Chicken Liver Pâté Round ??

Chicken liver pâté is one of my favorite things to make and to eat. The first time I prepared it, I was living with my parents for a short period of time after graduating from college and before starting to work. I was trying to make up for playing the part of the typical college student who returned home jobless, by making dinner for them on a semi-regular basis. I was just starting to delve into the world of cooking and my meals were always the result of experiments with new dishes. It is unlikely that we ate the same thing twice during those few months.

I remember my osso bucco being a particular hit with my father. Of course, there was also the day I fell asleep on the couch while there were chicken thighs braising on the stove. I awoke to a house filled with smoke and some chunks of carbonized, used-to-be-chicken thighs permanently fused to the now ruined pan. Luckily, I was just cooking for one that night and my parents were out of town.

The first time I made chicken liver pâté it seemed as if I was embarking on quite the endeavor. After all, pâtés and charcuterie, though delicious, were still a mystery to me and not the sort of things you made at home. My mother assured me over and over again that it was a very simple dish to make, but I did not believe her. It was too exotic. How could pâté be easy?

Turns out, it is easy. It is also cheap. A pound of chicken livers is never over $2 and that includes the livers that I picked up from high-end, specialty retailer Eataly, here in New York. Once I discovered how easy it is to make this rich, delicious and often impressive dish, it became part of my regular repertoire. Chicken liver pâté at the holidays, chicken liver pâté to go with every cheese plate, my mom and I even made it for an event during the weekend of my brother’s wedding. We have bounced back and forth between recipes and I am always on the lookout for new ones to try.

So, when I saw this latest recipe while perusing Sweet Paul, a visually stunning online magazine, I knew I would be making it that weekend. This is a great chicken liver pâté. I will not go as far as to say that it is my favorite (that title still belongs to this recipe), but it is delicious and, unlike my favorite recipe, perfect for placing in a beautiful jar, under a thick layer of clarified butter and giving as a gift this holiday season.

Chicken Liver Pâté
Sweet Paul Magazine

1 pound chicken livers, cleaned
1 cup milk
3 T butter
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 t fresh thyme
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/4 cup cognac (I used white wine)
4 T butter

Topping
1 stick butter
6 sprigs thyme

Place the chicken lives in the milk and soak in the refrigerator overnight (24 hours if possible). Drain the livers. In a large pan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and sweat the onions until beginning to soften. Add the chicken livers and thyme and sauté until the livers are browned on the outside (about five minutes). Season with salt and pepper and cook for one more minute. Add the cognac or wine and cook until almost all of the liquid is gone. Transfer the mixture to a food processor and puree until smooth. Spoon the pâté into six ramekins.

For the topping: Melt a stick of butter in a small saucepan. As the milk solids float to the top, remove them with a spoon until the butter is totally clear and you are left with clarified butter (alternately you may purchase clarified butter and melt it until pourable). Cover each ramekin with a layer of clarified butter. Place one thyme sprig in the butter for decoration and chill until solid.

Comfort in a Bowl

Most days I push myself pretty hard. I work full time and go to school at night. In my spare minutes I compose posts for Apples and Butter, do a bit of freelance writing and work my tush off at making contacts within my industry here in New York. During my best weeks, I even get up early to stop by the gym on my way in to work.

Today is not one of those days and it is certainly not one of those weeks.

I took my level three final last night at The French Culinary Institute. It was the midterm for the entire program at FCI and worth 50 percent of my grade. In other words, a big deal. While it is a relief to have the thing over with, I am feeling a bit worn down from the whole process.

The flip side of pushing myself so hard is that I also have learned how to hit the brakes and indulge myself a bit when it is truly needed. Today I have plans for a lunchtime trip to Strand to treat myself to a new (used) cookbook or two to flip through while I lay in my cozy bed watching movies, and a big bowl of warm, comforting soup for dinner.

There is something so restorative about a bowl of soup.

This is yet another riff (or shall I say variation? Somewhere between this week and last, I began to hate the word riff, which is entirely unfortunate since it seems to be the favored word of bloggers and established writers alike when referring to their own take on something: ‘My riff on Suzanne Goin’s bacon-wrapped dates,” or “we were riffing on different potato-based soups.” Ugh). I digress. This is yet another way to use my vegetable soup formula. Specifically, this is an example of how to use the formula to make a roasted vegetable soup. Butternut squash is the main ingredient, but I also threw in some roasted mushrooms. I find the savory flavor of mushrooms in pureed soup to add a creaminess that is particularly comforting and I may have mentioned this already, but today I am in need of some comfort.

Refer back to the original vegetable soup formula if you would like to make some changes to this basic variation. And by all means do. Your perfect bowl of comfort may not look exactly like mine.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Mushroom Soup

1 lb cubed butternut squash
8 oz domestic mushrooms, sliced or quartered, plus more for garnish if desired
Canola oil
1 small onion, or half of a larger one, diced
A few sprigs of tarragon
A few springs of thyme
1 1/2 – 2 quarts of vegetable stock (6 – 8 cups)
Salt and pepper to taste
Walnut oil (optional)

Preheat oven to 375˚
Toss the mushrooms and butternut squash with a bit of oil and salt pepper. Spread out the vegetables on a roasting pan and bake until the squash is tender, about 30 to 40 minutes. Add a bit of canola oil to a soup pot placed over medium heat. Add the diced onion and sauté until softened. Add the thyme and tarragon and sauté for a minute or two longer. Add the roasted vegetables to the pot and cover with vegetable stock. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the thyme and tarragon and transfer the mixture to a blender to puree, in batches if necessary. Return the pureed soup to the pot and season with salt and pepper. If desired, serve with a garnish of roasted mushrooms and a bit of walnut oil.

Meatballs for The Sunday Cook

Few and far between are the weeknights I have time to cook a meal at home. I work full time and run straight from work to school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The other two nights I catch up with girlfriends or attempt to check off an endless to-do list and by the time I make it home, I am too tired to move, let alone cook.

The thing is, I am one of those peculiar people who gets energized from being in the kitchen. I know that if I can just get started on something, I will catch my second wind and be left with a delicious, often affordable and usually healthy dinner.

In order to increase the likelihood that I will get cooking on the rare night I find myself at home, I am always on the lookout for simple dishes (love a good stir-fry or fried rice) or a dish that has me doing most of the prep work ahead of time, on a weekend, when I have more time. This is known as being a Sunday cook.

If you are looking to expand your Sunday cook repertoire, try these Thai-inspired turkey meatballs. They were the result of a recent Sunday project that kept me well-fed on Tuesday nights for an entire month. The recipe itself is more an exercise in mixing than cooking, but having a bag of these frozen meatballs in the freezer meant I was never more than 15 minutes away from an easy, home-cooked meal. Simply thaw a few of the meatballs in the refrigerator overnight, or use the defrost setting on your microwave if you are pressed for time. Add a bit of canola oil to a small sauté pan and cook these up over medium heat. They make a great addition to many dishes—think soups, stews, pastas, or my favorite application, over a bowl of wheat berries with a poached egg—or just serve them on their own with a salad on the side.

Thai-Inspired Meatballs
Adapted from Everyday Food

2 pounds ground turkey
6 scallions
3 T Japanese fish sauce (2T if you do not have the Japanese variety which has a milder flavor)
2 T Sriracha
1 T sugar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup cooked barley

Place the ground turkey in a large bowl. Cut the scallions in half lengthwise and thinly slice white and light green parts only. Place the dark green sections in your freezer bag for collecting vegetable scraps for stock. Add the chopped scallions to the turkey. Mix the fish sauce, Sriracha, sugar and garlic in a small bowl. Add the fish sauce mixture to the ground turkey, along with the cooked barley, and mix gently. I prefer to wear disposable gloves and mix with my hands, just until combined.

Place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Shape the turkey mixture into meatballs of your desired size and place on the cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze until solid. Transfer frozen meatballs to a Ziploc freezer bag and use as needed.

Cookies for the Holidays - Updated with Winner

A random number generator selected comment number 11 as the winning comment. Congratulations Terri. I will contact you to arrange delivery of the items. Enjoy!

In honor of the start to the shopping, err I mean holiday season, Apples and Butter is hosting a giveaway of yummy treats and a cookbook filled with lots of tempting, delicious recipes. I don't know about you, but one way I manage to get everyone checked off my list is by baking their presents. It is more affordable than purchasing gifts for everyone on my list and it has the added bonus of putting me in the holiday spirit.

Last year I undertook the major project of truffle making. The truffles were delicious and I hope enjoyed by all recipients, but I will not be repeating that process in my tiny New York kitchen. This year cookies are on the gift-giving menu and I have every intention of finding some of those recipes in the cookbook from Tate's Bake Shop.


Tate's is a bakery based in Southampton that makes crisp, delicious cookies as well as cakes, brownies and squares. I generally consider myself more of a puffy, chewy chocolate chip cookie kind of girl, but I devoured half of the chocolate chip cookies within 20 minutes of their arrival. Oops. Luckily for you, since I have none left to share, you have the opportunity to win your own gift box of Tate's cookies and the Tate's cookbook to find your own baking inspiration. Just leave a comment here telling me what recipe you make as a holiday gift and you are automatically entered in the drawing. If you become a fan of Tate's on facebook, you get to enter twice. Just leave another comment letting me know you became a fan and that will serve as your second entry. Sorry to all you foreign readers, but for shipping reasons, the giveaway is only open to U.S. residents.

Not a baker? Tate's doesn't want you to miss out either. You can still check everyone off your holiday list by ordering cookies online. Tate's will even give you 15 percent off your online order. Just enter the code 'cookie' anytime before December 31st and the discount will be automatically applied.

Vegetable Soup Formula

Vegetable soups are quickly becoming my savior as I enter my first, cold New York winter. I used to bring salads to work in Los Angeles year-round and they proved sufficient for a quick meal at my desk. I tried that here in New York during the first few weeks of November and it turned out to be less than satisfying. So much so that when faced with the green leaves staring back at me from the office refrigerator, I quickly turned and walked out the door in search of something warm and a bit more comforting.

The main problem with my new lunchtime ritual is the detrimental effect it has had on the snugness of my wardrobe. Add that to the battle already underway with the culinary school bulge and it is a recipe for disaster. One more trip to Guy & Gallard for lobster bisque and no amount of Saturday morning boot camp in Central Park is going to bring me back.

Enter the humble vegetable soup. This is the perfect comfort food compromise. It is warm, thick and packed with the flavors of fall, but if you keep the ingredients to vegetables, stock and a few key flavorings, it is supremely healthy and nourishing.

This recipe, as with most, is just a guideline. Be sure to experiment with your favorite flavors. Keep this simple formula in mind and you will produce a successful soup every time:

1. Sauté diced onions in a bit of oil. After the onions soften add any garlic, ginger or other such flavorings (not herbs) and sauté a bit more. Season with salt and pepper.
2. For a roasted vegetable soup, dice the vegetables and roast at 375˚ until tender. Alternately, you can add the vegetables to the pot with the onions and sauté a bit to achieve some color. If roasting, add the vegetables to the pot with the softened onions after roasting.
3. Add enough vegetable stock to cover everything, toss in any herbs you want to use and simmer for at least 30 minutes. If you did not roast the vegetables, make sure they are tender before proceeding.
4. Remove the herbs and use an immersion blender or a standard blender to purée the soup.
5. Return the puréed soup to the pan and season to taste with salt and pepper.

There. You just made delicious and healthy vegetable soup. The only thing I must insist on is that you, if at all possible, make your own vegetable stock. It is so simple, yet it adds so much to the final product. Not to mention that it is a great way to use up vegetable scraps. For a refresher on vegetable stock, go here. If you are not quite ready to experiment on your own, here is the recipe for my latest concoction, carrot ginger pear soup.

Carrot Ginger Pear Soup
Makes about 2 quarts

1 small onion, diced
2 T vegetable oil
1 pound carrots
2 ripe pears
2 slices fresh ginger
1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock
Salt and pepper

Heat a medium pot over medium high heat. Add the oil and diced onion and sauté until soft. Add the ginger slices and continue to sauté. While the onions are sautéing, peel and roughly chop the carrots and pears. Add the carrots and pears to the pot and sauté until beginning to soften, five to 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add enough stock to cover the vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes until the carrots are tender.

To temper the spice of the ginger, remove the slices before pureeing. If you want more zip, leave the ginger in. Purée the mixture using an immersion or standard blender. Return the purée to the pot and season with salt and pepper to taste. If the soup is too thick, add a bit more vegetable stock to thin it out. Serve or cool and divide into containers for storage.

Dem Bones

I used to love the knowing looks butchers would flash my way when I would ask for beef bones, chicken carcasses or offal. I once received a marriage proposal after requesting three pounds of oxtail. Rather, I think the butcher told my boyfriend, who was with me at the time, to ask me to marry him right away. ‘Put a ring on that,’ may have been the exact words. You get the point.

That was at least four years ago when I first started making my own stocks and needed to ask butchers for things like chicken carcasses. Those days are pretty much over. It seems it is no longer uncommon for someone to make their own stock or request lesser known cuts of meat. This, in itself, is a good thing. I love that the food revolution has carried quality product and more homemade—fewer processed—ingredients into the kitchen of your average home cook. However, if I am being totally honest, I miss the knowing looks. And the marriage proposals.

One key thing I have learned about stocks at The French Culinary Institute, is that any kitchen without veal stock is an ill-equipped one. On occasion I have the opportunity to bring home from school a quart container of veal stock, or excess demi glace (veal stock that has been reduced by half), but last week I found that all of my reserves had been used up. It is getting cold here in New York and I am going to need a freezer full of stocks to accommodate all of the soup and stew making I have planned for the coming weeks. Unfettered by the lack of butcher attention received in recent years, I set out last week to gather the ingredients for a batch of veal stock.

Though not a difficult task, veal stock is slightly more complicated than the chicken or vegetable stock I make. Since I make a brown veal stock, I have to roast the bones and mirepoix before leaving everything to gently simmer on the stove for hours. Still, considering what a difference using a homemade stock makes in the final flavor of many, many dishes, the effort is minimal in relation to the payoff.

The recipe included below does not need to be followed exactly (I try to use up whatever vegetable trimmings I have stashed in the freezer when making stock), but a good guideline is to aim to include mirepoix (carrots, onion, celery) equivalent to about 20 percent of the weight of bones being used. So, for my seven pounds of veal bones, I included about one and a half pounds of mirepoix.

Once the stock has simmered for roughly eight hours, cool it down quickly by breaking it into smaller containers and chilling them over an ice bath. Once cool, place the containers in the fridge if you are planning on using the stock in a day or two. Otherwise, store them in the freezer for the next soup, stew or braise you make, all of which can benefit from a little homemade stock flavor.

Veal Stock
Makes about 5 quarts

7 pounds veal bones
Vegetable oil as needed
1/2 pound carrots or carrot trimmings cut into 3-in lengths
1/2 pound onions or onion trimmings, peeled and quartered
1/2 pound celery or celery trimmings, cut into 3-in lengths
Greens from one leek, thoroughly rinsed
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup tomato trimmings or 1 plum tomato, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, smashed
Bouquet garni (bay leaf, thyme sprigs, peppercorns, parsley sprigs)

Preheat oven to 450˚
Place a heavy bottomed roasting pan in the oven to preheat. Coat the veal bones in oil and place in the pan. Roast the bones for 30 minutes then turn the bones over and continue roasting for 30 more minutes. Toss the carrots, onions, celery and leek greens with the tomato paste and add them to the roasting pan for the last 15 minutes of cooking (after the bones have been roasting for 45 minutes). Place the roasted bones and mirepoix in a large stockpot. Deglaze the roasting pan with some water to loosen the browned bits, scraping them up if necessary. Add the water and browned bits to the stockpot along with the tomato trimmings. Add cold water to the stockpot until the bones are fully submerged (about 6 quarts of water depending on the pot) and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and skim well. Add the tomatoes, garlic and bouquet garni. Continue to simmer for eight hours. It should be a very low simmer with just a few bubbles breaking the surface every few seconds. Continue to skim the surface while the stock is simmering. Removing the scum that floats to the surface will result in a clear stock - a sure sign of success in a finished stock.

After the stock has simmered for eight hours, strain it and place in smaller containers to cool over an ice bath. I plug up my sink and fill it with an ice and water mixture. I then pour the stock into metal bowls and place the bowls in the ice bath to cool. Pour the cooled stock into quart containers and freeze or place in the refrigerator for later use.

Tarte Aux Pommes

Lest all of you think that I skipped out of town with my extra copy of the Thinkfood cookbook, I think it is high time I announced the winner. Thank you all for the beautiful stories you shared in the comments section on the last post. I love hearing about other people's food memories.

I used a random number generator to select a number between 1 and 25 (I know this is a cop out, but there were just too many good stories and I was having a really hard time choosing just one). The web site selected number seven, so, Saint Tigerlily, you are the winner! I will get in touch with you to arrange delivery of the cookbook.

In the meantime, as fall is most certainly upon us here in New York City, I think it is time to get down to some apple business. My friend Tanitra, FCI classmate and fellow food blogger, brought me a bag of apples from her recent apple picking outing to Mead Orchards. They are delicious, juicy and just the right balance of sweet and tart. I am using some of them this afternoon to make the Apple Vinaigrette from Phil and Lauren Rubin's new book, The Comfort of Apples. I will be sure and share that vinaigrette and the resulting salad with you shortly, but first I want to get to the apple tart that we are now making nightly in level 3 at The French Culinary Institute.

Get all ideas of apple pie out of your head before you make this tart. There is not a lot of sugar in this filling. If you are looking for a sweet, syrupy interior, stick with your favorite apple pie recipe. However, if you love recipes that let the natural flavor of ingredients shine, definitely give this a go. The tartness of the apples really comes through in the final product.

Tarte Aux Pommes

4 large Granny Smith apples
2 T water
4 T sugar
2 Golden Delicious apples
4 T butter, melted
1/4 cup apricot jam
2 T water, more as needed to thin the jam
Lemon juice as needed
1 recipe of your favorite tart or pie dough

Preheat oven to 400°
Roll out your dough and fit it to an 8" tart shell and place it back in the fridge to rest. If you have just made your tart dough, be sure and let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour before rolling it out.

Peel the granny smith apples and roughly chop them. Add them to a saucepan with two tablespoons of water and 4 tablespoons of sugar. Loosely cover and cook until the apples start to break down. You want the mixture to be approaching applesauce consistency, but with some remaining apples chunks. Set aside to cool.

Peel and core the golden delicious apples. Cut them in half vertically. Cut each half into very thin slices, no more than 1/8". These slices will be used to decorate the top of the tart. If you are not decorating the tart right away, toss the slices with a little lemon juice to prevent browning.

Remove the tart shell from the refrigerator and fill it with the cooled apple filling. The filling should come about 3/4 of the way up the tart shell. Arrange the thin apple slices in two concentric circles. No filling should show through the topping. Place in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350° and continue cooking for an additional 50 minutes.

Combine the apricot jam and two tablespoons of water in a small pan. Heat gently to thin out the jam. Use a pastry brush to glaze the tart with the jam. Let the tart cool to room temperature before serving.

Thinkfood Cookbook Giveaway

This past summer I was asked to contribute a recipe to the Thinkfood Cookbook published by Posit Science. I was thrilled to be invited to participate and had so much fun working on the project. One of the highlights of the whole experience was hearing from a Posit Science contact that while out at a dinner in the Bay Area, she was discussing the cookbook with her dinner companions when she was interrupted by someone at the table next to her. The woman wanted to tell her that she had heard about the Thinkfood cookbook from a blog she reads, Apples and Butter (I would love to know who you are if you are still a reader!). So many great things have happened as a result of this project, but I do not think anything could match the thrill of seeing the published cookbook for the first time a few weeks ago.

It is a beautiful book, filled with delicious and brain-healthy recipes. I would tell all of you to head over to the Posit Science site to order your copy today (which you should all do), but I am more excited to tell you that I have one copy to give away here today.



I created the recipe included in Thinkfood for my boyfriend. I was trying to satisfy a craving for a dish he had enjoyed many times in England with his father when he was growing up. We could not find proper lamb kofta in Los Angeles so I came up with this recipe to appease him until we made our next trip to London with his family.

Have you ever had to recreate a dish at home for someone you love, in an attempt to satisfy their food craving? Were you successful? Tell me about your story in the comment section and one reader will receive a copy of the Thinkfood book, lovingly shipped by yours truly. Bonus points if you are willing to share your recipe so we can try it out on Apples and Butter!

In the meantime, the original recipe for lamb kofta can be found on the Thinkfood cookbook page. If you stopped by today as a result of the Posit Science newsletter, thank you for visiting and please leave a comment with your recipe story so you can have a chance at winning the cookbook!