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Mock Pate de Foie Gras No. 2
1 cup fowl livers and gizzards 6 tablespoons chicken fat 1 medium onion minced 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce Salt and pepper 1/2 cup soup stock Put livers and gizzards in a pan with half the fat, half the onion, the soup stock and the seasonings and cook very slowly until soft. Cool in liquor, which should have boiled down to almost nothing. When cold, rub livers through a fine sieve and mash to a fine paste. Fry the remaining onion in remainder of fat slowly, for 10 minutes, then rub through a fine sieve. Mix all together for 10 minutes, until very smooth. Mix in gizzards, cut in small pieces, and press mixture into greased cups. Cover with hot fat and chill. One-half cup mushrooms may be fried with the onion and forced through the sieve with the, if desired.
A chopped-liver-style spread built on chicken livers, gizzards and rendered chicken fat, sealed under fat in individual cups. The method is sound; the main adjustments are cooking temperature and food-safety timing.
- Cook the gizzards separatelyGizzards need 45-60 minutes of gentle simmering to soften, while livers are done in 8-10 minutes and turn grainy past that. Poach the gizzards first in the stock, then add the livers for the last few minutes.
- Livers must be cooked throughThe instruction to cook "until soft" leaves too much latitude. Poultry livers should reach 165F throughout — no pink centre — before they are cooled and sieved, since the finished paste is never reheated.
- Chicken fatSchmaltz, rendered from the skin and fat pads of a chicken. Sold in tubs at kosher counters and increasingly in supermarkets; you can also render trimmings slowly in a dry pan. Butter substitutes acceptably but changes the character.
- The sieveRubbing cooked liver through a fine sieve was the usual route to a smooth paste in a kitchen without machinery. A food processor does it in thirty seconds; pass the result through a sieve afterwards if you want the texture the original intends.
- "Cool in liquor"Let the livers cool in the reduced cooking liquid rather than draining them hot — the paste stays moist and takes the seasoning better. Do the cooling in the refrigerator once the pan has stopped steaming.
- Soup stockChicken stock, ideally the strong gelatinous kind from a boiling fowl. Reduce it to a glaze as directed; a watery result will not firm up in the cups.
- Sealing and keepingThe layer of hot fat poured over the top is a seal, not a garnish, and it only works if the surface beneath is smooth and the cups go straight into the cold. Even sealed, treat this as a five-day refrigerated preparation rather than a preserve.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Expect roughly a cup of paste from 1 cup of livers and gizzards, enough to fill a few small cups.