Rod Miller: Stewing Pumpkin Spice Liver & Onions
Author’s note: I want Cowboy State Daily readers to know that Clair McFarland is not the only writer in the stable who can pen warm scenes of domestic tranquility that take place in the kitchen.
One of the Miller family traditions around our house is the special dish that I prepare for our Samhain feast. My wee bairn sons, all descended from Picts and Druids, love nothing more for celebrating the season than my pumpkin spice liver & onions.
This ancient dish, cooked back in the day to fortify my ancestors as they marched out to slay the Roman interlopers, makes the house smell like an Iron Age battlefield, and it always gets my kids in a festive mood.
I can forgive my Scot forebears for inventing such inedible and un-drinkable dreck as haggis and scotch whiskey, because they perfected this succulent manna.
I was sauteing onions to add to the punkin’ pie filling when my firstborn, my redheaded eldest gentle giant called to say his dog just died.
I passed this sad news on to Good Dog Henry, who just regarded the raw liver on the counter with hope in his eyes. Not even death, it seems, can interrupt preparations for an autumnal feast.
Henry only sneezed his grief when I cracked open the cinnamon and allspice to add to the simmering pumpkin innards.
The secret to this dish is to slice the liver thinly, so it absorbs all the October goodness of the pumpkin.
I was just carving this gift from the gutpile into paper-thin strips when my segundo popped through the kitchen door to give me the news that the football team he coaches won their game.
He dipped a pinkie into the bubbling sauce, waved it in the air to cool it, licked his finger and said, “Dad, you’re gonna make some lucky gal a fine little homemaker!”
I rolled the ribbons of liver in fresh Copenhagen, as the old family recipe requires, and began to braise them lightly in lard and PBR before they went into the casserole dish to bake.
The kitchen began to smell like the bloody battle with the Brits at Bannockburn. It smelled like victory!
Just as I was topping off my absinthe (I always cook with a drink in my hand) my third-born, the mystic pilgrim of my sons, popped in to get the keys to the Harley. He was late for Mass, and didn’t have time to dawdle. As he dashed out the door toward the bike, he hollered back, “Smells good!”
It’s important to stir the pumpkin and onion sauce constantly because, if you don’t, it will burn and stick to the pan. Doctors will tell you that burned pumpkin spice liver and onions will have a deleterious effect on your psyche, sorta like peyote.
If you aren’t prepared for the ego loss and disorienting hallucinations, it will ruin your Samhain feast. Just a word to the wise from my kitchen to yours.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah,...arrange the strips of liver in a casserole dish greased with bear fat, and ladle the pumpkin sauce over it.
If you’d like, sprinkle blue cheese crumbles on top. My family likes to garnish the dish with sauerkraut because twisting the lid off the jar makes us feel manly.
Let the whole shebang set on the countertop to rest, and then pop it into an oven preheated to 127 degrees and cook it while you listen to the extended version of Inna Gadda Da Vida. When the final note fades out, your masterpiece is ready.
I was just polishing off the absinthe when my youngest son followed his nose into the kitchen.
He, I’ll inform you, is the most woad-painted, fire-breathing Pictish warrior of my brood. He should have been born with a claymore in his grip.
He saw the crowning glory of my culinary art cooling on the counter, wrinkled his nose and said, “Oh no! Not again.”
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
