What was supposed to be a recipe for pâté
Well, we’ve come to it: the first recipe I trampled upon so much I am concerned sharing it at all makes me negligent.
It started with the best of intentions: I made roast chicken (not the Favorite Chicken; we’ll get there eventually, I promise, I swear) over the weekend and of course tucked neatly inside were its extra bits. My father taught me long ago that these parts are not to be ignored; in fact, he claimed my grandmother used to take advantage of the neck seeming gross to her children and always saved it for herself. Usually I sear the livers, heart and neck in a cast iron with some olive oil and salt and they’re a great little snack while cooking. But this time, I came across them and thought, okay, maybe I make pâté, an appetizer I of course hated as a child but now absolutely love. Of course I also haven’t had in forever because I’m not going out to fancy dinners or making fancy dinners at home; what a perfect opportunity this would be.
Here’s a list of things I didn’t have at home when I decided to make this: the full amount of liver the recipe called for, cream, cognac, ground ginger, white pepper, allspice, and any of the suggested mushrooms, pignoli nuts or pistachios. (I also didn’t have chicken or pork fat, but seemed not to notice that until writing this out right now?) Instead, I forged ahead, sure that having liver was enough. I replaced cream with butter and cognac with port. According to some recipes out there, that might have resulted in something looking and tasting like pâté, had I followed them instead.
I didn’t even really measure properly, blending everything together in a concoction so bizarre I just looked at the photos again and was newly horrified that I documented the experience at all. I then decided to do something wild and follow the instructions, using the “baking it in a roasting pan that sits in boiling water” technique as specified. What resulted was so hideous I will simply not share it—though in an extremely minor defense of myself, it’s not as if liver pâté ever looks particularly pretty—and certainly not spreadable enough. The water all evaporated from the pan (2 to 2 1/2 hours is a long time) and though the pâté was sort of erratically oily at first, dried out in the fridge when I put it in to set. (Am I making you hungry yet?)
It tasted, my dining companion said, as we tried it on crackers, not particularly strongly of liver—fine, not offensive, but certainly not the rich, decadent feeling of sitting in a French bistro in a cold winter’s night and drinking a glass of red wine without a care in the world. Upon further research, seemingly more foolproof and not nearly as complicated actual recipes suggest some combination of cooking the liver on the stovetop, then pureeing, then putting it in the fridge to set.
Though, if you can believe it, there is another recipe for liver pâté in Fave Recipes, I may have been too scarred by this experience to try it again, which means there’s no real lesson here, except for the obvious, which is: read the recipe, have the right ingredients, and that I knew my hubris would get me in the end. Tune in next month for an actual recipe of use.
Donations Time: Last month, $112 went to RWCF COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund. This month, your money will go to mutual aid organizations in Houston, Austin, and Dallas—and I’m matching the donation. You can sign up or switch to become a donor to this newsletter for $5 a month or $30 a year right here. The cost of an actual, probably large, order of fancy pâté!