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Monkfish liver is very tasty and inexpensive (£10/kg). It can be prepared like foie gras but – unlike foie gras – will not melt when cooked. A simple way to prepare it is just to poach it and serve it cold on warm toasts.
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| Ingredients: 300g of liver, toasts, salt and pepper |
Take off the large veins of the liver and poach it for 20 minutes. Put it in the fridge overnight
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| Slice the cold liver in 2mm slices |
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| Put on warm toasts. Salt and pepper. Serve promptly |
Other names: anglerfish, goosefish (USA), all mouth (North Carolina), Molly Gowan (Scotland), frogfish (Irish), lotte or baudroie (French), rape (Spanish), seeteufel (German), rana pescatrice (Italian), anko (Japan).
In Japan monkfish liver ("ankimo") can be served in pot-au-feu (nabe) or steamed and served cold with a sauce of citric fruit and soy sauce (ponzu choyu), sliced cucumber, grated dacron, etc.
Other fish livers. Many fish livers are prized such as cod liver (used to make the eponymic oil) and red mullet (goatfish) liver which you keep in the fish to add to its flavour . The excellent Harold McGee (Food & Cooking, 2004) also mentions those of the mackerel and the ray and the comparable organ in crustaceans, the midgut gland or hepatopancreas.
Few cooking books mention fish liver recipes although the delicacy of monkfish liver is mentioned early in The Imperial Cook (Le cuisinier impérial) of Viart, Fouret et Délan (1867, p.380). Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery mentions cod's liver and oysters in white sauce as well as cod's liver quenelles (1907, p.199). Chef André Bonnaure gives the recipe for a "surf and turf" foie gras terrine made in equal portion with traditional foie gras and monkfish liver in "Foie gras", an excellent book published in Spanish (2006) and French (2007, p.146: Foie gras "mer et montagne"). On the very good recipe site www.astray.com (187,000 recipes in August 2011), there is a recipe of Rich fish stew with fish livers.
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