One hungover Sunday with friends a few months ago, from the depths of our poisonous, headached despair, we came up with an alter-ego: the Angry Liver. The Angry Liver would be sitting in a dark room, listening to Chopin and crying and muttering about the poor treatment – endless drinks thrown at him, light liquour dark liquour sweet liquour savoury liquour, grape and grain and spirit all together, an unceasing barrage of booze that was more than he could bear. Angry Liver would be having flashbacks of when we were kids and weren’t constantly testing his processing limits; happy sunny days of playing in fields and flying kites. He would think of those halcyon days, cry some more, and grumpily wallow in his misery.
Thursday was my boyfriend’s birthday; Friday saw Angry Liver’s return.
“Why you wanna treat me this way Ona? Why?”
I’m sorry, Liver. I would like to beg off full guilt, this time, if I may. Sure, I started everyone on gin cocktails before dinner, knowing we would be drinking red wine later. But I didn’t ask for the cava after all that red wine! They just kept giving it to me! And the Scotch – I certainly didn’t need it. But it was planted in front of me! And the glass refilled! And you know, Liver, you know how I feel about Scotch.
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| The cause of the hangover |
Angry Liver’s appearance always, always coincides with a strong and faithful ache for yellow food. Eggs. Potatoes. Cheese. Polenta, if there is some. Pasta is not yellow enough: it’s has to be the colour of the sunshine that your mood lacks.
I’ve heard tell that many people have no energy for cooking anything at all in a hungover state. Pas moi: I need sustenance, I need it right then, and I need it how I like it. Not even Angry Liver will stop me from being a super control freak picky eater.
So Friday morning afternoon saw me slumped at the stove, in my jim jams, cooking up three yellow items: in one pan, onions, in a surfeit of olive oil so they slowly improved from acrid white harshness to mellow golden sweetness; in another pan, tiny cubes of potatoes browning in olive oil (also yellow!), getting crisp all over. Once the onions were caramelised, they were scraped from the pan, and replaced with (really gloriously yellow now) free-range eggs, beaten just to a homogenous gloopy mass, and like the potatoes, generously salted. When the eggs set a bit, you scatter over the onion, and just let the whole thing cogitate by itself for a few moments until you have the best omelette ever. The potatoes were eaten on the side like chips, grabbed in greedy handfuls out of a bowl, olive oil and salt besmirching our saintly fingers.
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| The alleviator of the hangover |
I wish I could call this combo a Hangover Cure, but not even I am that naïve. Let’s call it the Angry Liver Appeaser.
By the way, if you want to make an Omelette Parmentier, and thereby legitimise your hangover with an actual, historic, named dish, then just scatter your fried potatoes onto the unset egg to adhere to the mix. This French Sunday-night classic of soft, yielding egg and crispy salty potato is extremely pleasing – hungover or not.
