VENI. VIDI. VICI.**
The one thing you all must know about my French Friday with Dorie colleagues is that we try to be good sports. There are more than 300 recipes in “Around my French Table”, the cookbook we use that was written by Ms. Greenspan. We are committed to trying each and every one of these recipes, six years of Fridays. Including……
Sardine Rillettes.
Seaweed Sablés.
Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes with Garlic.
Seriously???
An unmolded chicken liver gâteaux served on a bed of butter lettuce tossed with champagne vinaigrette and pickled onions.
This week’s recipe choice, Chicken Liver Gâteaux with Pickled Onions. provided another “Seriously ?” Moment for me. In French, gâteaux means cake. A chicken liver cake? Dorie, however, treats this as a salad, “The idea of having cake at the start of a meal is too irresistible.”
When I stopped by my local grocery store to buy 1/2 pound of chicken livers, I was clueless. The butcher helped me find a carton of these squishy, runny, scraggly morsels. They didn’t look like anything I would ever place inside my mouth. After removing all their veins, fat, and green spots, according to directions (the yucky part), the gâteaux was ridiculously easy to put together. Throw everything in a blender, whir two minutes, pour into buttered ramekins and bake 40 minutes. The pickled onions were even easier, something I made the day before and will keep on hand to use often in other dishes.
The ingredients of the chicken liver mixture is the consistency of custard and pours easily into the buttered ramekins. To de-bubble the mixture (seen here) before baking, I rapped each ramekin on the kitchen counter. Worked like a charm.
I tasted one of the little cakes immediately, treating it as a warm paté and spreading it on rustic crackers. It was not particularly flavorful. I refrigerated the others overnight and unmolded them today to serve as a salad. They possessed the strong flavor you’d expect from an excellent paté. The vinaigrette and pickled onions kicked up the flavor even more. To my surprise, I enjoyed my cake-salad. Very, very much.
Chicken livers, anyone? To learn how to make this recipe yourself, go here. See what my colleagues thought of this week’s choice at French Fridays with Dorie.
** I came. I saw. I conquered. Latin
You did conquer! I thought I’d like this, but I wasn’t prepared to be so traumatized by blending up the livers…yuck. Once that picture was out of my mind, I could enjoy this tasty pate 🙂
Mary, those look lovely! I am looking forward to tasting them, and I love pickled onions. Thanks for sharing your efforts with me.
OMG, Mary – I am so impressed. Just reading about green spots turns my stomach – let alone trying to deal with them.
I will be making the shrimp next week!
Mary, I smiled when I read the title of your post! My dear american or canadian friends are really looking at me with a big big question mark in their eyes when I mention how much I like chicken livers. “Are you serious, you eat that?Really?” Yesss, I do, all Swiss do, French do.
Not to mention that chicken livers are sooo much cheaper here in Canada than in Switzerland! Is it because there it’s called a delicacy?! 😉
Mary, If you don’t mind I would like you to try my own Swiss chicken liver recipe:
Prepare chicken livers as you wrote above. Cut them in half (nice bites). Turn them in a mix of salt, pepper, rosemary, coriander seed and herbs of Provence. Sprinkle some flour or corn starch (best with a small sieve) over the well spiced livers. Turn gently so that every piece get spices and flour. I do it with my hands. Little messy, I don’t care.
Steam in a frying pan one fine chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until glassy, add the livers, turn them a few times, but don’t “hurt” the livers. They should get slightly brown.
Fry only about 5 minutes! Then add a lot of chopped curly parsley!! Turn/stir 3-4 times. Add white wine. ( put the heat a bit higher for 2-3 minutes). Stir. Add whipping cream. Let it cook for 2 more minutes. It should be enough creamy sauce to pour over rice or mashed potato! Voila!
Writing a recipe in english was not that easy for me, actually it’s the first time! I hope you understand anyway. I will not any longer bother you with more recipes, but “the chicken liver” was a challenge!
Bon appétit!
Mary, you made these look so pretty! That had to be a bit of a challenge!
These were easy AND tasty. Gotta trust Dorie, right?
Mary, you certainly made creamy and delicious looking Gâteau de foie de volaille (could not resist looking up that very French recipe on some very French websites). Actually, it is nice to read that you really enjoyed eating this – we had some warm and some cold and I chose the “lyonnaise” route rather than preparing the pickeld onions – who would have known that liver goes so well with tomato coulis and green olives (a must, it seems when you look at all the French versions of this recipe). I almost feel weird to write that the kids were not at all squeamish about tasting the Chicken Liver Gâteaux.
Have a great weekend!
I was the only one in my family up for eating liver so it didn’t happen. I love liver, liverwurst, pate etc… I agree the texture can be surprisingly pleasing. Your’s looks lovely, I hope you found someone willing to share it with you. I will return next week… noodles are an easy sell.
I think yours is a beautiful and tasty-looking dish. I keep hearing how good it was cold, I’m looking forward to giving that a try this weekend. I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer to tackle this one, as it certainly does provide a boost to the cooking ego!
All I can say is that I am glad I am visiting NEXT Friday instead of THIS Friday. (No disrespect the the Honorable Ms. Greenspan intended.) I have to say, I’m with Susan, I almost urped at the description of cleaning the livers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, YOU ARE A BRAVE WOMAN! By the way, what is the French Friday’s with Dorie recipe for next week??? Any chance we could simply revisit those lovely Pommes Confites a la Dorie?
I agree with you Mary. Warm it was alright but cold it was delicious! I would serve this to guests but I’m not sure how many of them would eat it:) I can only think of one friend who would enjoy it. Maybe I’m wrong.
To my surprise, I didn’t hate them 🙂 Yes, my bar was very, very low. I am embarrassingly squeamish about cooking with organs and even cleaning the turkey is not my cup of tea. Luckily Nana anticipated this and did the yucky part for me- there is no way I could have dissected these to get them prepped. I will say that the cooking gateaux actually smelled lovely. They were nice (since I thought I would hate) them BUT my guys really loved them. It is fun to push the envelope, no 🙂
Great job, my friend. This cracked me up “I came. I saw. I conquered. ” I have to admit that the livers I bought were pretty clean and didn’t require much in the way of cleanup. No icky green spots, anyway. I didn’t try them warm, just cold, and did enjoy them (though, as you know, I expected to). Enjoy your leftovers!
You are a super trooper.
And to change up a quote from Dr. Suesses “Horton Hears a Who”: “I said what I meant; I meant what I said; I’ll cook through Around My French Table. 100%” Even if it means chicken livers and salmon in a jar. Just sayin’
Glad this was a hit for you!
Cleaning chicken livers description reminded
me of Julia’s discussion of sweetbreads!
I hope you come up with a good recipe for Melissa
next week!
Love the quotation! It’s good that we’ve conquered this one, indeed. I’m glad we’re ending the month on a more universally palatable dish.
You’re so brave Mary – especially after having to de-vein and de-green the livers. Yuck! Hope you’re not too mad at me for skipping and glad you ended up liking them!
Well done, Mary! 🙂 I am glad you enjoyed them. I tried, I really tried.
So glad you enjoyed it cold. It was definitely better the next day after having time in the fridge. I would do this one- but I’d pass the sardine one…ick!
LOL do you not like Jerusalem artichokes?? 🙂 They are actually pretty tasty to me! Well nice job with the chicken livers! Looks good!
I couldn´t find chicken livers in time to make this recipe, but I love them in a pate. They´re so different from what we are used to with regular liver. And sauteéd with a green salad is another way to eat them. I will make this as soon as I find them!
I have thought about going back and making all of the recipes that I missed but chicken livers. Really. Job well done.