We had a potluck at Suan‘s house on Christmas Eve last year. I flirted with the idea of roasting a duck for the potluck but backed out later because I’m a wuss. In the end, I decided to roast a 2kg chicken and….make chicken liver pate. Will blog about the roast chicken later, for today I’m just going to blog about the chicken liver pate.
First of all, let me tell you the story on how I got my chicken livers. As I don’t have much experience marketing at an actual wet market (I know I got to learn :P) I requested help from my Mom. I knew it costs almost nothing for chicken livers so I casually told her to grab me RM2 worth. How many livers can RM2 get you, right?
Errr apparently RM2 worth of chicken livers can feed about 30 people. I don’t know whether it’s a standard thing or my mom’s regular supplier was just being generous but yeah, in the end I threw away about 70% of all the livers mom had gotten me. Wasteful yeah but I had no idea what to do with them and I just couldn’t bear with the idea of storing stinky, smelly, gloopy livers in my brand new fridge :P
So anyway………….
# – Here are the stuff that you’d need – A bottle of vodka, butter, basil leaves, 5-7 pieces of cleaned chicken livers and black pepper. Okay and salt too!
If you’re wondering what are those pixelated stuff, they are ingredients to make onion marmalade which goes very well with chicken liver pate but which I won’t be blogging about yet because I don’t have pictures of the cooking process FML :P
# – First, melt a chunk of butter. You can never have too much butter…
# – When it’s fully melted, throw in 3 or 4 pieces of basil leaves and cook till very slightly wilted.
# – Next, throw in the chicken livers.
# – You can keep or omit this step but I sprinkled in some paprika for a mild kick. You can use chili powder or cayenne for that Asian wow factor.
WTF am I babbling about asian wow factor bla bla bla bla.
# – Next, a dash of black pepper. Remember to put a dash of salt too!
# – And lastly, the all important step of pouring vodka in. At this point please give your common sense a workout and pour enough to make sure when the livers are blended it’ll become a paste and not soup….
From now on you can probably take the saucepan off the stove but if you don’t like your lives undercooked, then by all means cook them up longer.
# – You may leave them to cool for a while before throwing them into the blender too but since I’m lazy and sloppy, I blended them almost immediately :P Pour entire content of saucepan into blender ya.
# – Blend, blend, blend. Blend into a creamy texture. Make sure no chunks are left behind. If it looked too dry, pour in more vodka hehe.
# – Pour chicken liver paste into a container. Smoothen the top, clean the sides of the containers bla bla bla.
# – Now….melt a chunk of butter again.
# – Pour the melted butter on top of the liver paste. And put a sprig of dill for a classy look wahahaha.
Stick into fridge for about 6 hours minimum or till butter hardens.
# – Slather on baguette or (vegetable crisps for slow carb version). Eat. Swoon.
If you’ve got port wine to go with, even better!