Smooth Operator – Another Chicken Liver Paté

If you have read my piece on hospital food, you should be interested in this post. In some of the comments (online and off) about my best efforts at recreating a 1970s recipe for chicken liver paté, there was an implied criticism. “More like a tureen.” or “Are they pieces of livers in there?” or “Have you ever done a smooth one?” left me with the impression that while you all loved my efforts, you might have had a different view if you had to eat the stuff. 

So with the feedback taken onboard and the constructive commentary absorbed, I am preparing a simple Chicken Liver Paté with Thyme. Like with so much of the stuff I am doing recently, it comes with a very short ingredients list. Everything, except the butter is in the photograph.

The star of the show is the half kilo of chicken livers.

Here’s what you will need;

• 500 grammes of chicken livers
• 150 grammes of butter
• 3 cloves of garlic (i am using one ‘single clove’ bulb instead.
• 2 good-sized shallots
• 1 bay leaf
• Salt and pepper
• Half the thyme you have been lovingly growing on the windowsill
• A good glug or two of brandy

Side note on measurement;
You  can take one of two approaches to measurement in dishes like this.
Approach 1: Slavishly jot down the wisdom of some person who in turn jotted it down from somebody else and make something pretty much identical to what they did.
Approach 2: Read a few recipes and decide what might suit your palate and that of your friends and family. 
You can guess where I am on this. 

First thing to do is to cut the extraneous bits off the chicken livers. I will leave that to your imagination in this post. It is the gory bit and I am trying to be a ‘Smooth Operator’ after all. Next, fry them with the bay leaf in a generous slice of butter.

I can only protect you from so much. You have to see the livers frying in hot butter.

While this is going on, chop the shallots nice and small and take the thyme off its stalks.

A pretty sedate shot of the shallots being sliced. There are no more gory bits.

Place the livers in a food processor when they are lightly browned on the outside but not cooked completely through. Season them.

The processing will help make it smooth and acceptable to the more discerning palate.

Let the livers cool while you fry the onions and garlic until soft, adding the thyme leaves at about half way.

These add great flavour to the paté. Don’t rush this bit.

Just before they are done, add that glug or two of brandy to the pan.

Keep your eyebrows out of the way while you flame off the brandy.

Add this to the processor and blend until smooth. Scrape the stuff off the sides of the food processor and blend again. Blend again for good luck. This needs to be smooth.  Just like in the world of fashion, achieving smooth takes a lot of hard work. In the case of the Smooth Chicken Liver Paté, the hard work is in forcing it through the sieve.

You have no idea how much work goes into pressing this stuff through the sieve with the back of a spoon.

Spoon it into ramekin dishes. You will note I had enough to do a big and a small. the big is enough to feed a small family for a week. The small is enough to make you embarrassed that you ate it all yourself.

Pour some clarified butter over to preserve the pate. This works a treat, BTW.

Refrigerate overnight and serve to your more sophisticated acquaintances with the Toast Melba I showed you in the other paté post.

The smooth operators amongst you will love this Chicken Liver Paté.

Maybe I am just that bit less sophisticated than the rest of you. I really enjoyed this. It is a top quality paté by any standards. But, I preferred the less refined pate I cooked before. Maybe that says more about me than I say about the paté. Try it. You will enjoy it.