Beef Liver : A Reminiscence Both Sweet & Melancholy

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We are all thinking, emotional beings: it is what differentiates and elevates us from all other organisms on this planet. We can plan, dream and hope. We can aspire to better not only our own lives, but also the lives of those dear and important to us. Yet for all these illuminating qualities we are still not perfect. We are fallible, self aware beings that have to find our way in an imperfect world. Thus the existence of the “Human Condition”.

Emotions are fickle and unpredictable reactions in humans. Some of us are more responsive to our inner feelings than others. Moreover, all of us have unique personal histories. These characteristics: emotions and personal histories, when combined with our personal experiences and memories, probably form the foundations of those self defining autobiographies we all carry around in our heads.

Our food contributes significantly to these self defining autobiographies. Brillat-Savarin – gastronome extraordinaire – did after all proclaim: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” Subsequently food – and certain dishes in particular – is often a powerful, though selective, time machine. Our associated food memories are singularly reliable short cuts to the past, both sweet and bitter – both often inseparably intertwined. These ‘trigger’ foods or dishes are evocative, most intimate reminders of people, places, events, settings, moods and states of mind. And if the food or dishes were unusual, the settings exceptional and our emotions vivid, the novelty reinforced the fixation of these memories (and their associations) so much more effectively.

Beef liver has an irrevocable, time transcending personal link to my maternal grandfather: Oupa Piet. He was foremost a gentle, quiet man of even temperament and astute intelligence. I cannot recall a single episode where I saw him cross, furious or express an insulting opinion of someone else. Though deeply religious, he did not resort to fanaticism or bible punching. In life, his appearance somewhat belied his gentle disposition. He was a large and attractive man – well proportioned, but with hands like shovel blades and always a straight, formal bearing. And he never ever used foul language.

His nature was emotionally distant and somewhat stand-offish. He always struck me as pensive, even at the breakfast table. I never knew what he was thinking or feeling, but I was still in primary school when he passed away and not aware of the emotional games adults play and defensive fortifications they erect.

Only later, through the memories of my parents, family and the evidence of his labour did I learn of his unfailing, earnest and so-hard-to-express love for his family. I learned something of the man: Pieter Johannes van der Merwe. He was not perfect, after all, none of us are. But in his imperfect way he was a good man, a provider and a responsible, involved member of his community and church. His good standing included being elected twice as mayor of the town of Silverton before it became incorporated into the engulfing municipality of Pretoria.

Oupa Piet had a plot of undeveloped land roughly 60 kilometres east of Pretoria on the Moloto road near the tribal area of KwaMhlanga. Formally, the immediate area is known as Dewagensdrift (loosely translated as “The wagons’ crossing”). The area is uneven, hilly Bushveld with well drained, somewhat poor, red, sandy soil and abundant deposits of sandstone and fossilized river bed (known in the area as “oubank”). The climate is relatively temperate, but the higher laying areas tend toward a Highveld climate and biodiversity.

Oupa Piet started developing the land after he was boarded, having suffered a debilitating stroke from which he only slowly and imperfectly recovered. He built the farm house and outbuildings over a long period from large stones and rocks he and a helper collected from his own hilly veldt with the aid of an old Massey Ferguson tractor and worn flatbed trailer.

Now Oupa Piet was an accountant in his professional life and self-taught builder thereafter. This was reflected in his building skills: not a single corner being square nor any walls perfectly vertical. But he built well and he built to last, despite the merry dripping of water and the embarrassed collection of enamelled bowls and assorted receptacles when it rained. Yet he was content: he created a monument to his life and to his care for his family.

His dream was that the farm would be his family’s traditional vacation spot. A haven where his children, their families and his grand children would repetitively congregate to celebrate Christmas, New Year and Easter weekends in rural peace and quiet. Simultaneously they would honour and renew their ties of family hood in close simplicity in the flickering glow of a Bushveld fire under the vibrant stars of the African night.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, affairs did not work out as he had planned and hoped. An indifferent world intruded. Maybe his inability to give voice to his dreams and the innermost yearnings of his heart contributed to the failure of his vision. The social, political and economic upheaval of the 80’s and early 90’s certainly interfered in the lives of everyone involved. All came to nought.

Today the farmstead is almost a ruin. Unhurriedly, the outbuildings are reverting to stones and defeat and the farmyard is running wild and slowly returning to the bush. Africa only grudgingly lends you her soil. His surviving child and his grand children are scattered over the country – many semi strangers to one another.

Not all was lost from the beginning. For a few years the candle flame of his vision burned and flickered. Not boldly, but quiet and modest as was the nature of the man himself. My fondest memories of him and the farm stem from that period. I was in primary school and our family lived in tranquil Port Elizabeth – almost on the opposite side of the country. Every 2 – 3 years Mom would become restless and gloomy and my father would testily undertake the trip ‘up North’. In that distant era he was in Government Service at a senior management level and our visits mostly lasted ten or so days.

We would take up lodgings at my grandparents’ city residence and I can remember two, maybe three occasions where we spent a week at the farm in their company. I still remember nephews, nieces and uncles and aunts attending, children sleeping on foam mattress Christmas beds and groups of adults scattered under shade trees, various beverages in hand. I recall my fascination with the bathroom’s wall mounted, gas fired instant geyser and it’s unpredictable, disconcerting whoomph! with which the heating elements lit up as soon as the water flow reached a certain point.

The logistical exercise for going to the farm all week was a serious and intense affair. The farmstead had no electricity supply or running water. Gran had a paraffin refrigerator that I recall being moody and recalcitrant in character. That obnoxious thing had warm and cold spots inside and the wick required frequent adjustment or it would go moodily on strike. Water was pumped to elevated tanks from a borehole with a submerged, reciprocating rod and valve pump powered by a single piston, two stroke VETSAK motor and looping, endless belts.

At night light came from candles, paraffin lamps or noisy, portable high pressure gas lamps of which you had to be exceedingly wary. The protective glass screen surrounding the incandescent glow element would immediately deliver a nasty, sizzling burn to the lax or the unwary. Even the adults operated those lamps with caution and we children were forbidden – on pain of pain – to go near those intimidating devices.

But the pride of the farm was the farmhouse kitchen. I vividly remember that kitchen – a huge, double volume space always cool in midday summer heat and cosy in the bite of early winter mornings. The snug warmth was courtesy of Gran’s huge (or so it seemed when I was very young) old Ellis De Luxe wood fired stove. It was a hulking, ravenous devourer of unsuspecting corn cobs, weirdly shaped twigs and stone hard cords of veldt gathered, dead trees. Nor were the odd eggshell or crumpled balls of wrapping paper safe from it’s gluttony. That old Ellis was deceptive in it’s innocence: dressed in creamy, young-ginger-yellow enamel panels and brushed, chrome-plated steel trim. It’s camouflage was masterfully complemented by the serene bulk of the large, semi-blackened aluminium kettle on top. This reassuring scene of domestic harmony belied the brief, terrified scrabblings of insects hiding under the bark of cords of wood deposited into that greedy, glowing maw. The only hint of the kettle’s dark complicity was the red, diamond shaped “Hart” manufacturer’s badge high on it’s side.

Cast Iron Stove Plate Lifter

That benign looking old wood stove initially fascinated me, but I quickly learned to be wary of it. It’s black, black heart only grudgingly allowed my Gran – and only her – to cook on it. She soothed it’s moodiness with regular cords of dead wood and the odd dried corn cob when it threatened to turn it’s back on her. When it was being difficult, she beat that thing into vindictive submission with a determined fire iron and vicious, short rights from the cast iron plate lifter. Frequent, merciless banging of heavy cast iron skillets and hefty enamelled pots with chipped, sharp rimmed lids reinforced her domination.

Oupa Piet avoided that old stove all together. My hunch is that he suspected the hulking thing to be a hidden doorway to a twisting, dark passage eventually opening in a backyard corner of the Underworld. Consequently his offerings of small, unsuspecting things hiding under the bark of dried branches or mindlessly gnawing away at the hearts of sections of dead trees were to appease the spirit lurking in the Stygian heart of that stove.

In spite of her equipment’s recalcitrance, Gran cooked the most enticing and soul satisfying dishes on that stove. She even baked bread in that ornery stove’s oven that would make angels give up immortality in a blink. Her beef liver stood out in particular. Strips or cutlets, it didn’t matter. Always with a sweet & tangy brown sauce containing drowned, caramelised onions seductively lurking just below the surface. Invariably, she served her sautéed liver with soft, mushy mieliepap (white maize meal porridge) – creamy with butter and redolent of Africa.

At that age I was not familiar with liver, any liver, on my plate. Mom regarded liver as a full fledged member of the Offal Club – much to my father’s disappointment – and no self respecting house wife of the 70’s era would have anything to do with it. In fact, liver was regarded as pet food, food for the poor and anaemic, sickly children (and adults) and we children were neither of the three. Gran’s chewy, deeply flavoured liver strips came as a vivid revelation to a curious mind that didn’t at that point regard food as an intellectual challenge or an interest worth exploring intimately.

Gran’s mieliepap was always cooked in the beer bellied, black enamel pot that restlessly clung to the edge of the high heat area of the stove surface. As she cooked, Gran would frequently move that pot around, following or fleeing the heat as the hot area waxed and waned with fresh wood fed from above or ashes spilling down into the ash pan. That black enamel pot was tatty and battle weary from constantly skirmishing with the heat. However, appearances are often deceptive. Morning after morning it patiently produced mushy, smooth maize porridge with a hint of grainy-ness and dreamily tasting of sweetish-milky, immature maize kernels fresh off the cob.

Gran was (and still is) an early riser all her life. I still recall in sharp detail stumbling into that flickering kitchen, lit by two candles, only half awake and thirsty in the early gloom of those cliff topping kitchen windows. In the wavering half-light, that black enamelled pot strikingly resembled the backside of an annoyed Vietnamese potbellied pig with Gran a be-night-gowned ring master deftly and firmly putting our pig through it’s nimble paces. It was the nature of that old Ellis’ blackened soul to allow humble and generally maligned things to be cooked well on it.

Today that farm kitchen is no more but a decaying shell. The farmstead is a crumbling monument to Pieter Johannes van der Merwe and what could’ve been. Yet, for a short while, his dreams were a poetic reality filled with brief joys and lasting sorrows. Such is the human condition, often briefly sweet but persistently melancholy.

These memories and reminiscences – some vague, some sharp – shaped my notions of liver and my compassion for it. Beef liver does have the taste of lost, fading dreams and a murky tinge of despair. Yet, if we brace ourselves mentally and vigorously girdle the spirit with a shot of fortitude, liver shakes it’s dark aura and becomes a source of joy and culinary beauty in the buoyant glow of brighter, happier memories. And this ‘ennoblement’ holds particularly true if we treat liver with understanding, care and respect; thus elevating it’s humility.

© RS Young, 2018

Image Sources:

1. Personal family photo archive

2. Ellis De Luxe : Bargain 4 Cash Pawn Shop; https://web.facebook.com/Bargain4CashPawnShop/posts/596639917197087; Retrieved on 02/03/2018.

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