Liver Spread (Pâté) a la Pinoy

To satisfy a craving for pure (and I mean “pure”) liver spread, I set aside about less than a quarter of a kilo of the liver we bought for chicken adobo. I requested my hubby to fry the liver, not really knowing how to prepare the pâté. I thought I could just wing it. How hard can it be?

So I came home to fried chicken liver ready for my experiment.

First mistake: I requested that the liver be fried first before tenderizing. Of course, it was too tough to mash.

Second mistake: I placed the liver in our Black and Decker blender with about a cup of fresh milk and around 63 gms (roughly 1/4 of a 250 gm bar of butter), with salt and pepper to taste.

This was a mistake because the liver was just fried, not tenderized, which made it tough. My blender whirred with much effort at this dry mixture. My blender was also on it’s last legs, I might add, and conked out at just that perfect time after 10 faithful years.

Third mistake: I was exhausted and stressed out and it is never really a good time for me to experiment on recipes in that condition. It took me longer to think of how to remedy the situation – the tough liver – in just a short amount of time. I was anxious to put my tired feet up.

Solution: I boiled the liver mixture (with the milk, butter, salt & pepper) in a pot with more milk, about a cup of milk, at very low heat, making sure to stir from time to time to prevent the mixture from burning.

As the liver softened and the liquid reduced to a mere buttery oil, I turned off the heat and began to mash the liver. Now that was the gruelling part, at least to my arms.

There is an upside to frying the liver before softening. The flavour of the liver is sealed before it is tenderized.

We found that the liver pâté tasted better with cream cheese on toasted bread. Any brand of cream cheese would be good, not necessarily endorsing the brand featured in the photo.

I believe mayo or mustard would work well as a condiment, too, since either one will lend a tanginess to the rich liver taste.

Overall, I believe that my experiment was a success.