Gateau de Foie de Volailles a la Bressane

Ok ok, so Gateau de Foie loses a lot in the english translation to liver cake....but really think of it as a light and airy pate made with chicken livers, now almost the cheapest meat in the store. When I met Gerry, I knew by the sight of a huge tube of liverwurst in his fridge that we were meant to be (I eat it almost every morning on my toast).

So it just seemed reasonable that we would eventually head down the diy path on all things liver. I am fond of pate and love an herbed liverwurst. The other day G-man arrived at home with a package of chicken livers as some free beef fat from the grocery store. Fat was tucked quickly away into the freezer for some Mennonite sausage I want to try and the chicken livers have become a gateau. The recipe came from a book called French Provincial Cooking, given to me by my long-ago friend Maureen who was downsizing. After a quick google, I realize that it is a pretty basic recipe and can be spiced up by the addition of some cognac and more or less herbs/spices.

Recipe:

300g chicken livers
75g flour (2.5 ounces)
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks (nice cause the remaining whites became some chocolate chip merangues for my work potluck this week)
3 TBS cream
3 c milk
salt and freshly ground pepper
pinch of nutmeg (which I left out as Gerry hates the stuff)
1/2 TBS parsley, very finely chopped (I used fresh out of the garden and the winter cold hasn't yet killed it all)
1/2 clove of garlic

Grind livers into a paste, sift flour and then basically add it all together. Put into terrine (I only had a pyrex loaf pan and two small ramikins) then into a bain marie on the stove. Bring to simmer then transfer to oven at 325 F. Recipe said bake for 40-45 minutes but I found it took about 1 1/2 hours to have it done right the way through. Ger has already eaten most of one of the small ones.

For me, I would add some herbes de provence and extra garlic next time as I am not completely fond of the chicken liver taste. All in all, however, a great experiement. I think I will slice the loaf pan gateau into thick slices, seal in shrink bags and give as Christmas presents along with a nice Port from the cellar.

Chris

With local wheat and a grinder how can you lose?

It has been quite an adventure trying to find wheat on this island. The local organic store brought in bags but very expensive. We had thought non-organic would be cheaper but there just isn't a supplier that I could find in Canada, so organic it is. I even tried the feed stores to see if they could get food-grade wheat, but that ended no where, until one of them told me of a farmer in Metchosin who grows wheat! Calling Tom Henry was a great thing. Not only did he have wheat for sale but his brother in law lives in Duncan and would deliver it.

Tuesday this week, my lovely 20kg of hard red wheat arrived in its thick plastic bucket. Now Tom says that its protein content is only around 11% which is less than prairie hard red....I will have to do some research to see what to expect from that.

So then the only task left was to order the whispermill so that we can grind our berries into flour. Found a Canadian supplier who had free shipping and the new toy should be here next week. I can hardly wait. I just remember Joanne's fresh ground wheat buns, how light and delicious they were!

Our WonderMill arrived shortly after the wheat and we have been grinding wheat to feed my sourdough starter and this weekend we are planning a baking marathon. I can just taste the bread now.

Chris