Minced liver

[Wilfrid]

I followed a recipe yesterday which called for a pound of minced liver.  How the heck do you mince liver?  I tried slicing it into small pieces, then used the setting on my processor which satisfactorily minces most meats.  But I can see no way - whether you use an old-fashioned meat grinder, or just carry on chopping with a knife - to avoid ending up with slurry.  Wet brown goo.  Maybe if you cooked the liver a little first - but then it's going to be crumbly, and dry out during the rest of the cooking.

Was it a dumb instruction in the recipe, or am I missing something?  (Anyone want to try some left over slurry?)

[Fat Guy]

The liver of what animal? Tell us more about the recipe and maybe we can figure it out.

[Wilfrid]

Liver of a pig, but I can see the same problem with calves, sheep and ox livers.  I am having trouble imagining mincing a chicken liver.  

I am going to claim that it was a recipe for crepinettes, because the real name of the foodstuff in question will make everyone snigger.  Essentially, one was invited to mince 10oz of pork belly, 1lb of pig liver*, and mix these with two beaten eggs, a handful of breadcrumbs, sage, mace, seasoning, mix it up well, roll it into balls and wrap it in caul.

Once my liver was reduced to sludge, there was no question of rolling the mixture into balls.  Resourceful as ever, I lined a loaf-tin with foil and turned the recipe into "faggot loaf".  Oops, I mean "crepinette loaf"!  Once the liver and eggs started to cook, everything got bound together fine.

*Next time, I would reverse these proportions, quite apart from the mincing problem.

[Clare Leaman]

Sounds like my first attempt to make a pork pie. Over the page (and thus not seen by me at first) was the counsel 'ON NO ACCOUNT [sic] use a processor or mincer'. With faggots I'd say you were looking for a similar, perhaps slightly finer texture, thus minced = chopped finely. I have found two chinese cleavers do the job very efficiently.

[Rachel Perlow]

What about par cooking the liver slightly? When making chopped liver the liver is cooked first. Kosherly, this is done by broiling, although I prefer to saute. Anyway, if you simmer the liver or briefly saute, to the rare stage, you should be able to mince it without it becoming liquid, but it will still be mushy and cohesive enough to bind with the minced pork belly.

[Wilfrid]

Makes sense, Rachel.  I guess it's either that or reduce the liver in the recipe so that its slurriness is outweighed by the drier ingredients.  I think less liver is called for anyway.

[Adam_Balic]

Wilfrid - I had the same problem making French pie (Pate), the mincer/food processor ends to crush the rather dice. Any Pate/terrine recipe worth its salt will tell you to use a knife or better still a double bladed mezzaluna, which is the specific tool for the job apparently. Do you have faggots often?

[Wilfrid]

I haven't had a faggot for several years, thanks for asking.  I was prompted to create them (or rather the faggot loaf) by a combination of the British food threads here and picking up Jane Grigson's book on English food at an airport last week.  Yes, she is the guilty party.  No mention of mezzalunas in her recipe.  The loaf tasted fine, by the way.  I cut it into large cubes, so I had faggots with corners.

Do you get faggots up your way?

[Jinmyo]

Ah, there's nothing like a faggot of an evening just at the edge of twilight when the sky is pink as a joint and the lights of the faeries shimmer in the fields. With a bit of Keene's to make it sharp.

[Adam_Balic]

I haven't had a faggot for several years, thanks for asking.  I was prompted to create them (or rather the faggot loaf) by a combination of the British food threads here and picking up Jane Grigson's book on English food at an airport last week.  Yes, she is the guilty party.  No mention of mezzalunas in her recipe.  The loaf tasted fine, by the way.  I cut it into large cubes, so I had faggots with corners.

Do you get faggots up your way?

Sure lots and lots, what else would you use for kindling?

[Wilfrid]

What a versatile word it is.

Byt the way, Adam, I can't believe your bio-thread is locked.  I have nowhere to post all the interesting stuff.

[Adam_Balic]

Yeh, well if you start a topic on "mincing" for "faggots" thats what you get. I suspect that this whole egullet crash thing was just a way of shutting down my bio-thread. I'm hip to that game though.

Either Jane Grigson or Elizabeth David mentioned the double bladed Mezzaluna thing, I can't remember which one.

[Bux]

I'm looking at another Grigson recipe. This one is for gayettes de provence [trust us, we don't make up these French terms]. There's some lean pork as well as liver and fat in the mix, but after grinding, she wraps the farce in pieces of caul fat. I note that she does't suggest balls can be rolled first. [This is all too rife with innuendo for me.] I would think grinding would make it even worse than a food processor.

The only time I've used pork liver in a paté or sausage, it was not the overwhelming component and a sausage casing is probably easier to stuff with a wet mix than caul fat.

I assume you lined the loaf pan with the caul fat. My creative instinct suggests you try lining the compartments of a muffin [damn, it just doesn't stop] tin with caul fat and bake individual patés. Perhaps you could come up with a proper name for these cupcakes.

[Adam_Balic]

Bux - remember these are English faggots (therefore, by Plotnicki definition, rubbish), hence they will not be as refined or "magical" as the French version. ;).

[Wilfrid]

Adam, I have sworn an oath under a blasted oaks to resist such remarks.

Bux, it had never occurred to me before that the French had an exact word for 'faggots', but I am happy to assume that gayette is it :D

Let me confess, I couldn't get any caul fat.  I have made various faggot-type titbits before, and while the caul fat unquestionably bastes and adds flavor, and looks pretty, I have always been able carefully to assemble and cook the meatball (broadly speaking) item without it.  This slurry wouldn't have gone into any caul fat.  So, just a foil-lined loaf tin, as I said.  I love the cup cake pate idea.  It occurred to me long ago that sourcing sausage skins was unnecessary, and that you could make quite satisfactory hand-shaped rissoles/burgers of whatever sausage mixture you fancied (you lose the snap, of course).  I can now see the cup cake idea making them very neat and tidy.

[Adam_Balic]

See! English = no caul :D .

[macrosan]

What does innuendo mean, please ?

[franklanguage]

I followed a recipe yesterday which called for a pound of minced liver.  How the heck do you mince liver?

 

Doesn't it make sense to freeze it first and then chop it with a very sharp knife? Chop it into chunks first so the piece you're working on will stay firm until you finish mincing it.

(Of course, then you can pirouette and mince around the kitchen to celebrate your skill and cleverness - had to get that in.)

[Matthew Grant]

What does innuendo mean, please ?

It's an Italian suppository!

[Wilfrid]

Chopping minced liver sounds difficult to me.  Once you get it down to small pieces, it's going to melt in an instant.  Have you tried this, frankalangauge, or is this an armchair hypothesis?