Chicken liver pâté

With a recipe from Quality Meats by Luke Powell

Images and text from Quality Meats by Luke Powell, photography by Alicia Taylor. Murdoch Books RRP $55.00.

As a kid I had those dishes that I’d go back to in restaurants. I don’t remember that I was ever told to order off the kids menu so they were always things that made me feel quite grown up in the ordering.

There were spare ribs that would come out at a few of the Italian restaurants we’d go to that became a family joke. I don’t know whether it was that they were particularly molten but I’d have to wait until they cooled to even manage to pick them up for any length of time. The family having finished their starters would have to wait and watch me eat.

A safer and quicker option was pâté; a go-to order that still turns my head. It was familiar, and again felt above my age, and allowed for a degree of indulgence in how thickly the pâté was spread over toast (of which there never seemed enough). Now I think of it, it taught me the joy of dining as well as eating.

If not eating out it appeared at special occasion dinners at home; always a pâté from a packet and no chance of leftovers.

There barely seemed to be a menu that it wasn’t on at one point, in country pubs with dining rooms, and regional restaurants that were even vaguely French in their outlook. Then came the city gastro pub (I suppose in the nineties and the early oughts) when I was first dining as an adult on my own money (or my overdraft). Again, it was always a firm go-to.

Despite my love for it, I rarely make it. To memory, I haven’t since around 2014 or 2015 when I replied to a call out to test recipes from Emiko Davies’ first book Florentine. I’ve trawled my email and my shelf and there’s no sign of the recipe or the book, but I believe it was a rustic Tuscan chicken liver number, rich with Marsala.

Now, reading the new book from Luke Powell of LP’s Quality Meats in Sydney (co-written as it happens by my predecessor as editor of the WAGFG, David Matthews) I’m again inspired to turn my hand to it.

Chicken liver pâté from Quality Meats by Luke Powell

This pâté, which we served for a long time at LP’s during its restaurant days, is a relatively easy one. It goes in a smooth, rather than coarse, direction, with a texture almost like parfait that’s easily spreadable, which is probably why we almost always served it with a hunk of sourdough bread. The port reduction is the opportunity to add flavour to your pâté. You can use a mixture of different alcohols, including sweet sherry or even sweetened red wine.