It's Good Friday, so I will try not to go on and on about food. I did promise (via Twitter) that I would post about chicken liver pate, so here you go.
Sorry about the lack of an accent, which will be felt strongly throughout this post. It's just that I stubbornly cling to my Dell keyboard even though I now have a Mac computer. I like the Delete button! I can't give up my Delete button! (You know, as opposed to the backspace button, which is all very well until your cursor is in FRONT of the thing you want to delete. I for one am not wasting time arrowing the cursor over and then hitting backspace when I have a keyboard with a nifty Delete button! Hello, efficiency!)
But it means that my Alt key doesn't seem to work.
Sigh.
Okay, embarrassingly accent-less pate. Feel free to tell me what to do in the comments.
So, you and I are on board with being frugal and not wasting things, right? And also with Saving a Step while cooking. That means that when you are roasting TWO chickens (or three if you have, say, 8 or more people to feed), because what on earth is the point of roasting just one chicken, when for the same exact amount of prep time, oven time, and clean-up time (I mean, a little more clean-up, but still), you can have enough cooked chicken for two more meals, at least, plus the broth?
But then there are those innards. It doesn't feel super extravagant to throw away one package of innards, but two… that seems so wrong. So here is what you do.
You are basically going to have the concept of descending amounts of onions, livers, butter, dried fruit, alcohol, and spices. It's a flexible recipe that uses what suits you and makes a sweetly spicey pate that you are going to love, no matter how you feel about liver!
Go ahead and put the non-liver things from that gross bag in the roasting pan with the chickens (this all works for turkey as well, which you probably are only roasting one, but the liver is way bigger). They will add a lot to your broth.
Take the livers (in this case I have two, and they're kind of small, because, two chickens, but these proportions will work for up to four, and honestly, I wish I had had four) and put them on a plate while you get the chickens ready and in the oven. The livers are the soft things with the different more uniform color than the other things. (Usually there is a neck, which looks like a neck, and a heart, which looks like a cross between a cork and a pistachio or something. What the heck shape is that? And the other thing is the liver.)
Now, while you are prepping the rest of the meal, heat up about 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet. Slice a large onion and don't worry about being precise — all this is going in the food processor later. Saute (ugh, no accent!) the liver and onions together until the livers are nicely browned on both sides.
You can remove the livers to the food processor bowl while you get the onions really browned.
I like my pate with some Middle Eastern flavors, so I usually add about 1 teaspoon of cumin and 1 teaspoon of curry powder or coriander or heck, both. Let the spices brown as well.
The spice bottle faintly seems to say “allspice” but that is because I buy most of my spices in bulk (with the help of Erin, who lives quite close to a great market with fresh bulk spices) and keep them in jars that I mark with Sharpies.
Rosie always complains that my jars are indelibly marked with the wrong things.
I often vary the spices according to how I'm feeling. This time I added a teaspoon of ginger-garlic paste because I had some from the time about ten days ago I made Chicken Tikki Masala. The recipe introduced me to this concept. Basically you blend equal (large, like 1/2 cup) amounts of fresh ginger and fresh garlic with a little olive oil and salt (my addition). You can keep the paste in the fridge and it's awesome! Next week I will try to get you the recipe for the slaw I made using it. It was to. die. for.
Once things are good and fried up, you want to add your dried fruit. Ideally, you would have prunes, and I thought I had some prunes and some raisins, but no, it was two containers of raisins.
So raisins it was. I have made this with prunes, raisins, figs, and dried cranberries. It's all good. But prunes are best.
Then you want to deglaze your pan or, in the case of using an evil non-stick pan like this one, just reduce your liquid, which will be some form of alcohol, preferably somewhat sweet. My choices would be port, sherry, vermouth, or whatever is handy. In this case I used about 2 tablespoons or so of Slivovice, being a prune rotgut liqueur or whatever it is. Sorry to you Slovaks out there, but wow, this stuff is something else! It's good in pate though.
If you had little brown bits, you would scrape them up. In any case, let the fruit get plump and reduce the liquid. Add a couple of dashes of salt. If you used curry powder, that will be spicy enough, but if not, add a dash of cayenne pepper.
P. S. Store those spices in glass jars, with the overflow (because they are so much cheaper this way, you get way more!) tightly wrapped and stashed in the freezer. Don't just put the bags they come in all together somewhere, because then they will soon all taste the same, like bad cumin. And make sure the store you buy them from is scooping them out of glass jars, not pre-packaging them in the bags.
Now add everything to the livers along with two more tablespoons of butter. Yes, this is pate, dear readers. It has to have a lot of butter! (Remember, this is the gateway liver dish. Put lots of yummy stuff plus butter into your livers and then you'll be on your way to liking them plain and simple.)
Process it all well and give it a taste. It should be sweet and savory and a little bit spicy (not too much! You know Auntie Leila can't take the heat!).
Chill and serve with water crackers as your feast-day appetizer, along with home-cured salmon and some nice cheese. I promise you, it's out of this world good.
Now, have yourselves a holy Good Friday and a wonderful Easter! We will see you tomorrow for {bits & pieces}!
Raeanna says
Wow Leila, I also want your Chicken Tikki Masala recipe also. I have been craving it this pregnancy!
_Leila says
Raeanna, you should look elsewhere. Mine was deemed “Very good but not Chicken Tikki Masala” because I leave out key ingredients like chilis — can't take the heat. And I've never had it made by someone who knows what they are doing.
However, the ginger-garlic paste is awesome.
Patty says
I had no idea pâté had so little liver in it!
And the Mac equivalent of PC delete is Shift+Delete. Yes, it is one extra key. But the Mac keyboard has a built-in em dash! (Alt-Shift-Hyphen) Swoon!
_Leila says
Well, Patty, this recipe isn't all meat and fat. It's not your typical pate… it's… gateway 🙂
I tried shift+delete and just… deleted. 🙁
Patty says
Ok, I was right the first time I typed it and then went to check it and got confused. It's Fn+delete if you are in front of something.
Kathy says
We actually would never throw out our livers, we like them but we are in the deep South. I will be making this, it sounds wonderful, thank you for sharing.
Tabitha says
I will try this! If you use rubbing alcohol you can remove sharpie from glass. We did it all the time when I worked in a lab (we used ethanol, but rubbing alcohol works, too).
Christine says
There should be an “fn” key on your mac keyboard (at least there is on mine). To delete, press fn+backspace.
_Leila says
Christine, the point is that I am NOT using the Mac keyboard. So I still have my Dell and when I try an Alt code it doesn't work 🙁
Christine says
Sorry Leila, then I have misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that the reason you were clinging on to your Dell keyboard was the absence of the delete button on the mac keyboard, which is something that annoyed me as well when I first started out on a mac. That's why I've pointed out that even without a specific delete button the function is still there. Of course that doesn't solve your problem with the current keyboard, for which I don't know a solution either. But I for one will happily read completely accent-free posts from you 🙂 You could even do away with punctuation and I'd still read each and every one.
_Leila says
Okay, now I understand the Fn + backspace. And that might help me with parting with my Dell keyboard. Because if the alt key doesn't work…
Thanks for your sweet comment!! 🙂
Betsy M says
Thanks so much for the recipe Leila. The recipe I grew up with includes cream cheese. It was wonderful but alas my family is dairy free so it is not served in my house. I can't wait to try this!
Margo says
Well, I am always curious about new food, although liver is an old food I cannot stand. But I was a child – so maybe I should try again? And I do abhor throwing food away. I usually throw the giblets in with stock, but next time I will save the livers for this.
THe ginger garlic paste is brilliant! I want to hear more about the slaw.
Kara says
Actually, I think you'd be better off with a 38% Slivovice rather than the 45% you're using. The plum flavor is stronger and generally sweeter with the lower octane stuff. You can put it in coffee too, or use it to flambe crepes with plum jam…
_Leila says
Kara, I can't say I'm in the market for more Slivovice! But if and when I am, I will get the kind you say!
Sue says
Oh, my! This looks divine! It's too bad that whole chickens are hard to come by in Japan. My mom used to use whole chickens to make her fried chicken, and I loved to watch the whole process. At the end she would batter and fry the livers and let me eat them while she finished cooking. I'm sure I'll never taste anything like that again!
Carrie says
This is the hard way, surely, but if I need an accented word, I just make it in a word processor, then copy it, OR find it online and copy. :O) I love your blog!
MtMama says
O.K., maybe I'm misinformed or paranoid, but I throw out the livers because I heard/read/divined that if the chicken was raised on hormones or questionable food or in gross living quarters, the liver is where those toxins get stored. So to be better safe than sorry, I don't serve liver (even though I have fond memories of the liver and onions my mother made). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong!
_Leila says
MtMama, you do have to get good chickens. According to the Nourishing Traditions people, the benefits of eating liver outweigh the downsides — if the animals are good to start with.
Robin says
I consider the fact that I looked at the pictures of liver in your post as progress in my liver journey.
Thanks for all you do!
Emily says
Sadly for me, my Amish chicken and Farmers Market chicken both come WITHOUT innards! I have to buy and pay for them separately! Needless to say, I rarely have them around. This looks good, though. Can't wait for the slaw recipe!
Melissa Diskin says
I made this! I forgot to add garlic (but did add ginger paste) and the only alcohol I could find was….bourbon. But it was amazing. I did have to buy the livers separately in a flat at Publix…and since there were so many, I just sauteed and added more of the other ingredients…and more.. and more. I ended up with nearly 2 liters of the paste — I just checked the size on the container I used to store it in the fridge. Yes: I made nearly a shoebox full of pate!! and served it up to everyone on Easter!! …and now I have a few tiny little cuplets in the freezer that I'm hoarding away for myself.
I even got the small cousins, and the BIL who hates liver, to try it and LIKE it. Yay!
_Leila says
Wow, MDiskin, that's a lot of pate!! But yes, it does freeze well.
Decadent Housewife says
My saltshaker is never that clean.
Another good chicken livers recipe is from the old Joy of Cooking. Superb.
This looks wonderful, Leila.
Claire says
I have no desire to make this recipe, but reading it was so fun. You are such a solid voice for good. You lift me every time I read your posts.
Christy says
A pregnant hungry lady thanks you profusely. I actually really like liver, so adding a bunch of other things I also like just made it fantastically decadent. I am trying not to eat the whole bowl… Pate is good for Advent too, right?
savvyfoodmama says
All I had was a Grenache/Shiraz blend of wine – no liquor, and it's delicious!! So proud to now make Liver pate – Auntie Leila, you write like I want to learn…”here, do this.” So easy!