Liver and onions: an excellent combination

Liver and onions are an easy recipe to prepare. It can be served with grilled polenta or when it is warm weather it can be accompanied by a fresh salad.

Liver alla Veneta or Veneziana is one of the best known and most famous dishes of the Venetian cuisine. Its origin comes from an old Roman recipe. Animals but especially pigs and geese were fed with figs to make their liver fat or the liver was cooked with figs.

Venetians replaced figs with onions, that they added to pork and calf liver, cut into strips. They considered bovine offal as a valuable constituent of their diet because of its contribution to high value nutrients. The sweet taste, that the liver assumes, comes from the encounter with white onions. They are the only type of onions there are in the Veneto region, and they are produced in Chioggia. When they are cut they have to be thinly sliced.

There are other kinds of liver that are cooked in Veneto. The Venetian liver differs from the Vicentina for the use of vinegar instead of wine.

Ingredients for 4 people:

600 grams of pork liver

2 white onions

50 grams of butter

4 spoons of olive-oil

Vinegar

Salt and pepper

How to prepare it:

Cut the onions into slices. Put oil and butter in a pan over a medium-high heat. Add the onions with some salt and reduce the heat to a medium-low. Cook them for 20 mins until they are soft and add some water if needed. Put the liver alongside with the vinegar and some salt. Cook for not more than 6 or 7 mins until the liver browns.

When it is ready serve it immediately and do scrape the pan juices onto the liver.

How did Venice control its fish-markets in the past?

A white marble plaque at the Loggia Grande at Rialto

Today It is still possible to map topologically the interior subdivision of the Rialto market just by following the remained toponyms such as the "Erbaria" for the vegetable market, the "Drapperia", for the sale of fabric and silk, the "Beccaria" for the sale of meats, the "Caseria" for cheese and the "Pescheria" for fish.

Although fish was sold in other parts of Venice, Rialto has always been the most important one, where a wide range of fish has always been sold starting from 1097.

On the wall of the Loggia Grande there is an old white plaque, which includes a list of fish names with their sizes to be followed and to be sold by the minute. The names of the species are written in Venetian dialect. For example the branzin is the sea-bass and its length was once 12 cm, today 25 cm, the peocio , mussel, from 3 cm to 5 cm.

What does this mean? With an edict from 1173 Venice decided to regulate the size of the fish that was sold in the city. Consuming fish at a young age means compromising the natural balance of the species, so in order to preserve fish reproduction. Length and seasonality became part of the same target. In case of non-observance of those rules, severe punishments were imposed.

The Buranelli biscuits from the island of Burano

From fishermen’s cookies to a local specialty

Venetian local cuisine offers a wide range of amazing desserts such as: tiramisù, a coffee-flavoured cake, fritelle, galani and castagnole just eaten during Carnival, the hard baked baicoli and the coconut-stuffed arnotts.

Among all of those desserts the Buranelli occupy a special place in Venetian pastry, because they have never suffered from any culinary “contamination”, of which Venetian cuisine is typical, due to the availability of many exotic products.

Eaten once just at Easter, they are the most famous cookies of Venice. You can find them all over in Venetian pastries, but as tradition recalls those butter cookies were prepared by the fishermen’s wives of the island of Burano for their husbands. Having the Buranelli a good durability in terms of conservation, they were brought on board as men stayed away from home for several days. Those biscuits provided them with energy being the main ingredients eggs, flour, sugar and butter. Their golden yellow color is achieved through the use of many eggs.

They have different names: buranelli, bussolà or buranei and essi. The name “bussolà”comes from the Venetian dialect “buso” which means hole, “ buranei” because they are made on the island of Burano, and “essi” because they recall the s-hape of the Grand Canal.

Today they are tasted mainly by dipping them in white wine or coffee to soften them. If you happen to visit the island of Burano, do not forget to try them!