This is definitely not a recipe/food for everyone, but I’d been vaguely wanting chopped liver for about a decade, and I’m glad to have finally gotten around to it! We always used to have it before the meal on Thanksgiving, but with Hannuka coming up that’s a decent excuse to make it too!
My mom and I looked at a few cookbooks and took/ignored what we wanted from multiple recipes (5 eggs? Really?? I could see maybe 2, but 5 is a whooole lotta egg!) and the result tasted exactly like I remembered/wanted. In the future I would probably try using the food processor more sparingly, to leave a tiny bit of texture, but if you’re into super smooth, that’s easy enough to achieve too!
Ingredients:
- 2 pounds chicken livers
- 1 jumbo sweet onion
- approximately 1/2 cup schmaltz (rendered chicken fat)
- 1 large egg, hard boiled
You can apparently buy schmaltz jars in some stores. We made it – bought a big thing of chicken fat, heated it in the top of a double boiler until it melted, and strained through cheesecloth. That’s it!
Clean the chicken livers (cut out the connective tissue looking bits).
Liiiitle bit of liver for some happy kittens!
Heat 2 tablespoons of the schmaltz in a large pan over medium-high heat, then add the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and lightly softened, 4-5 minutes. Remove the onions from the heat, and set aside.
Add another 3 tablespoons of schmaltz to the pan and return it to the heat, lowering to medium. Add as many livers as can fit in a single layer to your pan, and cook until cooked through, then place in the bowl with the onions and continue with the remaining livers, adding more schmaltz as needed if the pan looks dry.
Once all the livers are cooked, add the egg and a pinch of salt.
This is half, we put it in the food processor in 2 batches, but it turned out not to be so much that it would overload it, I don’t think.
Process for just a few seconds. Scrape down the sides of the food processor to catch stray onions, then taste and add any additional salt as desired.
Process for another few seconds until well combined, and the texture you prefer. Transfer to a container and refrigerate until cool, then serve with bread or crackers.
We put half straight into the freezer as we weren’t going to eat THAT MUCH LIVER any time soon. We haven’t defrosted it yet, but it’s supposed to be good if you move it to the refrigerator the day before you want to eat it.
Chopped Liver
- 2 pounds chicken livers
- 1 jumbo sweet onion
- approximately 1/2 cup schmaltz (rendered chicken fat)
- 1 large egg, hard boiled
Clean the chicken livers.
Heat 2 tablespoons of the schmaltz in a large pan over medium-high heat, then add the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and lightly softened, 4-5 minutes. Remove the onions from the heat, and set aside.
Add another 3 tablespoons of schmaltz to the pan and return it to the heat, lowering to medium. Add as many livers as can fit in a single layer to your pan, and cook until cooked through, then place in the bowl with the onions and continue with the remaining livers, adding more schmaltz as needed if the pan looks dry.
Once all the livers are cooked, add the egg and a pinch of salt, and process for just a few seconds. Scrape down the sides of the food processor to catch stray onions, then taste and add any additional salt as desired. Process for another few seconds until well combined, and the texture you prefer. Transfer to a container and refrigerate until cool, then serve with bread or crackers.
When I made this, we used way more rice cakes than chicken, because I didn’t bother measuring at all, but I’m going to give the original measurements because realistically more chicken than rice cake probably is the proper proportion. We still were really into this, though, and all the leftovers disappeared very quickly.
While the chicken marinates, stir together all the sauce ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside. Heat the cooking oil in a deep saucepan/wok to about 350 degrees. Line 2 plates with paper towel, and have more paper towels nearby.
Once the oil is hot, deep fry the rice cakes in batches, cooking until the outer layer turns crispy (about 30 seconds). The change isn’t visible while they’re in the oil, but when you strain them out if you poke them carefully, they will be crisp. Place the fried rice cakes on a paper towel-lined plate.
Once all the rice cakes are fried, give the oil a moment to heat again, in case the cool rice cakes lowered its temperature, and then begin frying the chicken in batches, cooking 2-3 minutes until lightly browned, and setting the drained chicken on a paper towel-lined plate to drain. For this step, it’s possible to do it alone, but significantly easier if you have one person to have gross chicken-hands dropping the starch-coated chicken into the hot oil, and a second person with clean hands fishing them back out with a large strainer-spoon.
Once all the chicken has been fried once, fry a second time, again 2-3 minutes, until a deeper golden brown. At the end of each 2-3 minute period the chicken begin bubbling more frantically, which is a good sign they’re ready to come out. Set aside the cooked chicken.
Heat a large skillet, then add the prepared sauce, boiling 1-2 minutes while stirring constantly. Add the chicken and rice cakes, stirring to coat.
Whisk in the sugars, salt, and vanilla.
Add the egg and yolk, whisking until no lumps remain, about 30 seconds.
Let the mixture rest for 3 minutes, then whisk a further 30 seconds, rest another 3 minutes, and repeat the whisking and resting a further 2 times. Allowing the sugars to melt into the butter like this apparently adds a bit of a toffee flavor to the finished cookie, and by the looks of it also works some extra air in (lightening the color) while it cools a bit.
Add the chocolate chips and strawberries, again stirring until just combined.
Divide into 16 portions, each roughly 3 tablespoons in size, and place on the lined baking sheets, about 2″ apart.
Bake one sheet at a time, rotating the pan halfway through, 10-14 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown, with set edges but soft centers, then repeat with the second pan. I cooked my first batch for 12 minutes and they weren’t burnt, but were more baked than they had to be, and my second batch for 10 minutes which was just right with the oven I was using.
Add the dry mixture to the wet, stirring until just combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
Bake 45-50 minutes until the cake passes the toothpick test.
If you are making a double batch, bake in a 9×13″ pan. Check at 45 minutes, and if the top is already browned, cover with foil to prevent burning and bake another 10-15 minutes until the cake passes the toothpick test.
Ingredients:
Add the buttermilk and mix well again.
Add the dry goods and mix again until well combined. I thought the batter seemed alarmingly liquid-y at this point, but it firmed up just fine while baking.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake 20-25 minutes, until it passes the toothpick test.
At 25 minutes when I took mine out of the oven and jostled the pan it looked like it jiggled a bit, but a toothpick came out clean so I called it done, and (when it had cooled and I checked it out later) it was, indeed, baked through.
Serve warm, or cool in the pan before slicing.
Ingredients:
Cover the bowl loosely and let the dough rise in a warm place at least two, and up to five hours. At this point the dough is ready to cook, or be refrigerated.
Cook the bread for about an hour, until the surface is soft but feels baked – I found that for dough straight out of the fridge, 70 minutes worked well. I also noticed that with cheese in the dough, some of the melted cheese looked misleadingly like ‘uncooked’ dough, so don’t get fooled by that!
Beat in the sugars.
Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined.
Add the flour mixture and beat until just combined.
Spread half of the dough into the prepared pan. If you have a hard time spreading the dough, you can wet your fingers or use a bit more parchment to press on the dough.
Spread the 1/3 cup of peanut butter over the spread dough.
Pour the chocolate chips evenly over the peanut butter.
Uncover the fluff container and microwave for 20 seconds or until the fluff is just starting to rise over the top, then spread the warmed fluff evenly over the chocolate chips.
Press portions of the remaining dough between your hands to create thin ‘shingles’ to cover the fluff, using up the remaining dough.
Bake for 28-30 minutes, until lightly golden on top.
Let cool (at least to the point you can touch it!) and then cut into bars and enjoy.
Ingredients:
Reserve 1 cup of the flour mixture, and press the remaining mixture evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a medium bowl beat the cream cheese with the sweetened condensed milk until light and fluffy, then beat in the lemon juice.
In another medium bowl, combine the remaining 2 tablespoons brown sugar, the cornstarch, and the strawberry pie filling, and stir until well mixed.
When the crust is baked, spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the crust.
Spread the strawberry mixture evenly on top of the cream cheese layer.
Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of the flour mixture over the strawberry layer.
Bake an additional 35-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
Let cool to room temperature before slicing, then store in the refrigerator.
This duck cooks quite quickly, and makes plenty of sauce that I thought also worked well as a dressing on the salad I ate it with. Other than the baby carrots, this was a very farm stand heavy meal, which is grand, and I got 3 dinners out of the duck.
Ingredients:
Place the pan in the oven and cook 8-10 minutes, for medium rare, or longer as desired. (I went with 10 minutes and it was right for me.)
Remove the duck from the pan to a cutting board and let rest.
Add the balsamic vinegar and cook until reduced, scraping the brown bits off the bottom of the pan (if you’re not using non-stick anyway). Add the stock and raspberries, and cook until the berries are soft and warm.
Slice the rested duck breasts and serve with the raspberry sauce.
I feel like this would be nice for a small dinner party, because it looks a bit fancy, tastes great, and requires very little hands-on time. Could always serve it warm with some vanilla ice cream, cuz why not?
Bake 20 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden brown.
Let cool on the pan 5 minutes, then serve warm or transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
sparecake 