Grandpa’s Iscas

Liver with delicious red wine sauce

A typical Portuguese Dish

The memories

Ever since I was a kid I remember entering my grandparents house and immediately know that lunch was Iscas by the amazing smell coming from the kitchen. Ohh the amounts of bread I’d eat with that sauce. Delicious. But I’m a sauce lover. My mum still nags me because every time she is cooking I will dip some bread in the sauce while she’s distracted away from the stove. Yet with liver it was different because I simply didn’t like them…just the sauce.

The guts

This slimy dark steak seems unpleasant at first sight, specially to those that never tried it before. But if you miss your grandparents food or you wanna try something new, let’s get over the looks of it and make this recipe. Besides liver is super cheap (even in Norway) so you got nothing to lose 😉

Yes, the use of animal bowels as food is less and less common. The human population struggles for a reduction on animal consumption and maybe because of that the organs lose interest compared to meat. But two generations ago animal were valuable. People, even if they didn’t do it themselves, knew the processes of producing and killing the animals they ate. And the economy was totally different. The amount of meat each person ate was much smaller than now but each animal was almost totally used.

The human mind is genius when it comes to inventing. And culinary is a strong expression of that. The need allied to the respect for the animal generated a huge amount of recipes to allow the consumption of the whole animal. And Portuguese gastronomy is expert in that. We have recipes for livers, hearts, brains, lungs, intestines, kidneys, hands, ears, tongues and cheeks. Everything is used, nothing is wasted.

Interesting Facts about Liver

• It’s rich in Vitamin A, complex B and D, iron and other minerals like zinc and copper, antioxidants and fatty acids.
• It’s a cheap food and low on calories – about 165 cal in 100g, making it skinnier than lean meat like chicken breast.
• Even though the liver is the organ that filters toxins, these don’t tend to be accumulated, they are expelled by the body. Therefore there is no danger in eating liver. Even though, in animals of industrial production where the administration of medicine like antibiotics is common it may not be advisable for us to eat it too much cause even in smaller doses the toxins aren’t good for humans.
• Not that it’s common nowadays to consume liver daily, but still specialists advise to not do it more than once a week and preferably from animals raised in organic or local farms.

Keep strolling after the recipe for some tips

Tips

• The longer the liver is in the marinate more savory it’ll become.

• They are even better the next day, when heating them on the stove, for the sauce will perfect its flavor.

And if the main dish is lean and healthy then you deserve dessert. Try this super easy and yummy 2 flavor Cheesecake.