On Making Chicken Liver Pate

chicken liver, whipped

Chicken liver. Don't get grossed out. I don't mess with innards too much either, but I do enjoy a good chicken liver pate every now and then. And I only eat them out. So, this week, when I went through my ritual of boiling a whole chicken, and inspired by my girl Tamar Adler and her Everlasting Meal , I set the livers aside. 

chicken liver, raw

Gross at first glance, I know. But things got better very quickly: I seasoned them with salt and pepper and seared them in a dab of butter and removed them from the pan. 

chicken liver, pan seared

Then I diced a small shallot and threw it in to the same pan with red wine, to deglaze it and pick up all those little pieces of goodness left behind.  

chicken liver, smothered in red wine and shallot marinade

I whipped it all together in the blender with a few springs of thyme and a spoonful of water for just a few seconds and let it set in the fridge for about thirty minutes, for the final product that you saw at the top of this post. Good enough to eat by the spoonful or spread on a rip of bread, this home made pate is a little bit of decadence in the middle of the daily grind.

Risotto alla Milanese

One of the best things about having a restaurant in Park Slope is the proximity to Asia's school. Most days, she walks in to Va Beh' right in time to try the daily specials. Last night, we shared risotto alla Milanese. 

The name speaks for itself: This distinctive dish is native to Milan, Michele's home town. It gets its rich, red color from the addition of saffron but the flavor is very elegant and light. 

According to legend, this dish has an exact birth date, 8th September 1574. The event is chronicled in the  Milan City Government Resolution of Recognition of Communal Denomination:  “That date had been set for the wedding of his daughter by the Belgian master glazer Valerio di Fiandra, who was working on the stained-glass windows of the Duomo, Milan’s cathedral, and for whom it apparently had a special meaning… During the wedding dinner appeared a rice dish coloured with saffron, a material that the crew of Belgian glazers, following Master Valerio, used to add to different colours to bring about particular chromatic effects. The rice prepared in that manner, perhaps as a joke, was enjoyed by everyone just as much for its flavour as for its colour; in those times pharmacological qualities were attributed to gold and, when this metal was lacking, to yellow substances”.

It will be on the menu for the next few days so come by or try this recipe at home. 

One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

Scraps from a lentil soup, thrown in to a pot with salt and olive oil and transformed in to...

...a luxurious vegetable broth. 

Think twice before tossing. Odds and ends, scraps and leftovers can be new beginnings. A vegetable broth is the base of a soup or a flavor enhancer for boiling rice or de-glazer for a sauté. 

"An Everlasting Meal" is my favorite book for this philosophy. Tamar Adler has built an entire repertoire on building meals out of the bits left behind from the meal before. Check it out. 

How to Make Fried Calamari

There's a lot of mystery surrounding squid. We had it as a starter for dinner last night, with a group of friends, and everyone "ooh"ed and "ahh"ed and talked about how they only eat it out at restaurants. I think that this is the case for a lot of people. And the adventurous ones who try to make it at home follow recipes that ask them to use all kinds of extraneous concoctions and combinations of condiments like cornmeal, rice flour or sugar to re-create the classic, crispy dish found in many Mediterranean restaurants. 

My man has the simplest, most straightforward approach that I can show in you two pictures, demystifying this process forever: 

Toss the squid in flour, salt and pepper 

Then, fry on "high" until golden brown, less than 2 mins: 

 

Basta.

Garlic Soup!

When you have nothing in the fridge, make Julia Child's garlic soup!

The recipe is so simple, it's crazy. It's amazing how so few ingredients can pack such a big punch. My take on it, a much simpler version of the soup, literally consisted of:

water
garlic cloves
olive oil
parsley
one bay leaf

After simmering for thirty minutes, Julia suggests straining the liquid and leaving only the clear broth behind. I opted to leaved the boiled garlic in. I liked the soft flavor and texture. Then, I threw in some diced potatoes, but some pastina would be just as good. I finished it with some fresh pepper, fresh parsley and parmesan cheese. 

This is one simply luxurious, aromatic and flavorful dish that cannot be aptly described. Try it! 

Pot Luck Precipitation

Just settling in to our new home...and Sandy strikes. After preparing all day Saturday (And by "preparing",  I mean shopping at the Park Slope Farmer's Market and hauling a small mountain of groceries home from the Red Hook Fairway. Candles and flashlights were only an after thought. The ideas of sand bags and generators seemed foreign and unnerving to both of us.), there was nothing to do on Sunday but to ride it out. 

Wide swaths of undefined time usually means cooking at our house and that is what we did, all day. We conserved most of of our focus and energy for dinner: roasted, whole black sea bass basted with soy, ginger, sesame oil and cilantro with a side of sautéed tatsoi. For lunch, we settled for a mishmash of leftovers (roasted chicken and butternut squash stew for the kid and pasta schiutta with beef ribs from the night before) and some first-time sides made with scraps of fennel and red pepper sitting around from the night before. 

This is a close-up of the my take on Julia Child's "Legumes a la Greque" with peppers...

...and with fennel...

Both are riffs on the same process, essentially braising the vegetables slowly over low heat with olive oil, lemon juice, celery, aromatics, herbs and spices. Julia suggests serving it cold. We ate it at room temperature and it was divine, perfect palate cleansers after the rich mains. The recipe will definitely get added to the repertoire because it is simple, satisfying and a great way to use odds and ends before they go bad. 

A couple of naps, some TV and an early turn-in defined the rest of the stormy night. Lights flickered once or twice, but by God's grace we never lost power or cable. With the worst behind us, I'm grateful for our private holiday.