Ingredients:
150g chicken livers
150g bacon
50g butter
Optional:
Crushed garlic clove
1/2 onion, chopped
Fresh herbs such as parsley and basil
Spices such as pepper and nutmeg
Method:
Melt butter in a medium frying pan. Add bacon (and garlic and onion, if desired) and sauté until cooked through.
Add livers, and fry until they are cooked completely - break them apart to check that there is no pink left in the centre.
Transfer contents of the frying pan into a food processor, and add optional herbs and spices. Process until very smooth.
Transfer into glass bowl (ideally with a lid) and refrigerate. You may choose to melt extra butter and pour it over the meat (after smoothing the top) to create a delicious layer floating atop the paté.
Serve chilled, with crackers and cheese.
I have a lot of beef and pork liver in the freezer - is there any reason why I couldn't use those in this recipe? If you don't think it will work well - any suggestions other than my old standard which is to just fry them up?
ReplyDeleteI don't have any experience with beef or pork liver, but I suspect the flavour would be stronger or darker etc than chicken liver, so you might want to up the bacon:liver ration and add more herbs and spices. But it you like the flavour of liver alone, I'm sure you could sub it straight in.
ReplyDeleteI love your blog and beautiful pictures...
ReplyDeleteOne thing i have noticed is it doesnt appear as though you incorporate half of what you eat to be veggies.
Do you not like them? Arent they the base of the primal food pyramid?
John,
ReplyDeleteIn all things, you should take the best research and expert advice out there and make that your framework, then tinker to find what works best for you. I do like veggies, but my gut often doesn't. Now that I have access to organic, grass-fed and free-range meats that carry a bio-available form of almost all the nutrients I would otherwise be fighting to get from vegetables (and we can't get most nutrition out of plants anyway), I am most comfortable living on a diet focussed on animal products. My digestion runs efficiently and comfortably, I am highly satisfied by each meal, no matter the size(!), and I am able to adapt to burning fat as my primary energy source, which allows me to tap into my stored adipose tissue to burn stored fat (yay!).
That's what works best for me. I don't feel deprived, even though I do love veggies (and fruit, and nuts) but I'm happy to do without them due to the way my body feels when I eliminate them.
There's no agreed upon paleo/primal food pyramid (some have meat at the base, some veg - see http://images.google.com/images?q=paleo+pyramid&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tbs=isch:1), but if you consider what foods were available year-round, depending on where your ancestor evolved, the only item on the list is probably going to be meat. So it's fine to consume meat only for periods at a stretch, and some people find it is the long-term answer for them. I'm more flexible, but I only started including veg, dairy & nuts once again to test out Alternate Day Fasting in a way that was relevant to more than just zero-carbers (meat-only eaters).
If you like to be more rounded, just make sure you're getting more than 50% of your calories from fat, and you cover your minimum protein requirement (1g per kg lean body mass) - then if you choose to add vegetables into the mix after that, then go for it if that's what makes you feel good. :)
Now, I know what to do with the chicken livers I have in the fridge. Thanks a lot. This is very helpful.
ReplyDelete