Chicken Liver, Spiced Rum and Marmalade Pate

This a variation on my Chicken liver and cointreau Pate, the addition of Marmalade and spiced rum give it a sublte sweetness. I hope you enjoy. 

Ingredients

470g chicken livers

50g shallots

160g soft butter

40ml spiced rum of your choice (I used Kraken)

2 teaspoons of a good marmalade

Salt and Pepper

Extra butter to melt and cover pate.

Method

1. Peel the shallots and garlic, place in the bowl fitted with the ultrablade. Mix at speed 12 for 10 sec.  Scrape down the sides with a spatula
2. Replace the ultrablade with the mixer. Add the chicken livers and 20g of the butter, and the rum.
3. Launch P1 slow cook for 12 minutes
4. At the end of the program, drain the livers and rinse the bowl in cold water.
5. Insert the ultrablade once more and place the livers in the bowl with the creme fraiche remaining butter and the marmalade.  
6. Mix at speed 12 for 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides and mix again for another 10 seconds if the pate needs to be smoother.
7. Pour the pate into small dishes and smooth the top.
8. Melt enough butter to cover your pate
9. Place a little parsley (mostly for decoration) and cover with the melted butter. 
10. Pop in the fridge for at least 2 hours but preferably overnight before eating. (remove the pate from the fridge for the pate to return to room temperature)
11. Serve with crackers, on toast or a sliced baguette. 

Till next year

This year has been an eventful one, my daughter got married in October. Needless to say, it was a joyful and proud time for her father and I, and as with all brides she was beautiful. This has been the reason I haven't been posting much of late, but 2018 is a new year, and there are no significant events planned to take up my time, so I look forward to developing some new recipes.

Well, the silly season is almost over, and I hope you all were able to spend time with those that you love and are important in your life.   My lovely daughter and her shiny new husband have returned home. There is sadness that they are gone, I will miss them, but no matter how lovely they are it's always nice to get your home back.

Christmas day went off without a hitch, in part to CC, my great oven, and a 3 station buffet from Kmart for $45, that kept the vegetables and meat warm over our lunch.  Fantastic buy!

CC has been busy over the last week, making bread, and bread rolls, custard and stuffing for the turkey.  I had bought myself a Christmas present of the CC mini bowl, which isn't available here in Australia, but Amazon France shipped it out in double quick time!  The page is in French, but if you use Google Chrome just right mouse click on the page and choose "Translate to English".  It says they dont ship to Australia, but many of us now have bought and had the mini bowl delivered.  (For me in Tasmania it was only 10 days using the slower delivery option). It arrived on Christmas Eve, so Santa came early.  I will be developing some recipes especially for the mini bowl, so watch this space!

The New Year is fast approaching, I have plans to add lots more recipes to my blog, I hope you all have a safe and happy New Years, I look forward to giving you some inspiration in your kitchens in 2018!

Keep watching this space as I have something new and exciting to share!

My New Obsession

Several weeks ago after joining the Sourdough Baking Australia & New Zealand Facebook group, the lovely Maree Tink, founder of the group and blogger from Around the Mulberry Tree sent me some dried sourdough starter. A lovely tradition when you receive a starter from someone else is to name it.  My starter is called Tinkerbelle in honour of Maree. Well, I haven't turned back since.

Thirsting for more knowledge I signed up for "several" of Teresa Greenway's courses.  Teresa has course information on her site Northwest Sourdough.  Teresa's, courses are easy to follow with clear written and video instruction.  Between her and Maree I have become obsessed with baking beautiful crusty sourdough.  

Another of my favourite bloggers is Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. Celia's blog is a treasure trove of many things but of course, one of my favourites is her section on bread.  Her overnight sourdough was my first bake I made with my "Tinkerbelle".

Overnight Sourdough from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Today I did my second bake of the  #2 Bake Artisan Sourdough Bread Like a Professional course.  I made the Teresa's Tyra loaves. I made these with some beautiful stone ground flour from Callington Mill. The flavour of this flour was deliciously nutty.  We were very surprised at what a difference the flour made. 

Tyra Loaves

Yummy Buttery Baguettes

The crust of these baguettes was delicate and slightly chewy with a salty flavour (from the butter). The crumb was tender with an al dente bite.

The one thing I would probably do differently next time is to make 3 baguettes from this amount of dough as they were fairly generous in size. But that could just be because there is only the two of us to eat them here!

I hope you enjoy them as much as we did. 

Ingredients

340g warm water
1 1/2 Tbs. (2 packages) dry yeast
2 tsp. sugar
570 g bakers flour
2 tsp. salt

Method

1. Place ingredients into CC with the kneading crushing blade Pastry P1 2 mins 30 secs
2. This is a sticky dough, remove carefully from CC and scrape dough from blades onto a lightly floured bench. (you want the dough to remain fairly sticky)
3. I used a pastry scraper to lightly knead the dough (basically moved it around until it becomes a smooth ball. 
4. Cut in half and shape into 2 baguettes.
5. To make them smooth and pretty, roll each half of dough into a rectangle and roll up lengthwise. Pinch the edges to seal and place on a lightly greased cookie tray with a seam downwards. Cover and let it rise for 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 230 degrees.
7. With a very sharp knife (you can use a very sharp knife, one with a serrated blade or a razor blade) gently make a slash down the length of each baguette. (I did small diagonal slashes on the second)
8. Pour water in a cookie sheet and place it on the bottom rack of the oven. (this forms a steamy atmosphere for the bread)
9. Bake the bread for 15 minutes. Half way through, brush the bread with melted butter.

Recipe Source http://www.thesisterscafe.com converted for CC

How to Disassemble the Lid of Your CC for Cleaning

1. Firstly find the widest space of the lid and use your spatula handle to just flip and then this part of the lid is removed.
2. To remove the rubber seal just use a bread and butter knife or the handle of a spoon and remove it, its that easy.

When putting the lid back together, replace the rubber seal, then place on and press down till you hear a good click.

How to use the stopper and Mini and Maxi

1. This is how to use the stopper on mini and maxi
2. Place the stopper with maxi pointing toward the arrow on your CC handle (to the left)
3. Now, turn maxi toward the front, which means maximum steam will be kept inside CC
4. Now turn mini toward the front and the opposite applies, meaning minimum steam kept inside CC
5. You know if you have your stopper in the wrong way as the mini and maxi won't be straight up and down.