Mousse Madness
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| From Misc Photos (2011) |
(From prior posts, you know I’m embarking on a tour through James Peterson’s “Cooking” cookbook. This post relates to that adventure.)
There is a dearth of duck livers in my area. Unable to find any, I resorted, for the moment, to skipping the terrine section of Peterson’s cookbook and jumping right to the chicken-liver mousse recipe.
Oddly, chicken livers were not so easy to find either. After my third sweep through the store without success, I had to ask the butcher. Turns out they were ensconced on the top shelf of a refrigerated section nearby. I am not a tall person. I never would have seen them there without assistance. In fact, I had already perused that section and missed them. I thought chicken livers would be available in abundance, an inexpensive meat “by-product” of America’s chicken ubiquity. But, apparently, at least in the northeast, they are not popular enough to garner front row shelving.
Anyway, I have never deliberately bought fresh livers in my life (French pate, yes. Liverwurst, yes. But not their origin ingredient).
It’s probably a culinary travesty to admit this, but the sight of the internal organs themselves (as opposed to in already-processed form) makes me a bit nauseous (even more so when processed into a mousse slurry from scratch). The organs are just so much more intimate somehow than the muscle meat of a hearty steak or drumstick. I’m only doing this little experiment to garner some classical culinary skills and knowledge. But it kinda has me rethinking vegetarianism again.
Unfortunately, my chicken-liver experiment has left me with four good-sized ramekins full of liver mousse. My spouse won’t eat it, so it’s just me. Yes, I will, of course, try it, and even attempt to eat a good portion of it (assuming I can overcome the psychic barriers), but what the heck do I do with the rest of it?!
As with a prior post, I note that Peterson would do well to address storage issues for each recipe, though that wouldn’t help me here since my off-book research indicates that liver mousse made with real whipped cream (like Peterson’s) won’t freeze well. The suggestion? Do everything except adding the dairy; freeze what you’ve got; re-process with the dairy ingredients upon thawing. Wish I’d done my research prior to making the stuff.
Ah, yes. Making the stuff. About that. It turns out it’s extremely economical and easy. Have you seen how much they charge for pates at the store? If you like it, you should definitely make your own. It will be very impressive at a party to say, “What? Oh the pate! Yes, I made that myself.” Unless PETA’s attending.