Silverbrow on Food

Chopped liver

American slang has it that the term 'chopped liver' is an insignficant thing, a nothing.

And the ingredients to make the dish itself could easily give the impression that this is something really rather insignificant.  It's a bit of offal, a few eggs and bit of onion.  So, what's all the fuss?

The fuss comes when these things are combined to create a dish of sublime beauty, subtlety and deliciousness.  I accept my association maybe Proustian, but nonetheless it is good.

It would be wrong to think that it is a kosher version of chicken liver pate - or any other pate for that matter.  The ingredient list is short, the methodology straightforward.  It is simply chopped liver.  That's it.  We shouldn't be ashamed of its simplicity and we don't want to masquerade it as something it isn't. 

I like to eat it with new green cucumbers.  You can make your own (I'll post a recipe shortly) or I rather like Snowcrest's - not a statement you'll see me write about anything else Snowcrest makes.

A note on fat: For this recipe I advocate schmaltz - rendered chicken fat.  I know it's not healthy, but as my grandmother said "everything in moderation".  As a crack addict, she was speaking from experience.

If you don't use schmaltz then use a relatively neutrally flavoured oil like vegetable or peanut.  Both have a relatively high smoking point - unlike olive oil - and will allow a better flavour.

Schmaltz has the added advantage of gribenes - a chef's treat if ever there was one.

I made the chopped liver most recently for Simon Majumdar and I'm pleased to see he enjoyed it - shame about his balls.

Below is my mother's recipe that was passed down from her mother and no doubt her mother and so on into Jewish grandmother lore. 

I've adapted my mother's recipe because I use schmaltz, my mother doesn't. Turns out however that in the dim distant past my grandma did.  Although my mum's is excellent, seriously, you should go for the schmaltz.  And if you do, you might want to think carefully about dessert.

Serves 6 as a starter

• 450g / 1lb chicken livers - not frozen
• 5 medium onions - diced
• 8 hard boiled eggs
• 250g chicken fat to make schmaltz

Clean the livers.  This involves de-veining them and removing anything that is darker than the rest of the organ.  Simply slice it out.

If you keep kosher, the livers need to be koshered.  Simon in the comments below gives a pretty good method although this is a bit more detailed. (For clarity, I should say that I've amended this bit on koshering the livers because what I had in the first place wasn't correct and it was my original methodology that Simon refers to.)

Hard boil the eggs and separate the egg from the yolk of 7 of the eggs, keep the eighth egg whole and set aside with the 7 whites.

Grate or blitz in the magimix the 7 egg yolks and set aside for garnish.

Fry the onions in the schmaltz until they are a deep brown - it can take about 20 mins.  Towards the end of the cooking try not to let them burn, you want them soft not crispy, ideally.  Some argue a bit of crispiness is ok.  Set aside about 10% of the onions for garnish.

Make sure the livers are as dry as possible - vigorous dabbing with kitchen roll works well - and fry them in the same pan as the onions, on a high heat.  You don't want to clean the pan before you fry them - you want the schmaltzy onion remains in there.

Cook the livers for about 4 minutes - or until they are thoroughly cooked through but before they're dry.  I like them to be a bit pink on the inside with a decent amount of brown caramelisation on the outside.

If you were my grandma you would then combine the livers, the 90% of onions not destined for the garnish, the egg whites and 1 whole egg into a hand grinder.  If you're me or my mother, you'd chuck it in the magimix.  I blitz it until it's the grainy side of smooth - it's totally personal preference.  In his excellent book Yiddish Recipes Revisited, Arthur Schwartz suggests adding gribenes to this mixture.  I haven't tried it.  It sounds naughty, but very nice indeed.

Add the remaining onions and stir in - you don't want them blitzed.

You will need to take a view at this stage whether it is sufficiently moist or too dry.  Tasting is the best way to make this call.  If you think it needs to be a bit moister, then add some schmaltz or oil, but do so carefully.  It can very quickly go from being dry to an oil slick.

Let it cool in the fridge.  Remember those warnings about the dangers of allowing chicken to cool too slowly.  This is chicken offal, so in the fridge as quickly as possible please.

Once completely cool - a couple of hours should do - remove from the fridge and allow it some time to stand and get close to room temperature and taste it.  It will need to be seasoned again because up to now, you've seasoned it and tasted it as a hot dish.  As a cool one, the flavours will be muted so it needs pepping up.  I usually find it needs more pepper than salt.

When serving, my mother sprinkles the previously set-aside egg yolks on top.  Personally I don't, I leave them in a bowl for people to add themselves.

Schmaltz

Never has the dichotomy of good food and bad health been greater than in the case of schmaltz - rendered chicken fat.

To me, it is the very essence of bad good food.  You know it's not healthy, but you also know that an ingredient that adds this much flavour to whatever it touches has to be very good indeed.

And so it is.  Let it near an onion and it will be the sweetest onion you've ever tasted.  It can turn a chicken liver into the consistency of cream and the oi, we shouldn't talk of the things it can do to chicken skin to make the delight of gribenes.

As an aside: do non-kosher butchers charge for chicken fat?  Kosher ones do and I've an inkling non-kosher don't.  Now that my friends is a chutzpah.  As a further aside, can I point out that being spelled with a ch- chutzpah is pronounced as though it is an h.  Please stop saying chootzpar, as in choo-choo, and start saying hootspah, with a slightly guttural 'h' at the start. 

Returning to the matters at hand.  It couldn't be easier to make schmaltz and I'm not sure if this even counts as a recipe.  But here goes enough to make chopped liver for 6.

• 250g chicken fat

Put the chicken fat into a pan with a tight fitting lid.  Turn on the heat relatively low and let it melt away until you are left with liquid.  You need the lid because it spits insanely and getting burned with chicken fat is not a pleasant experience - nor is cleaning it up from your ceiling.

It could take 20 minutes or so to fully render. 

You can then store the liquid, ideally frozen as it is chicken remember, or preferably use straight away.

If you're very lucky, there will be bits of skin left in the fat - they won't melt - that will have turned golden brown.  Best eaten quickly with a cold beer and smug grin.

Gribenes

I've never eaten pork scratchings and have long wondered why I've heard so many people speak about them akin to an orgasm.  What is so appealing about a bit of deep fried, hairy pig skin.

And then I made schmaltz and discovered that sitting within the boiling vat of fat was some deep fried chicken skin.  And lo, I ate in wonderment and amazement at these brown scraps in front of me.

Food doesn't get much unhealthier, nor does it get much better.

I have seen recipes that recommend adding onions, which I imagine would make it very good indeed but when I made them, admittedly by accident, there wasn't any onion.

Similarly I've seen recipes recommending you add salt.  If you're using kosher chickens I really don't think it's necessary and would make them too salty.  Kosher chickens are salted as part of the koshering process and until I made gribenes I hadn't appreciated just how much salt is retained in the skin - but it is tasty:

• 250g chicken fat
• As much chicken skin as desired

Put the skin into the pan as you are rendering it down for shmaltz.

Once the schmaltz is ready so are the chicken skins.  Dab on kitchen roll to get rid of excess fat and eat immediately.

I strongly advise you don't bother sharing these with others.  You've worked hard, you deserve it.  They don't.

Reubens

I had a good meal at Reubens with Chris of Cheese & Biscuits and Jon at Round Britain with a Paunch.  In fact it was surprisingly good.  I feared a re-run of the last time I encouraged someone for a salt-beef feast and it turned out more than a little wrong.

As I said in the comments, I'm not sure about his last sentence, but otherwise Chris' write-up is spot on.  Next time though, I will remember to ask them to keep that barding on the beef.  And I hope they have some tongue available.  Salt beef, good.  Tongue, better.

Particular mention should be made of the well flavoured lockshen pudding and the surprisingly flaky apple strudel.  Both rather took me by surprise. I should 'fess up to the fact that I only ordered them as an oh-so-ironic practical joke demonstrating just how awful kosher desserts can be.  That taught me.

Google Maps

Reubens, 79 Baker Street, London, W1U 6RG, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7486 0035

What others think

Michael Winner, The Sunday Times - I expected nothing. I received some of the tastiest, best food I’ve ever eaten.
Save the Deli - The chicken soup is so yellow and schmaltzy, you could be eating butter.

Taming the kosher dragon

I had been meaning to write a post about the New Yorker's recent article (annoyingly registration is required for access to the full article) on the process of rabbis certifying as kosher, food produced in China.   Basically if the rabbi's are happy, then the food gets the requisite hechsher and is sold across the world as kosher.

I was going to cynically point out the irony that so much cost and effort is put into certifying cheap commoditised food, produced on the other side of the world, whilst there is seemingly so little concern about nature's harvest that is reared or grown far closer to home.

Anyway, with so much to write (a post on veal stock and one on tarte tatine) and so little time, I was pleased to see that the inestimable The Jew and The Carrot had largely made my points for me. Ok, so they're a bit less cynical than me and yes, the irony might be lost a tad, but their post basically says what I wanted to.

By the way, if you've ever had a yearning to see a charedi rabbi inspect a chinese food production plant, here are some photos the New Yorker has posted on its website. 

If however, you're more interested in the best that kosher food has to offer, this is a little more thought-provoking.

State of the kosher nation - according to NY Times

The New York Times published its inaugural food issue yesterday. 

There's a great article on the numerous ethical and political issues that are being fought over kosher meat at the moment. 

Being written from an American perspective, there is none of the loony 'ban-Shechita' arguments we see in the UK.  Rather, the war is about the importance of looking after the animals we raise for slaughter and the dissonance between believing in the laws of kashrut and allowing our livestock to spend their lives in stinking hovels.

It's well worth taking a few minutes to read it.

Can Brits learn from US religious perspective on food ethics?

Interesting thoughts in The New York Times on the importance of ethics in kosher food, but from a religious perspective.

Rabbi Herzfeld might be referring in this instance to the problems at Agriprocessors, but I think his argument holds true for the consumption of all kosher meat. As we head into the Fast of Av, it's mental nourishment for those of us in the UK that are complicit in putting up with - or should that read encourage? - bad practices.

I'd like to see a British Orthodox rabbi come out with some equally trenchant views.