Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Livers with Spicy Tomato Ginger Dipping Sauce

Makes 32 pieces

Spicy Tomato Ginger Sauce:

1 cup ketchup

1/4 cup soy sauce

3 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons sambal oelek or a red chili paste

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar or unseasoned rice wine vinegar

Fresh ginger, the size of a large garlic clove, peeled

1 clove garlic, peeled

Bacon-Wrapped Livers:

32 pieces Gerber Amish Chicken Livers (buy 2 pounds for 16 livers cut in half)

6 cups whole milk

25 grams kosher salt

1 gram Prague Powder #1 (see Chef's Note)

16 slices bacon (1-pound) Fantasma's Finest Jalapeño Bacon, cut in half

32 whole water chestnuts, drained (buy 2 8-ounce cans containing 16 pieces each)

For the sauce: Place all sauce ingredients in a food processor and purée until the garlic and the ginger are completely broken down. Place in a storage container that will hold at least 12 ounces or put into a bowl for dipping. (The sauce can be made well ahead of time. It will keep for weeks in your refrigerator before it starts to ferment. Before serving, bring to room temperature.)

For the livers: In a non-reactive pan with a lid, place livers in milk with pink salt and brine for 24 hours. After soaking, drain livers, and pat dry with paper towel.

Preheat oven to 400°F. On a foil-lined sheet tray, line up halved bacon slices and bake for around 10 minutes; you do not want the bacon to brown or to crisp. Remove bacon from pan, drain any fat (do yourself a favor and save that liquid gold!). Blot the bacon and sheet tray with paper towels to remove excess grease.

Reline sheet tray with the bacon and place one water chestnut in the middle of each piece of bacon, topping each with a liver half, wrapping the bacon around the water chestnuts and livers, securing each with a toothpick.

At this point, you have a choice: You can put the sheet tray back in your still hot 400° F. oven and cook until the bacon is crispy and the internal temperature of livers is 150° (the carry over from cooking will get you where you need to be from a food safety point of view.)

Or… you can cook the bacon-wrapped livers to the same crispy goodness and temperature on a grill, getting the added benefit of flame char. I prefer grilling them, but you will have to tend them more closely, moving them around while keeping an eye on them to prevent flare up from scorching your bacon.

Eat the livers while hot with the dipping sauce at room temperature.

Chef's Note: Prague Powder #1 is a pink curing salt, aka sodium nitrite, available from online sources. It's best to use a kitchen scale to measure precisely, but i1 gram will measure about 1/6 of a teaspoon.

"I call these tasty umami bombs the gateway liver. I have served them to many a person who say they don’t like livers to nearly universal acclaim. The key is the milk soak and the cure. The milk dilutes the iron, which gives livers their metallic/mineral notes, and the cure denatures the proteins, causing them to unravel and swell, which allows them to retain more moisture and develop a firmer, less mealy texture. Some people prefer their livers unadulterated. If you prefer them this way, you can just skip the soak and curing process. The spicy tomato ginger sauce is a great accompaniment and a natural flavor bridge that pairs beautifully." - Chef Jonathan Justus, owner of the soon-to-open The Parker Hollow at 100 S. Main St. in Parkville, Mo.