Most people, including me, have an aversion for organ meats.

I have been wanting to try this dish for a while now, I’m not quite sure why. Maybe I wanted to convince myself that I could find a recipe that will make like liver.

I finally came to understand that the most common mistake with cooking liver, is that people have a tendency to overcook it, making it rubbery and intensifying the metallic taste. Pork and beef liver naturally have a stronger flavour, but I find that milk-fed veal liver is much more palatable. This is what I used in this dish.

Onions are naturally paired with liver, because the sweetness of the onions against the potent flavour of the liver, make for a balanced dish. Adding other strong flavours, in this case, Marsala and sage, help equilibrate flavours even more.

Although Venetians probably did not invent this, they apparently do it better than anyone else. Waverley Root, in The Food of Italy, indicates that there are two secrets for cooking a perfect fegato alla Venetiana: the first one is to colour the onions very slowly, taking at least 30 minutes to do so, and the second, is to cook the liver very rapidly over high heat, in less than three minutes. To achieve this, the liver needs to be cut finely into thin ribbons. The rest is up to you.

For a variation, use a dry white wine instead of the Marsala, and use red wine vinegar instead of the red wine. Some people also use balsamic vinegar at the end, though this is not traditional.

I am pretty happy on how this dish turned out. It was pretty tasty. Will I want to make this over and over again? Not sure. But one thing is sure, it is certainly the best way to eat liver and onions, so if your doctor told you you should eat more liver because you have anemia, then that’s the way to go.

Fegato alla Veneziana is traditionally served with soft or grilled white polenta, like in Venice.