Lambs Liver Paté

Our freezer is a chest freezer. They are great for carrying capacity, but things do get lost in them. No shelves, you see, therefore no order does it have, just a merry jumble.

Over a year ago we culled some year old lambs plus the old ram. He was a big boy. He made lots of bags of meat which almost filled the freezer up, but now most of it is gone. All except a couple of bags, one of which looked like a humungous lump of liver. I have often come across that humungous bag but, feeling disinclined to tackle it, I have pushed it to one side, allowing it to slide to the bottom most part of the freezer. And then the day came when I could no longer put off the task of defrosting, and then finding a use for, this chunk of liver because space was needed for further cullings.

....so what to do. Well, half of the liver I cooked up with a tomato and onion sauce. This we had for lunch. Shame, though, to give the other half to Bools and Gus, our willing demolishers of anything edable. Couldn't freeze it again. So, what to do.......

It sat in the fridge for a day or so. Then a thought popped into my head. 'Paté' the thought said. 'Difficult' was my response back, followed by, 'Complicated, not particularly fussed about bothering with making that'.

But the thought stuck. An Internet search was done. Three recipes  I found, none of which I felt was do-able for various reasons, so what I did was made my own recipe from them.

So what I started of with was some left over lambs liver, quite strong in taste because of it coming from a ram of unknown age. And here is a thought: the ram was not a lamb, therefore it's wrong to call the paté 'Lambs Liver Paté'. But I have never heard of mutton / sheep's liver paté, or, in this case, ram's liver paté!

So, starting again, this is what I used to make the paté:

'Lambs' Liver: 450g. What I started off with was some liver left over from a ram of our flock. This I sliced up into small pieces, taking out a bit of tube and some some thin white bits. Recipe said 450g, but I didn't weigh what I had.
Bacon: 5 rashers. Quite thickish rashers would be best, but here in SW France we can't buy anything other than whisper thin slices of bacon, which cook into hard little strips when cooked. But the recipe said 'bacon' so this is what I bought. This I cut up into small pieces as well.
Red onion:  1.Didn't have one so used an ordinary one. This was chopped up into small pieces as.
Garlic: 2 cloves. Crushed and cut into pieces.
Parsley: collected from the garden, and chopped up small.
Lemon: 1. Juiced.
Spring onion: From the garden, washed, chopped finely.
Seasoning: Salt, pepper, and anything else you fancy.

- I put the onions into a frying pan in which I had recently cooked some bacon for bacon sarnies. Thought the bacon flavour would contribute to the overal flavour. One of the other recipes said 'Add butter', but I didn't as was short of butter. Added sunflower oil to the pan instead.
- Over a low heat let the onions cook until they were almost translucent.
- Added the liver and bacon, plus a little more oil. Cooked mixture for a minute or two, stirring frequently. Added more oil as the mixture looked a little dry.
- Added the garlic. Cooked mixture further until satisfied that the liver was cooked through. Checked this by cutting a piece of liver open to see if the pinkyness was gone from the interior. It was. Gave this bit of liver to Bools, who had been 'helping'. There is never any dropped food left lying on the floor for long with him and Gus around. By the way, liver gets tough if cooked for too long, like leather in fact.
- And here is where the fun started, because I had to convert the cooked mass in the frying pan into a paté-like texture.
One of the recipes said, 'Use a hand blender', another said, 'Use a food processor'. I have neither of these. A sieve was also mentioned. Got on of those. Tried to push the liver, etc through the sieve, but no, it did not work. So here is what I used:

..... my cheese grater. I picked up some liver mixture in my fingers and rolled it over the finer side of the grater. It took ages, and I made a mess, as you can see. Chipped fingernails also happened. I think, however, that I managed to retrieve the chippings.

A cup of tea was required to give me the energy to carry on.....

....and here is what I ended up with:

- into a bowl the mix was put. Now the fun started. Seasoning time. Lemon juice, spring onion, parsley, salt and pepper were added. Had a taste. Wow! But the liver was still too strong for my liking, so I added some more lemon juice and salt. Hubs strolled through the kitchen, curious to know what I was up to. Gave him a little bit of the paté to try out. Wow! It was all I could do to stop him from munching his way through the entire bowl.
- into a lidded container the paté was put, then in to the fridge it went.

Supper time:

.....homemade paté, homemade apricot jam (made June 2011), on homemade bread. Yummy.

Now I do not want to come across as someone who is a dedicated foody person, but the food on that plate, although simple, was quite delicious. I never knew paté was so easy to make despite the lack of equipment to get the liver mixture into the texture of paté, although I still managed to do so. Bread making is easy once you get into the rythm of it, and jam making is quite easy as well. For none of these do I have equipment, except for the basic tools. And I have learnt that good food, tasty food, is simple and easy to make.

And here is the recipe again in brief:

450g Lambs Liver (or thereabouts), cut into pieces
1 red onion (or normal onion), chopped into small pieces
5 rashers of bacon, cut into pieces
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
Parsley, chopped finely
Lemon juice
Spring onion, chopped finely
seasoning.

Fry the onions in a little oil until transparet, add the liver and bacon plus a little more oil if needed. Cook for a minute or so. Add the garlic. Continue to cook, stirring frequently. When liver is cooked through, take of heat, and mince. Add the parsley, lemon juice, spring onion, and other seasonings to taste. Put into a sealed container firming the mixture down, and keep in the fridge.

Enjoy!

And here are the links to the other recipes:

http://www.redbrickpaper.co.uk/2011/02/lambs-liver-pate-with-caramelised-red-onion-chutney/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/liverpatecrostini_93063

http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/liver-pate-or-terrine

Fig and walnut cake

Searched on the Internet to find ways of using up our large harvest of figs, and came upon several cake recipes all of which seemed overly complicated. So I made my own up, and here it is (scroll down to the end of this page for a brief version):

It is an 8:4:4:2 recipe for ingredients, which means 8 ozs SR Flour, 4 ozs soft margarine (or butter at room temperature if you prefer), 4 ozs brown sugar, two eggs (beaten).

You will also need some sort of spicy seasoning, like Allspice, or cinnamon. I did cinnamon, Quatre Epices (which I think is Allspice), and ginger. But you can use any mix of brown spices you want. Cumin or curry, though, is probably not a good idea! A teaspoon of spice mix is about what you need. Or less, or more, depending on how spicy, or not, you want to make the cake.

Oh and you need no more than 4 ozs of figs, probably 2-3 ozs is best otherwise the cake will be too soft and squishy therefore making it a delightful pud but difficult to use as a cake because it will crumble into a broken pile instead of making a nice clean slice when cut. Not to worry, though, if this happens because you can always eat it with a spoon and pretend that it was intended that it be this way if you are giving it to guests. A dollop of  something or other on top, like yoghurt or cream, might also persuade them that it was intended to be that way.

As for the figs, just cut them up, but not toooooo small otherwise you will rob yourself of the pleasure of eating the chunks of figs which turn into a consistency and taste similar to dates. One would think that figs would dissolve away into nothingness because they are such a soft fruit, and they will do just this if cut too small. So you need to have some smaller pieces which will give flavour to the cake, and then have some bigger pieces which will give you those nice soft lumps of fruit.



I have also seen recipes which include sultanas, but I thought walnuts would be nice try, and they worked wonderfully well giving the softness of the cake some interest. It's nice to suddenly find a bit of nut in one's mouth when one is eating softness. I used a bag of whole walnuts, probably about 3ozs in weight, which I had to break up. However, if you have to do the same keep one of the walnuts back without breaking it up. But you could use any other type of nut, or you could use sultanas, or raisins (first soaked to ease their dehydrated state of being), or anything really, or nothing because this cake will be OK on its own, maybe with an icing put on top although I wouldn't recommend it because I think that it would spoil the lovely softness. Maybe a soft cream cheese icing then, which would sort of ooze itself into the general crumminess.

So, the method: Easy really. Creaming: into bowl put margarine (or butter) with the brown sugar, and blitz with a mixer until combined. Drop a dollop of beaten egg into the mix, then blitz for a second or two. Then add another dollop of egg this time adding a little flour taken from the 8 ozs. This will stop the curdling effect that can happen when adding eggs at this stage. Repeat last until all egg gone.

Pop in the figs and broken pieces of walnuts (as per photo), making sure you keep one entire walnut back if you have had to break the nuts up yourself.

Now add the flour, with whatever spices you have chosen already mixed in. Gently combine all, but no blitzing with a mixer otherwise you will end up with no figgy lumps. The mix should gently flop off a laden spoon. If it stays stuck, then add a tinsy bit of milk to the mix to moisten it up. But if it slops off the spoon fast then it is too wet a mix and you need to add a smidgeon of flour to dry it up. Of either, it is likely to be the second problem you might come up against because this will tend to be a wet mix.

Put into a lined cake tin. I always use greaseproof paper for the lining having given up with greasing and flouring the tin years ago. But I do re-use the greaseproof paper, this being my effort at being environmentally friendly. This cake needs an oblong cake / loaf tin  to be cooked in, the reason being that if a round cake is made then you will have the devil of a job trying to cut a decent slice. As I say, this cake is very soft and squidgy, so an oblong tin is best because then you are more likely to be able to cut a decent slice. Trying to cut a v-shaped slice from a round cake is likely going to end up with half of the cake slice being left in situ.

So cake mix in tin. Sprinkly a generous quantity of white sugar over the top to give a nice crunchy top, or rather in this case, a firmer top.

Into the oven. At moderate. Now I have a calor gas oven which varies in its temperature range according to the how much gas is left in the gas bottle, or how hot or cold the gas in the bottle actually is. That is why I say 'moderate' for temperature. In my days in the UK, when I had an electric oven which had a regulated temperature at all times when in use, I used to fuss about making sure that the temperature knob was set at exactly the right temperature as given by whatever recipe I was making. And I remember fiddling about with that knob, fretting about whether a degree or two either way would spoil what I was cooking. Not know. After two years of caravan cooking and a year further on with a French calor gas cooker, I have realised that 'moderate' will cook most anything, with a 'higher moderate' being needed for pastry, and a 'higher higher moderate' for making bread.

Into the oven, then, for about forty minutes. Test by pressing the top of the cake (take it out of the oven first of course!) and if it feels firmly springer then it is done. I tend to go for 'very firmly springy' so would most probably put it back into the over for another ten minutes or so although it probably doesn't need it.

Meanwhile, allow anyone who wants to 'lick out' the bowl in which the cake was made by handing them a spoon to do the job with. In my case, this is the job of Hubs. Oh and the single walnut? Eat it, you have deserved the treat! I love walnuts, and if I didn't put aside that single walnut to eat when I had finished making the cake, then I would probably keep nibbling away at the walnuts as I broke them up, maybe even halving the quantity going into the cake. I am a nutaholic!

Cooking time at an end, so take the cake out of the oven but leave in tin until cold. It might get a soggy bottom if greaseproof paper is used, but it is better to be soggy botted rather than having the cake fall apart if turned out too soon. If it is being used as a hot pud, I would still not turn it out but take servings straight from the tin. Not sure how this would look if one had guests. My cake tins are well used and therefore not condusive to sitting on a dining room table. But what you could do is lift the cake up out of the tin using the greaseproof paper, put the whole shebang onto a posh plate, paper as well, et voila! Unwrapping the cake / pud from the greaseproof paper infront of the guests would make quite a nice impression don't you think.

But if using the mix as a cake, then leave it to cool down in the tin, then remove and put in the fridge, the coolness of the fridge helping the cake to stay glued together when cut. I would keep the greaseproof paper on it as well just to deter the cake from flopping apart, which it shouldn't do, but just in case. Ice cake after a couple of hours if you want to.

It's not going to be the prettiest of cakes, although you could tart it up if you wanted to, but it is not likely to hang around too long as it it will get eaten up fast. It is delish. And sorry about not taking a photo of a cut slice....as I say, this cake does get eaten up fast.

And what I do is use a couple of slices for a hot dessert, then the rest as a cold cake.

And here is the recipe in brief. Because I am of a certain age I still use pounds and ounces rather than metric so you will have to convert that yourself.

8ozs SR Flour,

Approximately one teaspoon of brown cake spices. (Cinnamon, allspice, etc) Mix with flour

4ozs soft margarine or butter at room temperature

4ozs brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

3-4ozs figs approximately, chopped, some fine, some chunkier

3-4ozs walnuts, chopped but not so fine as to be too tiny

1 cake tin, preferably oblong, plus greaseproof paper to line it with. This cake needs this lining.

1: Using the creaming method, cream the margarine / butter and brown sugar together until well mixed using a mixer.

2: Add a dollop of egg. Mix. Then another dollop of egg plus a teaspoon of the flour. Mix. Continue until egg all gone.

3: Add chopped figs and chopped walnuts. Stir gently.

4: Add flour and spice mix. Stir gently.

5: Into lined cake tin. Cook for approx 40 - 45 minutes until firm to touch.

6: Leave in cake tin to cool down unless needed for a hot pudding. But I would still suggest that you keep the greaseproof paper around the cake to help keep the serving of the cake tidy....this cake will have a tendency to break itself up if you are not careful when cutting it.

7: When cold, the cake is best kept in a fridge although does not have to be. Ice when cold if you like.

This is a simple recipe, and is not complicated in its ingredients. Hope you enjoy.