Florentine Chicken Liver Crostini: A Recipe and Ten Rules

The Ten Commandments of Chicken Liver Crostini

1. It isn’t Christmas, Easter, or Sunday lunch unless you kick things off with crostini ai fegatini (chicken liver crostini).
2. The bread has to be Tuscan and unsalted (sciocco); if you want it salty, go eat schiacciata (Tuscan flatbread) instead.
3. Store-bought pâté from the supermarket is for layabouts. It’s disgusting.
4. Anchovy fillets to clean, little capers, chop it all into a smooth cream. Anchovy paste from a tube is for gluing your sticker album shut.
5. The liver gets chopped by knife or mezzaluna (curved rocking blade); the food processor is the disgrace of the century.
6. When you eat them you should still feel the little bits of liver. The smooth, puréed version is baby food.
7. The bread gets toasted, not too much, then dunked quick in the broth. That’s its finest moment.
8. Once you start eating them, show some restraint, or you’ll ruin your appetite for the first course.
9. While they cook, deglaze with Vin Santo. You didn’t think it was only good for dunking cantucci (almond biscuits), did you?
10. There’s a variant for every grandmother.

Chicken Liver Crostini – The Recipe

• 500 g chicken livers
• 1 red onion
• 2 tablespoons capers in vinegar
• 3 salt-packed anchovy fillets
• 50 g butter
• Vin Santo
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper

Slice a red onion and let it soften in 5 tablespoons of oil. As soon as it takes on color, add the cleaned chicken livers (no filaments and no gall bladder — that little green bit — or they’ll turn out bitter).

Cook for 10 minutes, deglazing with half a glass of Vin Santo (some people use a good red wine). When the time is up, remove the livers and chop them with a mezzaluna or a knife.

Return everything to the pan along with the capers and the anchovy fillets, cleaned of course, all finely chopped. It should turn into a smooth cream. Finish with the butter, adjust the salt and pepper, and let it cook for another 10 minutes, moistening with a little broth if you see it drying out too much.

Start toasting the slices of Tuscan bread for a taste test before you carry them to the table, otherwise whoever’s cooking never gets to eat a thing!

Remember that the perfect crostino is toasted and passed lightly through the broth just before serving.

Tips, Trivia and Variations

If you add spleen, remember to scrape off its skin with the spine of a knife, and stir it in when you add the capers and anchovies. The difference is in the cooking: it will take 30 minutes, again with the help of a little broth. Made this way, they take the name crostini neri (“black crostini”).

Who are the Mollica’s? They’re a couple madly in love with Tuscan cooking. They carried it all the way to Australia, then came back, bought a truck, and with it have made an awful lot of people happy.

If they’ve won you over, you’ll find more about them on their Facebook page.