What it is
Pan-fried pork liver (煎豬肝) is sliced liver, lightly seasoned or dusted with starch, fried very briefly and tossed in a hot wok. Cooked well it is tender and faintly sweet. It is a common home dish in Taiwan and a standard of old Taiwanese (台菜) restaurants. Hsin Hsin in Tainan sells it as nan jian gan (南煎肝), the name of a similar Fuzhou dish.
Where it came from
The menus of Tainan's old Taiwanese restaurants grew from wine-house food (酒家菜), the dishes served with drinks at entertainment houses, blended with Fuzhou cooking. The chef Yi-chuan (一川師) of the old Bao Mei Lou (寶美樓) is credited with that blend. His influence passed to the founders of Hsin Hsin and A Sha (阿霞飯店), whose cooks had been fellow apprentices.
How it is made
Cooks pick 'powder liver' (粉肝), a fatty liver that stays soft. It is trimmed and cut into slices 0.5 to 0.8 cm thick. At Shin Yeh (欣葉) in Taipei the slices get a light coat of cornstarch and about ten seconds in oil at around 180°C, then a quick toss with soy sauce, rice wine, pepper, sesame oil and sugar. Hsin Hsin in Tainan marinates its liver with five-spice, passes it through oil and stir-fries it over flames that leap up round the wok, all in under a minute.
How to eat it
Eat it as soon as it reaches the table, as one of several shared dishes with rice. Shin Yeh finishes it with a little coriander.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Hsin Hsin (欣欣餐廳), opened in 1975, is counted with A Sha and A Mei among Tainan's three big old Taiwanese restaurants. Owner-chef Wu Huo-tu (吳火塗), born in 1947 and trained at A Sha, still works the wok.
- North
- Shin Yeh in Taipei uses two cooks, one frying and one tossing. The trimmings go into a second dish of diced liver with XO sauce and radish cake.
