Calf’s Liver with Ginger-Onion Marmalade

By now the local markets are stacked with a large variety of young and fresh vegetables, such as asparagus, radishes, carrots or rhubarb. The latter is categorized often as fruit, although it’s only the stalk of a plant. Probably it’s considered as a fruit, because it’s mainly consumed sweetened by sugar or syrups. Savory interpretations of rhubarb are rare, which is unfortunate, because the tart aroma of rhubarb adds freshness to a plate and replaces vinegars perfectly in spring or summer dishes. In this dish below I used rhubarb as a refreshing sour element.

When reading restaurant menus or cookbooks, roasted liver can be found paired usually with dry wines or (balsamic) vinegars. In this recipe I replaced the vinegar by rhubarb, which I briefly sautéd in the same pan I used for roasting the calf’s liver. I served both the liver and the rhubarb on top of creamy polenta. Onions are a classic pairing of liver too, so I garnished the liver with home-made onion marmalade enhanced by some ginger. You can either add the ginger right to the onion when cooking the marmalade, or also add the ginger later on when warming 2 spoonful of the marmalade for the dish. As a final touch, I sprinkled the plate with fried sage leaves, which had the role of a crispy element. In the end, the plate turned out as a classic bistro dish, with a small and refreshing twist by the addition of the rhubarb.