Top Secret Pâté

It's times like this that I am glad that no one other than the weirdo with IE reads this blog (yeah, I can see you; get a better browser), because my mother would absolutely kill me if she thought I was publishing her top secret Chicken Liver Pâté recipe on the Internet.  Getting her to give it to me was hard enough.

Knowing my mother, she's probably nicked it from somewhere else.  (Madly trying to justify this breach of trust)

Anyway, this Chicken Liver Pâté has become legendary in our family.  Each year my mother makes it for Christmas and we fight over who gets some to take home with them.  This year I have volunteered to make the whole family's supply to try and cut down on the work for my Mum.  

I'm making four times the amount of this recipe. 

Chicken Liver Pâté
4oz Butter 100g
1/2 onion
clove garlic
8oz chicken Livers 250g
2 tablsp brandy
1 teasp Dijon Mustard
Mixed spice
Seasoning


Melt 1oz butter and cook onion and garlic until soft not brown.
Add Chicken Livers  and cook 5-6 minutes turning once.  They should be just pink.  If they are cooked too long the pâté will be granular. This part always panics me.  What if I cook them too long? What if I wreck the pate? I usually resort to timing the cooking exactly and turning at three minutes.  This type of cooking doesn't come naturally to me.  I prefer to fling things in randomly and cook by eye.
Onions and livers into processor.  I'm forced to cook the liver in two batches because of the amount I am making.  The onions are moved to the processor with the first batch.
Rinse out the pan with the brandy, and add to the processor
Melt 2oz butter, add to processor.
Add mustard and mixed spice.

Process until smooth it does look pretty weird at this stage, piping hot meat paste.  Mmmmm 
.

   

 Split into small dishes.  I'm hoping that my sisters return the le creuset ramikins I've used.











Melt remaining butter and pour over top to seal.  Bay leaf and or peppercorns in butter for decoration.

I'm particularly smug, because the bay leaves that I used to top these with are from the bay tree in my garden.  Someone told me that bay trees were difficult to look after and that mine would be dead in a couple weeks.







Mind you that was two years ago and it was the same person who told me that planting rosemary outside my back door was a bad idea. That turned out ok too.