Its pâté time!

This month's daring kitchen challenge was presented by Valerie and by Evelyne and it was pâté and bread. How wonderful! I have always loved pâté and I had never made it at home before. So this proved to be a very useful challenge. I made a simple Cognac chicken liver pâté and served this along with whole wheat baguette along with marinated garlic mushrooms, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh goat cheese.

The presenters had suggested recipes that used large quantities of chicken liver and given tips that one could freeze pâté and consume it later. However, considering pâté is usually made out of liver meat and basically fat, I didn't think it was reasonable for me to eat this in large quantities or eat often. So I thought it would be a good idea to only get a half pound of chicken liver for two people. Surprisingly the resulting pâté was a large amount! Even a half pound was too much! I had to freeze over 60% of the pâté for later use. So if you are going to try this I would highly suggest only making a quarter pound of chicken liver for two people.

I used a recipe from Jacques Pepin. Please find the recipe at http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chicken-liver-pate-march-2007

Chicken Pâté Ingredients

• 1/2 pound chicken livers, well-trimmed
• 1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
• 1 small garlic clove, smashed and peeled
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 teaspoon thyme leaves
• Kosher salt
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons Cognac or Scotch whisky
• Freshly ground pepper
• Toasted baguette slices (see below for more info), for serving

Directions

1. Combine everything but the Cognac and butter in a pan and cook till its just done.
2. Remove the bay leaf and blend everything in a food processor. Add the Cognac, add the butter slowly till the pâté well blended and smooth.
3. Grind fresh pepper at the last minute for added freshness. If you'd like to buy one, please check out today's special at Foodbuzz. 
4. Scrape the pâté into ramekins or a nice serving bowl and chill till firm. Overnight is recommended.

FYI: To make this healthier, I reduced the enormous amount of butter used to only 3 tbsp and eliminated the water to a few tablespoons. It was still VERY smooth and delicious!

For the Baguette - I used a recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes, and made a whole wheat mini baguette and it was SUPERB! I had been hearing a lot about it and this became my most recent book purchase and I was glad that I bought this. I must highly recommend this book to all who would like to start baking whole wheat and whole grain bread. This was not only excellent, but proved to be very easy.