Homemade pork (or chicken) pate recipe, great as an appetizer for festive holiday meals.
Ingredient:
• 450 g pork liver cut into 1 cm slices
• 50 g lard
• 50 g butter with at least 80% fat, soft
• 15 g salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 4 medium cloves of garlic
• 50 ml water or brandy
• 100 ml whipping cream with a minimum of 35% fat, if possible at room temperature
• For decoration - colored peppercorns, small sprigs of rosemary and 65 g melted butter
Put the liver slices in a brine with a concentration of about 3%. That is, to 500 ml of COLD water, add 15 g of salt, stir until dissolved and pour over the liver so that it is completely covered. Refrigerate for at least 12 hours. This step will remove some of the blood from the liver, making it less bitter. In addition, the liver will get exactly the amount of salt it needs.
Some people use milk instead of water for this step. Personally, I haven't noticed any noticeable improvement when milk is used, but you can do that if you want. But keep in mind that using milk does not mean you should stop using salt. Salt must be added anyway.
The pieces of liver are removed from the liquid and dried on paper towels.
Put a large frying pan on medium heat, add lard and let it heat up. Then add the pieces of liver. Brown on both sides. After about 7-8 minutes, when the liver is almost completely cooked, add minced garlic and freshly ground black pepper. We must not be stingy with pepper. Liver and pepper are very good friends.
Then add 50 ml of water, or, if you like, 50 ml of brandy. This step is meant to remove from the bottom of the pan all the caramelized deposits of liver, because they add a lot of taste to the pate and we must make sure that they do not remain on the cooking vessel. Wait until all the liquid has evaporated, then turn off the heat.
The whole cooking of the liver took about 10 minutes. Overcooked liver is bitter and has a sandy texture, so always avoid overcooking.
Transfer the entire contents of the pan to a blender. Add the whipped cream, soft butter, then mix.
Because my mini blender is not so efficient, I have to process the composition with the hand blender in order to reach a consistency as fine as possible. In total I mixed for about 10 minutes.
I also want to say two words about the fat content of pate. You noticed that we have in this recipe, lard, butter, and whipped cream. Some of you will probably be tempted to cut back on fat to make it healthier. But you should know that due to its fat content, the pate is spreadable. The more fat you reduce, the firmer the consistency will be, the less fine it will be, and the harder it will be to spread on the bread.
Although blended, our liver paste is not perfectly homogeneous. It contains skins, larger pieces of liver and spices, which have no place in a pate. So, we take a round and tall bowl, and on top of it we mount a sieve with very small meshes. I put it upside down because it stays perfectly fixed and does not slip. Then we take small amounts of liver paste and pass it through a sieve with a spatula or a plastic gripper. With the flu it goes faster. All the impurities in the pate remain on the sieve, and we remove them, in order to obtain a very fine and creamy product.
Transfer the pate into small ceramic pots. To make it as attractive as possible we can decorate it with colorful peppercorns and fresh rosemary. The decor will look a bit like a decorated Christmas tree.
Pour a thin layer of melted butter on top - just the yellow, greasy side. This is like a lid that protects the pate from oxidation and dehydration.
The decor is optional though. If you do not want to make it, then put it directly on the surface of the pate, ie glued to the pate, a plastic wrap or a piece of baking paper.
Serve with pickled cucumbers and slices of fresh baguette, or slices of toast. Good appetite!