Now, Stacy, you knew I had to do something with all that liver I get from the chickens, from pork, etc. Well, I used to cook it for the WonderWeiner and only used the chicken livers for pate, but you can use any liver you have.

This is a simple and fast recipe, I've used it a couple of times. I never put cooking sherry in it because I've never had any, LOL, and I never shaped it with my hands, just dumped it into a serving bowl and added a spreader and some crackers.

Liver Pate

3 cups water
1 pound liver
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons cooking sherry
3/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground mace
In a medium saucepan, combine water, chicken livers, and sliced onion. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and cover. Simmer for about 20 minutes, or until liver is cooked and tender. Remove from heat, drain, and discard onions. Also remove and discard any hard portions of the liver.

Place cooked livers in a blender or food processor, and process until smooth. Add chopped onion, sherry, butter, salt, black pepper, and mace; pulse to blend. With hands lightly greased, form pate mixture into a mound, and place on a serving platter. Chill for 1 hour before serving.

Now, here is a recipe I've had for a while and I haven't tried, but it sure looks interesting. Elery HATES liver and with Dad gone the only one who would eat it would be me, so I doubt I'll make this anytime in the near future. I'm sure it could easily be made with pork liver instead of the chicken livers.

Bourbon Chicken Liver Pate

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoon minced fresh marjoram
1 teaspoon minced fresh sage
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1 pound chicken livers, trimmed
2 tablespoons bourbon
fresh thyme, marjoram, or sage sprig

Melt 1 stick butter in a large nonstick skillet over moderately low heat, then cook onion and garlic, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add herbs, salt, pepper, allspice, and livers and cook, stirring, until livers are cooked outside but still pink when cut open, about 8 minutes. Stir in bourbon and remove from heat. Puree mixture in a food processor until smooth, then transfer pate to crock and smooth top.

Melt remaining 1/2 stick butter in a very small heavy saucepan over low heat, then remove pan from heat and let butter stand 3 minutes. If using herb garnish, put sprig on top of pate. Skim froth from butter, then spoon enough clarified butter over pate to cover its surface, leaving milky solids in bottom of pan.

Chill pate until butter is firm, about 30 minutes, then cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 2 hours more.

Yield: 10 servings

Though this pate can be eaten the day it's made, we find it even more flavorful when made 1 or 2 days ahead. If you use several small ramekins instead of a pate crock or terrine, you may need more clarified butter to seal the tops.

Have fun, I'll be waiting to see how that pate turns out!

Annie

Stacy, I use the recipe in "Joy of Cooking". I has and apple in it and it's the best I've ever had.
I'll check this thread tomorrow and would be glad to post it if you don't have the cookbook.

Nancy

This one got rave reviews on a blog I frequent.

Here is a link that might be useful: Country Pate

deborah, that looks very, very good. But it doesn't have any liver in it, unless I'm missing something.

Annie

I'm not much for pork liver....but I do this with beef or chicken livers.....and true to form, it's not a "recipe" it's a methiod.
Caramelize about 3 big onions ( or 2 big ones and 2 small ones or 5 medium or....well you get the ides!) in half a stick of butter....you can add a little more butter if you need to.
Slice about a pound of liver or break up chicken livers and fry them in the rest of that stick of butter....use more if you need to. Add several cloves of garlic to the liver as it's frying....cook until just no longer pink...grind it all together...I zap in the cuisinart....and I season with a squeeze of fresh lemon and some cognac
Linda C

Stacy, I love chicken liver pate, but not pork. My favourite pate recipe is Jacques Pepins. I love how creamy, melt in the mouth and very, very rich it is. Hard not to like something with 1 1/2 cups of butter.

Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table

Chicken Liver Pate
==================
This is my favourite Chicken Liver
pate. It is from one of Jacques
Pepin's cookbooks. "Everyday cooking
with Jacques Pepin" I usually pour
this into two or three small
ramekins and decorate with aspic
1 Pound of chicken livers
2/3 Cup thinly sliced onions
1 Clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 bay leaves crushed
1/4 Teaspoon thyme leaves
1 Cup chicken broth
2 Teaspoons of salt
1-1/2 Cups (3 sticks) butter,
softened
Freshly ground pepper
2 Teaspoons Cognac
Optional (for decoration)
1 envelope unflavoured gelatin for
aspic
a piece of tomato skin and the green
from a green onion
. Place the livers, onion, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, broth and 1
teaspoon salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover and cook at a bare
simmer for 7 or 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and let the mixture sit
for about 5 minutes.

Take out the solids with a slotted spoon and place them in the bowl of
a food processor with metal blade. (Reserve and strain the liquid to
make the aspic) Start processing the liver, adding the butter piece by
piece. Finally , add the second teaspoon salt, the pepper, and Cognac
and process for 2 minutes so that the mixture is very creamy and
completely smooth. If the mixture looks broken down, with visible fat,
let it cool in the refrigerator for about 1 hour to harden the butter,
and then process again until the mixture is creamy and smooth.

Pour into a mold. Decorate or refrigerate to set and serve.

You're right Annie, I obviously didn't read the liver part of Stacy's post, I just saw pork and off I went:)
I've never had pork liver, in fact until last year I'd had an aversion to liver at all.
Now I make pate similar to Ann's and can't get enough of it.
Sorry for my lack of paying attention, lol.

deborah, there's no such thing as a wasted recipe, LOL. Stacy bought (I think) half a pig, so any pork recipes would probably be greatly appreciated!

Annie

oh yes, any and all of these are appreciated! In fact, I forgot about it until I just opened the fridge and saw the package...sigh. I am now battling a head cold/resp thing and am not totally "with it".

Annie, what is mace, and can I do wihtout it?

Thanks everyone - I am going back up to read more carefully, now.

Stacy, Mace is the shell of the nutmeg with a very similar but more mild or lighter flavour. You can substitute nutmeg for mace, but use less.

Ann

thank you Ann! I don't even like liver AND I thought liver was liver (I was surprised to see that both you and Linda don't care for pork liver) - so we'll see if I can stomach the pate. I had to use it, so thought this was as good a time as ever...thanks for your help.

I will put in a little sprinkle of nutmeg.

Stacy, I hope you are feeling better on time for tonight's festivities!

As Ann T suggests, a bit of nutmeg is a suitable substitute for the mace.

Annie

thanks Annie. Me too. Our neighbors are coming over w/ their 3 kids and we are having a game night. We will do a mock New Year "ring in" around 9 as their youngest is in preschool. We've got some good board games, plus Will got Rock Band for Christmas...maybe the adults will be doing that...

And Happy New Year to you. :-)

I made your recipe - and it definitely smelled like liver.. (ew) It's chilling now.

LOL, Stacy, it IS liver. (grin) Feed it to the kids. Yeah, I dare you!

Bud and Makayla and I are having a sleepover too, a new game, the movie Wall E, supper at Burger King and cheetos and sparkling grape juice. Makayla has had her overnight bag packed for three days now, ever since I told her she could stay over.

Annie

awww. how cute! we had so much we decided to save the pate for the boys for the PSU game today.

how was the sleepover?

The sleepover. Wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on, Bruvver just couldn't manage to settle down until about 3 a.m. and The Princess got me up at 7:30 to make "wapples". She helped me start a crockpot of black eyed peas for the Hoppin' John and I took them home about 1 p.m. I'm whupped.

So how'd your New Year's Eve Bash go?

Annie

oh my gosh, Annie. What a night - and morning you had!

We had lots of fun - played Wii rock band and karaoke, the kids played lots of board games, and the neighbors were all home by 10:30...we got ready for bed, and rang in the new year with an air horn and party poppers on the front porch at midnight! We haven't been kicked out of the neighborhood.....yet. :-)

Oh, and the "boys" were very impressed with the pate! They loved it - thanks for your recipe.

Stacy

You're welcome, and Happy New Year!

I think pate is one of those things you like or you don't. Dad loved it, I used to "cut" it with half mashed ptoatoes to get the fat and cholesterol level down but he always knew. (grin) I love it, Elery hates it. Go figure.

Annie