Food Porn Friday: Chicken Liver Pate!

I love pate. Preferably the chicken liver type over the pork impostors. Plus it’s a cheap alternative to my first love, foie gras. Yeah, sometimes I’m fancy okay? Do you want me to use the accent marks? Because I will:  Pâté.

So after visiting Poole’s Diner – the flagship restaurant of Raleigh’s James Beard Award-winning chef, Ashley Christensen, as if you didn’t know – for the first time two weeks ago, my nearly forgotten love for chicken liver pate was reignited. Hers was smooth and savory, served in a jar to be spread on crostinis with jam. And mustard. And dammit, it was SO good.

I’ve tried to circumvent the need to go to a restaurant to get good pate. Trader Joe’s has some cheap options, and sometimes I buy it sliced by the quarter pound from the deli counter at The Fresh Market. Though I like it as a delicious snack with several drinks before heading out, Charlie (being the diva that he is) is not a fan of the store-bought brand.

So after agonizing over those packaged offerings last weekends, actually visiting The Fresh Market, and thinking maybe I should splurge on Trader Joe’s $8 chicken liver and truffle pate, I decided, to hell with it, I’d make my own. It couldn’t be that hard right?

And it really wasn’t. I searched for a simple recipe (ie few and cheap ingredients) and found this one from the New York Times. I then googled where to find chicken livers in the area (Kroger as it turns out). And upon discovering that a 20 oz. tub of chicken livers only cost $1.49, I resolved to make homemade pate, like, a regular thing.

Okay, maybe not. It wasn’t THAT easy.

I’m not going to steal this NYT recipe and try to make it into my own beautiful recipe blog post – because I’m scared I’ll screw up the directions by making them my own and because I’m not trying to steal this recipe… even though you can’t copyright food recipes in the US, just FYI – but I am going to show you my photos of the process and explain where I might’ve screwed up a bit could’ve done better.

First thing I learned:  Um, you have to clean the livers, which, as far as I can tell, just means removing any membranes that may be attached to the liver pieces. You can learn anything on YouTube. Anyway, I did my best.

Also, don’t overcook the livers. News to me: They don’t need much cooking. The recipe says to lightly brown them on the outside and keep them pink on the inside, but I got nervous about potentially eating raw liver (especially after handling said several raw livers just moments earlier), so I mayyy have overdone it a bit. This might explain why the inside of really delicious restaurant pate is often a light pink on the inside when you dip into it. Mine ended up pretty brown through and through.

Next time, I’d actually use a port or Madeira like the recipe calls for. This is an awful and constant downfall of mine. I was too cheap to go buy a decent fortified wine so I looked up substitutions and seeing that sherry was listed as a possible go-to, I used cooking sherry. Apparently, real chefs don’t do that. You should cook with something you’d actually drink and not the cheap grocery store shelf “cooking” stuff. Oh well.

A note about the heavy cream, because anything with butter and heavy cream WILL be delicious. I’m also not sure if I went too far with the “add a little more cream if necessary” portion of the recipe. I uh, just kept adding until it was smooth. Because heavy cream is wonderful.

And finally, I would’ve taken the recommendation that one should serve the resulting pate with toast AND bacon-onion jam. Because duh. That would’ve covered up any flaws… in anything really.

The result was good and I’ve been eating a ton of it lately – super earthy, rich, and almost sweet. It was not incredible, but I think with a little fine-tuning, it could be really great. The texture of my chicken liver pate was a bit dry and it seems like it’s better to eat after being brought closer to room temperature. But once I get this down, can you imagine getting a jar of this for Christmas? Great idea? I think so… Doesn’t everyone love liver?

(Disclaimer: The whirlwind making of pate in my kitchen also resulted in lots of chicken liver paste-like cement on multiple utensils, limbs, and countertops.)

We took this particular jar of chicken liver pate to Charlie’s sister’s place in DC for the weekend to serve with a baguette of French bread while we had wine and cocktails. Obviously I kept a personal jar for myself at home… that sometimes I just eat with a knife. So I know what I’ll be having tonight when I get off work. (Seriously guys, sometimes I’m fucking fancy.)

Update:  After my weekend snack and sharing this pate with friends, I can safely say that it is actually pretty damn delicious. It pairs especially well with something a little sweet, like this balsamic glaze I found at Trader Joe’s. Success!