ffwd: chicken liver gâteaux with pickled onions
Intrigue? Disgust? Excitement? The buzz around this week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie has included all of the above. Rose from One Expat’s Life has tried to nominate this one several times. I was always wholehearted behind the idea, but when we put it to a vote, the community had other ideas. For January, the FFwD administrators picked the lineup, so I took the opportunity to champion this challenging pick.
Personally, I like liver. Well, chicken liver, that is, ground into a paste. Beef liver is another story. In fact, when my parents got married, they made a pact never to cook or serve the nutritious meal of their era, (beef) liver and Brussels sprouts. Everyone, even your own parents, gets a chance to be rebellious in one way or another. It turns out that I’m a big fan of Brussels sprouts, though I could never get behind a piece of beef liver other than to make a batch of dog treats. Yes, I love my dog.
This week’s recipe for chicken liver gâteaux with pickled onions is an elegant starter or lunch. It couldn’t be simpler either.
To start, for the pickled onions, you simmer thinly sliced onion in pickling brine for just 10 minutes. I used red onion which gave the brine a slight pink tinge. The spices in the brine were not very noticeable, though the sweet-sour tang of the onions was refreshing. Much more spice is needed.
Next, the chicken livers are pureed in a blender along with eggs, egg whites, cream and milk (I used half-and-half), brandy, and herbs. After a couple of minutes, you have a smooth livery mixture. I strained the liquid to eliminate the few remaining lumps.
The liver is poured into waiting cups. I tried two different shapes for fun. While the traditional white ramekins were prettier in the cup, the straight sides made them harder to unmold. The ones in the custard cups didn’t look as elegant in the cup, but unmolded more easily and I preferred this shape on the plate.
The chicken liver gâteaux are baked in a bain-marie (water bath) for half an hour. They can be eaten warm or cold. I opted to chill them. I tossed some mesclun greens with vinaigrette which served as a bed for the unmolded gâteaux, garnished with pickled onions and, on the suggestion of Mardi from eat.live.travel.write., cornichons.
I served this as a first course before dinner, very special for a Wednesday night! And, appropriately, right before I left for my new French language class (more on that later). It was a hit. The texture was wonderfully smooth, a nice contrast to the tang of rest of the dish: the onions, cornichons, and vinaigrette. I would love to serve this to guests, but it would be depend on the adventurousness of their palates.
The recipe called for only half a pound of liver, and I made two-thirds the recipe because there are only two of us to eat it. Chicken liver comes in much larger quantity than that, so I made my favorite chopped liver pate with the rest: sauteed onion (in chicken fat is best), grated hard-boiled egg, and cooked chicken livers pulsed in the food processor until well-combined, but not completely smooth.
We don’t post the recipes, but you can find it in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table. And you can read about what the other brave Doristas thought about their own chicken liver adventures here.
We’re in liver heaven here in Lexington this week. No anemia here!
ffwd: long and slow apples
It’s been a while since we last made a dessert for French Fridays with Dorie. This week’s recipe sounded intriguing based on its name alone. Fortunately, it wasn’t as long or slow in execution as the name implied.
Long and Slow Apples are thinly sliced apples layered into ramekins with butter, spiced sugar, and orange zest sandwiched in between, then baked in a slow oven for a couple of hours. The apples caramelize and tenderize and shrink down to an apple patty just big enough to provide a little sweetness at the end of the meal.
This recipe provided an opportunity to pull out my seldom-used Benringer to slice those apples extra thinly. The apple curves fit into the ramekin perfectly, about two or three to a layer. I also got to use my favorite measuring spoons for those tiny units of Dash, Pinch, and Smidgen!
I was home alone this week as my husband was spending his week on the warmer West Coast. He isn’t a big fan of fruit desserts anyway, so I halved the recipe. I used two apples, expecting to fill two ramekins, though I filled two to the top and another about two-thirds full. I wasn’t sure whether I should have made added more to the two instead of moving on to another ramekin. Given the shrinkage, maybe I should have. I don’t know.
I had my doubts about the next step: wrapping the filled cups with plastic wrap before also wrapping with foil. These were going into the oven after all… Dorie said to trust her, the plastic would not melt. I was very skeptical, but miraculously, she was right. I gather that other Doristas didn’t have the same result and their plastic melted. Others didn’t trust Dorie and used parchment or buttered foil, which is what I’ll do next time. Seems safer.
The wrapped cups are lightly weighted down by another ramekin and baked in a slow oven. The house smelled amazing as the apples baked. The combination of apples, which always smell good, and citrus, which also always smells good, made the kitchen smell like home. When they were ready, I couldn’t wait to dig in and try one. I was surprised how much the apples shrank.
I unmolded the apples onto a plate and, because I’m not one for whipped cream, I dolloped it with Greek yogurt instead, garnishing with some slivered crystallized ginger.
I have mixed feelings about these apples. I was too heavy-handed with the orange zest. As I said, the aroma was enticing, but the orange flavor overpowered the apples. The orange zest in the recipe is optional, so I will try again without, or with less.
I did like the texture. The apple slices kept their shape and were perfectly tender. This recipe used sugar spiced with dried ginger and coriander. I’d like to play around with other spices as well. Even though butter and sugar are involved, this dessert is relatively healthy as not much of either is used, just enough to boost the natural flavor of the fruit.
I will try this again some time, though maybe not right away.
If you’d like to try it yourself, the recipe can be found here. If you want to read about other Doristas’ long and slow apples, follow their links here.
A Plateful of Happiness 