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1
Heat a generous film of olive oil in a wide, heavy braising vessel over high heat. Working in batches, brown the pork shoulder cubes deeply on all cut surfaces. Do not crowd the pan. The crust must be dark mahogany — pale or grey pork at this stage condemns the finished sauce to flatness. Remove each batch and reserve.
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2
Reduce the heat to medium. Add the diced onion and whole garlic cloves to the same vessel and cook in the residual fat until the onion is soft and beginning to colour at its edges. Add the cinnamon stick and bay leaves and stir briefly until fragrant.
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3
Return the browned pork shoulder to the vessel. Pour in the 500 ml of red wine and deglaze, scraping all caramelised deposits from the base of the pan. The liquid should rise to roughly half the depth of the meat.
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4
Add the pork liver chunks, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of piment, and stir to distribute. This is where the dish lives or dies: the liver must be added raw and whole into the braise, never browned separately, so that it dissolves entirely during the long cook and becomes the sauce itself — thickening it, enriching it, giving it its characteristic bitter depth. A fréginat without liver is a generic pork braise; with liver correctly handled, it is a different substance altogether.
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5
Cover tightly and transfer to an oven set at 160 °C. Braise for 2 to 3 hours, checking periodically. The dish is ready when the pork shoulder yields completely to a spoon with no resistance, the liver has dissolved invisibly into the braising liquid, and the sauce is thick, dark, and glossy — not pourable like a stock but coating and dense.
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6
Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. Serve directly from the vessel over or alongside mongetes blanques (white beans), which are the canonical accompaniment in Roussillon.