fry in a little oil. Serve on some spinach wilted in garlic and a little butter with the tomato sauce on the side. Delicious and simple!
I imagine you could pop these bacon & liver parcels onto a skewer and put them on the barbeque. A delicious alternative meat side dish, which I am thinking... would taste lovely dipped in a good barbeque sauce! I must try that this summer!!