Making Liver Pate
I began researching other ways to make liver more palatable.
I felt I had some decent success using sous vide, but in the last few batches where I let it sit for a good long while, maybe 1-2 days, I ended up with a very soft piece of liver. I would magic bullet so that it would be easier to baby to chew, and I ended up with liver slurry.
It wasn’t that great for me, or for that matter, the baby.
Unfortunately, most of the other recipes involved putting the liver in a pan with a bunch of onions, and the risk that I seemed to face was the liver getting tough. Not good.
So, I started to research how to make pate. I liked the idea because I knew liver pate would not have the shoe-leather effect, and it was something I could potentially feed the baby and not worry about her swallowing a big tough slab of organ.
The other thing I liked about the possibilities from pate was that there could be lots of variations for me to experiment with till I came across my own, personal, killer version.
So: I began by researching several different types of liver pate recipes:
http://paleodietlifestyle.com/simple-and-delicious-liver-pate-recipes/
I basically combined what I learned from these two:
Bought 1 pound of grass-fed beef liver at the farmer’s market (from Marin Sun).
Chopped a whole onion (originally I was concerned because the pieces weren’t that small for some of them, but now that I know that the whole thing gets blended anyway, it doesn’t really matter).
I decided to use Trader Joe’s chopped garlic and through in a big spoonful. I originally wanted to go all professional and do it with a fresh clove, but this was so much faster and I think just as good.
I added half a cup or so of red wine (the cheapest I could get, a $3.99 bottle of Shiraz from Whole Foods).
Chopped thyme and rosemary: these do need to be chopped pretty finely. If I believed my Magic Bullet could chop them, I probably would have done that, but I have a feeling that these fresh herbs wouldn’t have been chopped that well, so I did it by hand.
Half a cup of Kerry Gold grass-fed butter — this is why I believe this is a bulletproof super-food!
I put the onions in first into a pan with a few pads of butter to get them softened and then added the liver. One of the recipes said that this should brown the liver, but I didn’t see it get brown and didn’t expect it to. I just wanted it to get relatively cooked. I actually have experimented with raw liver to maintain as much of the nutrients in the past, but this time just followed the directions and kept the heat really low.
I then added all the herbs, red wine, garlic and let it simmer without a top till most of the liquid was gone.
Then I put it into a separate bowl, through in the rest of the butter and then put it covered in the refrigerator till it cooled off. After about 2 hours, I put the whole mixture into a food processor and blended it all up. Then I put the whole mixture in to cool for half a day before eating it.
I added salt and cracked pepper and then folded it into the mixture with a spoon. I realized later that adding more of both to taste will make it better (I use Pink himilayan and I know that pepper is not considered bulletproof because of the mold, but I can’t think of an alternative – the pepper really makes a difference in the pate).
The first morning, baby actually did lick the spoon; but she didn’t for dinner, so maybe it was a one-shot thing. I like it because I don’t have to keep it warm or cook it; I can just keep a container of the stuff and use a spoon and take it in when I need ‘nature’s vitamin.’
Overall, it was a good beginning. I will start to experiment with different flavors and possibly start taking photographs.