Chicken liver pate

We spent the weekend at home because of the impending rain on Saturday and the temperature drop on Sunday. That ended me up experimenting on two dishes, chicken liver pate and cucumber sushi. I did have plans to cook but these two are not on my list. I was supposed to try gambas ajillo or putanesca but obviously none of them was served in my kitchen. Coming up with the two dishes were both unplanned. On Saturday, I went to the market with Ate Rosie (my first Saturday at the market in my 3 years stay in Taipei) to buy a week’s supply of meat, fish and vegetables. Thinking of something new to grace my daughter’s palate, I thought chicken liver would be nice and healthy as well. I bought an “i-jin” (600gms) of it and planned to have it divided for several cookings. I realized though that the hubby does not eat liver but on the contrary, he loves liver spread and he eats igado (Filipino dish with pork liver). So, few pieces went into the pot, mixed with seasonings and resulted to liver adobo good for three servings but not necessarily in a single day. The uncooked ones were meant to be stored in the freezer. After lunch, I thought of searching the internet for any other liver recipes and found the chicken liver pate (with video shown in videojug) interesting. I told the hubby about it and with delight, he agreed that I try it. We checked the ingredients and it turned out that we’d need bacon rashers and sherry besides the seasonings we already have in the kitchen cabinet. No sherry was found in the grocery and the net showed that to come up with it, two different kinds of beverages need to be mixed. That being said, we opted to use red wine instead. And you know what, the liver turned out to be the cheapest ingredient of the liver pate. This made me realize why pates are costly back home; I’d rather buy the canned liver spread next time, lol. Anyway, the cooking process turned out to be not as simple as I thought; putting the cooked dish in our tiny blender resulted to some mess. The good thing is that we ended up with three servings of homemade chicken liver pate. Please see the complete “cooking story” that follows and give it a try if you’re interested. Of course I’d say you will love it!

The homemade chicken liver pate

Ingredients that I used (sorry, no exact measurements provided):
Chicken liver, cleaned and halved


Rashers bacon
Basil leaves (it should have been parsley but I didn’t have it)

Red wine (it should have been sherry)
Italian spices (I thought it would be nice to add these up)
Chopped garlic
Chopped onions
Butter, two portions (one for cooking and one for topping later)

Bay leaves (for toppings later)
Salt and pepper

My way of cooking it:
1. I melted the butter to have the portion for topping available right away. I used what’s left in the pan to fry the bacon with the onions and garlic added later.

2. I added the liver tossing it ocassionally. I gave it at 5~7minutes before putting the seasonings.

3. I added the Italian spices, sprinkled a dash of salt and pepper and stirred. I gave it 2~3minutes so the seasonings can “get through” the liver and bacon.
4. I added the red wine and left it to simmer for 10minutes. Occassional stirring still needed here. Of course, I tasted (and asked hubby to sample it as well) the sauce to make sure the seasonings are enough.
5. I added the basil leaves and give it another 2 minutes.

That’s it, it’s cooked! The next step is to blend dish. I’d say this is the part that takes most of my time preparing the pate. The dish had little sauce so I had to add a little amount of water otherwise the blender will not work. I know this is not supposed to be done, don’t do it then. Find other means, maybe you can add sherry or melted butter instead.

Finally, after having it blended, I set three small containers (this is advisable so you can open and consume one in a day or two), spread the blended dish and had it follow the mould of the containers. I put few bay leaves on top (for decoration purposes huh?) and topped it with the melted butter. That completed the chicken liver pate. The containers had to be placed in the fridge until the butter solidified.

The story ends with the family enjoying toasted loaves of bread topped with homemade chicken liver pate. Sunday’s experimental dish will follow in a separate post.

Credits: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-chicken-liver-pate - this was my main recipe reference. I altered it to suit availability of ingredients.
Note: Photos in this post are all taken by the blog author.