Stegt Svinelever med Løg

November evenings in Denmark get dark before you finish work. You come home and the kitchen is cold and the fridge holds what the fridge holds. This is the hour that stegt lever med løg was made for. It's fast, it's cheap, and when you cook it properly, it is genuinely good.

Pork liver with onions was the Tuesday night dinner of a generation that didn't waste anything. The liver was the first thing used after a slaughter, fresh and iron-rich, and the onions came from the cellar where they'd been stored since autumn. There was no pretension in it. There didn't need to be. The dish did its job: it fed a family well on very little, and it tasted like someone had taken the time to do it right.

I want to be honest with you. Liver divides people, and most of the reasons come down to bad cooking. Overcooked liver is chalky and bitter. Properly cooked liver is tender, with a mineral sweetness that the soft onions round out and the pan sauce sharpens. The difference is two minutes, and I'll tell you exactly what to look for so you land on the right side of that line. Soak the liver in milk first. Cook the onions slowly. Fry the liver fast and hot. Those three things, in that order, are the whole secret. You'll know when it's right.