Spreadable liver pâté

Another recipe with fantastic photos. Yes, I know it doesn’t look the part. But it doesn’t have to. Trust me.

This isn’t exactly a recipe for a classic pâté. It’s more the kind of pâté you ate (or maybe are eating right now) at university. Two sixty at the student shop round the corner from the halls of residence. Admittedly I didn’t live in halls for very long (and even then they weren’t my native halls, so to speak — I mean they belonged to a different university), but I did eat pâté, the classic Podlasie kind, for instance.

Funnily enough, as regular readers will know, I was a vegetarian for almost a year. And it had to come over me while I was at university. Those crafty manufacturers must somehow have found out that some students go a bit nuts 😉 around their 3rd or 4th year and decide to test their willpower. No, not by cutting back on liquids. By cutting back on meat. The manufacturers found a way round that. I mean, a student who doesn’t eat pâté? How would that work?

So even then, I used to tuck into pâté. Soya pâté. All sorts of varieties. The one with lovage was my favourite. Hmm.

Anyway, this liver pâté recipe doesn’t reach the heights of the pâté my dad makes, for example. This isn’t one of those pâtés that takes hours of cooking meat, liver and vegetables.

Ha, you won’t even have to bake it.

It’s a pâté for spreading, preferably on buttered bread. For breakfast, or with a beer at supper. Good as a starter.

It’s very quick to prepare and doesn’t ask for much in the way of ingredients. Just a few things give it a delicate, almost velvety flavour: poultry liver (naturally), button mushrooms, onion and chilli. That’s about it. Ooooh, nearly forgot the mayonnaise.

Which is interesting, actually, because mayonnaise used to be one of those things I couldn’t get down my throat. I was like that until I was about thirty. So until quite recently (well, perhaps not quite recently, relatively recently would be more like it ;)). Can you imagine? I didn’t eat the vegetable salad with mayonnaise that was all the rage in the 80s (at least that’s how I remember every family party) and the 90s: boiled parsley root, celeriac, carrots and potatoes mixed with mayonnaise and pepper. Everyone looked at me as if I were an idiot.

These days, though, in moderation, mostly in dips, small amounts of mayonnaise do slip past me. And down my throat, too. All the more reason to recommend this very simple liver pâté recipe.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Serves: makes as much as two packs of Podlasie pâté (the shop-bought kind), so you can work out for yourselves how many people that will feed

How many calories: oh, go on, none at all 😉

Ingredients for the simplest poultry liver pâté:

• 20 decagrams of cleaned poultry liver
• 6 large button mushrooms
• 1 large onion
• a 2 cm piece of hot red chilli (the tip, without the seeds)
• 5 teaspoons of mayonnaise (I used light, as if that made any difference)
• ground black pepper
• salt
• olive oil

Recipe for pâté without baking:

It’s best to break the job down into steps. Here’s how I did it.

1. With one eye on Hell’s Kitchen on the telly (that’s how I watch these days, with the other eye on everything around me, which usually means my phone or another screen), I peeled the mushrooms, leaving the stalks on and just cleaning them. I cut the peeled mushrooms into thin slices.

2. I heated a little olive oil in a frying pan (not too much) and fried the mushrooms until golden. It takes about 10 – 15 minutes (actually, I forgot to check the clock, but golden is what you’re after). Towards the end you need to stir more often so the odd piece doesn’t get too brown. They should brown evenly. I transferred the mushrooms to a little bowl.

3. While the mushrooms were frying, I got on with the liver, onion and chilli. I washed the liver thoroughly, dried it and trimmed off all the veins and membranes. You want clean liver cut into small pieces (2 – 3 cm at most). I chopped the onion very finely and cut the chilli into slices 3 millimetres thick.

3. Once I’d taken the mushrooms out of the pan, I added a little more olive oil and heated it. I added the chopped onion and fried it, stirring, until translucent. In went the liver and chilli, and I fried them for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

4. Then I added the mushrooms to the pan and seasoned with salt and ground black pepper (to taste, however you like it). I fried everything for another 2 – 3 minutes or so. The liver should be tender and still slightly pink inside (be sure to taste it before you finish frying).

5. I tipped the fried liver, onion and mushrooms out of the pan into a tall container. I set it aside to cool.

6. Then I added 5 teaspoons of mayonnaise (the light kind) and blended it all with a hand blender.

At that point you can call this delicate liver pâté (or spread) ready. Enjoy!