Berlin Style Liver (Leber Nach Berliner Art)

This is a pretty well known dish from Berlin, although it is certainly served outside of Berlin, just as Wiener Schnitzel is served outside of Vienna (Wien in German). It is usually made with calves liver, but you can use beef or pork liver and Bismarck's ghost won't get you with his spiked helmet.

"Yeeeooow! What the hell? Medic! I'll have to finish typing this while I'm standing up."

Anyway, it is not uncommon to find Berlin style liver in German-American restaurants. In Berlin it is commonly served with mashed potatoes, but you can serve whatever you like and Bismarck's ghost ... well, never mind about Bismarck's ghost. I'm not going through that again.

Ingredients (about 4 servings):

1 1/2 pounds liver, sliced, but not too thickly
2 baseball size onions, peeled and sliced into 1/3 inch rounds (you can use white, yellow or red onions)
2 apples (like red delicious or golden delicious), typically peeled, but I leave the skin on, cored then cut into round slices 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick
4 or 5 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon ground white or black pepper
butter/canola oil mix (about 3 or 4 tablespoons butter and the same amount of oil)

Heat 2 tablespoons each of butter and oil in a skillet over low heat. Dust the liver slices with flour and set aside. Add the onion slices to the pan and saute until lightly browned (the slices will naturally come apart). Remove the onions to a dish and keep them warm. Add the apple slices to the pan and cook until they too are somewhat browned, remove and keep warm. Add more butter and oil to the skillet, then add the liver slices. Brown on both sides and cook until they are just cooked through. Season the cooked liver with salt and pepper after removing it from the heat. Serve with mashed potatoes and with some onion and apple rings next to the liver.

WORD HISTORY:
Stroll-The history of this word is a bit uncertain, although it looks pretty logical to me. It was borrowed by English in the very early 1600s from German, which had "Strolch," a word from Alemannic German dialect^ which meant, "a vagabond, a rogue, a mischievous boy." This seems to have developed from Alemannic dialect "strollen," which meant, "to wander around aimlessly" (Alemannic also had the noun "Stroll," meaning "vagabond"). While not a complete certainty, these German forms seem to have developed as an abbreviated form of Italian "astrologo," which meant "astrologer, stargazer;" thus also, "interpreter of the stars and their relationship to events, a prophet," and which passed into Lombardic, the language of the Germanic Lombards who settled in northern Italy (the region of Lombardia is named for them), as "strolegh," which then became "strolago," and meant, "vagabond, traveling entertainer who uses tricks to deceive his audience." This seems to have passed into Alemannic in the 1400s from Swiss (German) and Swabian mercenary soldiers serving in northern Italy.

^  Alemannic is a group of German dialects tracing back to the Germanic tribe the Alemanni. Alemannic is pretty much concentrated in the southwestern area of the German-speaking area and includes Switzerland, extreme western Austria, Liechtenstein, Alsace in eastern France and southwestern Germany, including a part of Bavaria. Alemannic is the general name for the dialect, but it breaks down further into numerous regional and local dialects. Not all Alemannic speakers can necessarily understand one another.