BVC Eats: Chicken liver pâté

I’ve made this simple chicken liver pâté starting with one pound of chicken livers, as directed here. I found that I just didn’t eat it fast enough. In theory you can freeze it for up to a month, but my craving for pâté only comes around once every six months. It’s hard to buy less than a pound of chicken livers, though, so I rise the whole pound, cook up a half recipe of the following, and put the other half-pound of raw livers back in their carton, re-cover with fresh water, and put ’em in the freezer for next time. This is a full recipe.

8 T butter, half of it softened
1 lb chicken livers, white membrane, clotted blood, and blood vessels removed
2 medium shallots, very thinly sliced or minced (about 1/3 cup)
2 medium garlic cloves
½ t fresh thyme (or 1 to 3 T bacon sugars*)
1/3 c calvados (plus more as needed during blending cycle)
3 T heavy cream (plus more as needed during blending cycle)
Kosher salt to taste

Optional flavorings: nutmeg, a whole boiled egg (in blender stage), 1 clove garlic, don’t skimp on the cream, dried currants or fennel seed (soaked in calvados for extra punch), allspice, sage or bay leaf, teaspoon dried Dijon mustard, pinch of cayenne.

Rinse the livers and pat them dry. Some people trim away any strings of white sinew that might be in there; I don’t bother.

Melt half the butter. Let it brown. Add the livers and bacon sugars, cook 30 seconds to seal each side, then let cook 4 minutes, turning only occasionally, until the livers are very lightly browned but soft and pink on the inside, ~5 minutes. At about 3 minutes, i.e. late, to keep it zippy, add the garlic.  Are the livers done? If you press them with a spoon they should come apart. If you break open a thick piece, it should be a little pink in the middle

Scoop out the livers and let them cool.

Add the shallots to the pan and sauté them until they’re translucent.

Put all the cooked ingredients in the blender. It’s okay if they’re warmish. But don’t blend yet!

Deglaze the sauté pan with calvados, and reduce until  the glop is thickened and syrupy.

Put the reduced calvados glop into the blender, too. Add the cream and the rest of the butter. Blend on high speed until smooth, about 30 seconds, adding more cream or calvados as needed. Taste, adjust the seasoning, and add salt if needed.

Pack the pâté into a glass loaf pan, smooth the top, and pour some melted butter on top to preserve  your pâté anaerobically for 1 week to 1 month. Chill until the butter sets up, then cover the butter top with plastic wrap, too. Chill for at least 2 hours (up to 5 days) before serving.

Hints:

Add cream or more calvados in driblets as you blend, to keep it liquid enough to blend fully. Your pâté should be light in color, and it should turn over on its own in the blender.

Use a good brand of calvados (apple-based brandy), which is applejack in English-speaking countries. Fans of Terry Pratchett would call it scumble.

The overall liver-to-fat ratio approaches 2 parts liver to 1 part fat.

Taste it while it’s while hot to get the saltiness and alcohol content right.

Some people sieve their pâté to remove bigger chunks. I’ve heard it suggested, don’t throw out the leftover bits in the sieve; put them on a sandwich. Non-sieved is more ‘rustic.’

Serve this with a crusty loaf and something decadent to drink, such as the rest of the bottle of calvados, with a pile of crisp, tart apple slices on the side. Or go paleo and stick to the apples and decadent.

*What are bacon sugars? When you make bacon (I bake an entire cookie sheet covered in bacon), then remove the bacon, the blackened or brownish crusty flakes left behind in the pan are bacon sugars. This stuff is sweet and salty and bacony and OMG. Scrape it up along with a bit of bacon grease and add it to your pâté. If you have the luxury of making your pâté right after you’ve made bacon, this will add a holy-shit-why-is-that-so-good element to your pâté.

To glaze or not to glaze?

Some people like to glaze their pâté with jelly or aspic. I never have unflavored gelatin handy, myself, but YMMV, so here’s a quickie jelly for that. Pour the jelly in the bottom of your pâté mold and chill it so it sets up before you add the pâté. Or just pour it over the top of the molded pâté.

2 tablespoons water
1/2 cup calvados
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
ground allspice to taste

Heat the calvados in a pan. Stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Add the allspice and stir. Turn off the heat and stir in the gelatin until it dissolves. Cool that, then pour it gently over the pâté once it’s cold.

You could also just buy some jelly, spoon it over the top of the chilled pâté , then chill all again until the jelly is firm.