Recipe Tuesday: Chicken Liver Pâté

One of the biggest mysteries of the past few years is “where have all the chicken livers gone?”.  OK, I no longer shop at a Kosher butcher - they closed - but I haven’t seen any in a supermarket for years and our local butcher has real problems obtaining them.  Lurking in the freezer are a goose liver from removed from the 2022 Christmas goose and a tiny duck liver taken from the Christmas 2023 duck, both just begging to be turned into pâté.  Imagine my surprise when DH phoned me from the supermarket on Friday - I haven’t been shopping since I started chemo - and told me they had chicken livers!  Yay!! Three 400g packets came home with him. Two went into the freezer and, on Sunday, I made the third into Chicken Liver Pâté.  It was yummy!

My recipe is based on one by Rachel Khoo, from her Little Paris Kitchen cookbook. She uses shallots, brandy and rabbit livers, while I used onions, sherry, chicken livers together with the duck and goose liver from the freezer, and made a double quantity.  You will need a food processor.

Ingredients

250g chicken livers

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon sherry

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon Schmaltz or use olive oil

Method

1. Melt the schmaltz in a frying pan over a low heat.
2. Gently fry the onion and garlic, until the onion has softened and turned clear. 
3. Add the chicken livers.  Keep the heat low. Fry on one side for 2 minutes, then turn over and fry on the other.
4. Once the chicken livers have been turned over, add a pinch of salt and the sherry.  Stir. Fry for another 2 minutes.  Be careful not to overcook - they will toughen.  Test to see if they’re cooked by pushing down on one using the edge of a spoon.  It should break up easily and be brown inside.
5. Tip the chicken liver mixture into a food processor and process until smooth.
6. Decant into ramekin dishes, smooth down to give a flat top, allow to cool, cover with cling film and refrigerate until needed. Serve with good bread.

NOTE:  Traditionally pâté is covered with a layer of clarified butter/fat, in order to help preserve it.  I never bother but, if you wish to: melt 150g unsalted butter and allow it to cool for a couple of minutes. Skim off the white crusty layer, then gently pour the liquid butter over the pâté. Once cool, refrigerate and ensure the butter is set before serving.

- Pam

Mushroom Duxelles

Here is the "Mushroom Duxelles" recipe I promised in my Mushroom Ragout post. It's a type of mushroom pate, very dark and rich. The first time I made it was when I did my big mushroom cookup - word of warning: this uses a shed-load of mushrooms for not much pate. You could easily double the quantities for a dinner party starter.

You will need a food processor.

Mushroom Duxelles

Makes just over 1 cup of pate.

Ingredients

350g Mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
15g dried mushrooms (ceps/porcini, wild mushrooms or whatever you have)
50ml red wine/sherry/marsala
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon
5 or 6 grinds of black pepper


Method

1. First, soak the dried mushrooms: put them in a small container, pour over sufficient boiling water to cover and set aside for at least 20 minutes. (Meanwhile, prepare the other mushrooms.)
2. Drain the dried mushrooms through a sieve (I use a coffee filter), saving the soaking liquid. The sieve collects any grit.
3. Lightly chop the dried mushrooms.
4. In the food processor, combine the sliced mushrooms, dried mushrooms and tarragon. Grind over the black pepper. Process in 5 second bursts until the mushrooms are finely chopped.
5. Pour the mushroom mixture into a saucepan. Pour over the wine and soaking liquid. Add the soy sauce. Heat gently until the mushrooms begin to water, then stir fry over a high heat until all the water is evaporated.
6. Spoon into small ramekin dishes and allow to cool. Serve with crackers or melba toast, or use as a sandwich filling.

- Pam

On Chicken Livers

In response to my post http://pipneyjane.blogspot.com/2007/04/apologies-but-meat-fumes-have-got-to-me.html, Very Herodotus wrote: Sorry, but ... chicken livers? I mean, I'm sure they're nutritious, loaded with iron and all. I thought chicken liver was something people ate when there was nothing else to eat. You know, you ate all the white meat, then most of the dark, then the chicken neck for soup or something, and as a last resort you eat the liver.

But you've gone and bought the liver first, like saying "Look, I don't need the tender white meat of the breast, or the yummy goodness of the wing. I'll just take these chicken livers and be on my way."

Do they have medicinal value? Are they part of your secret beauty regimen? Please, do tell!


You raise an interesting point, which seems prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries: equating offal with food for poor people. And yet the French, for example, don’t seem to have that attitude – think of foie gras. I’ve seen chicken livers appear in numerous guises in the menus of their restaurants, usually as a starter: chicken livers in a red wine sauce, devilled and served on toast, as pate.

Yes, they’re cheap (I think of it, greedily, as “all the more for me”.); in the supermarket, I see non-kosher chicken livers for about £1 a pound. They’re also good for you: rich in iron and B-vitamins, and very low in fat. However, the primary reason I cook with them is because they taste nice.

Here are a couple of recipes to get you started. (I have others but to put them all in would make this a mammoth post.) The first is the classic Jewish chopped liver, as taught to me by my mum. The second is based on a recipe from The Best of Oriental Cooking, published by Caxton, where it is listed as “Curry with Chicken Livers”. I prefer my name.

General Notes on Recipes

I’ve given the instructions to kosher the chicken livers in each recipe. If you don’t want kosher livers, then skip this stage, add the livers at the suggested step and cook them gently for a bit longer.

Liver must be cooked gently or it goes tough.

The Weight Watchers points calculations are my own.

Gehachte Liver
serves 8 – 2 WW points per serving

1 tablespoon schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) or use oil
2 medium onions chopped finely
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled
1 clove garlic, crushed
8 oz/250g chicken livers trimmed
Peppercorns in a grinder

1) Grill/broil the chicken livers for 2 minutes each side under a hot grill (broiler) to kosher. Do not over cook.
2) In a frying pan, melt the schmaltz over a medium heat. Gently fry the onion and garlic until the onion is soft and clear.
3) Add the chicken livers and fry gently for two minutes (longer if you omitted step 1).
4) In a food processor, combine the chicken liver mixture with the hard boiled eggs. Add 20 grinds of black pepper. Process until you have a smooth mixture. Spoon into ramekin dishes and allow to cool.
5) Serve with toast.

Thai Chicken Livers
Serves 4 – 4 WW points per serving excluding rice

1lb/500g chicken livers trimmed
1 onion, chunked
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons lazy chilli/sambal ulek/red chilli paste
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon lemon/lime juice
6 oz/150g mushrooms
2 or 3 carrots cut into thin strips
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
4 fl oz/100ml Low fat coconut milk
1 teasp oil (I use rapeseed oil or canola)
1 teasp soft dark brown sugar
1-2 head of pak choi, sliced lengthwise (optional)
Rice to serve

1) Grill/broil the chicken livers for 2 minutes each side under a hot grill (broiler) to kosher. Do not overcook.
2) Put the curry powder into a small dish and mix to a paste with some water (this stops it burning).
3) In a food processor, combine the onion, garlic, turmeric, sugar, chilli, ginger and lemon/lime juice. Puree to a paste.
4) Heat the oil in a large wok. Stir fry the onion paste until golden brown.
5) Add the mushrooms. Stir fry until they’ve made water and that water has evaporated.
6) Add the chicken livers. If you’ve skipped step 1, fry gently until the liver begins to colour. Add the curry paste, stir well and fry for 1-2 minutes.
7) Stir in the coconut milk, carrots and pak choi (if using). Bring to boiling point and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
8) Serve with rice.


- Pam