LTHForum.com

I'd love to be able to document my entire Christmas "Julbord" preparations this year. However, I'm quickly realizing that I just won't have the chance. Instead, I hope to at least document several of the dishes I'm making.

First off, "Leverpastej". I suppose that this is a just liver pate. Perhaps anyone recognizing the dish can chime in with a proper English name for it.

The ingredients:



About one pound of veal liver (pork works well, too), 4 sheets of gelatin, an onion, some carrot slices and bay leaves for decoration, 3 eggs, a few ounces each of fatty ground pork (I ground some pork shoulder) and leaf lard, 3/4 cup cream, 10 fillets of Swedish-style anchovies, spices (see below), 3 tbls port, one cup of consomme (beef/veal) and a tablespoon of Japanese soy sauce.

The spices:



1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 tsp ground white peppar, 2 tsps salt, 1 tsp sugar.

Start by grinding the liver, the meat, the lard, the anchovies and the onions several times.



Add the eggs, the cream and the spices to the meats and mix well.



Pour the batter into buttered baking containers. Anything from a large (2 quart) ceramic dish to these small aluminium dishes work fine.



Most types of leverpastej can be frozen at this point. In fact, it's better to freeze them before baking so that one can thaw and bake a new batch whenever needed. However, I wanted to cover this batch with aspic and wasn't really certain how well that would freeze.

Bake in a waterbath at 350 degrees for 50 minutes until set and slightly browned:



For the aspic, soften the gelatin sheets in cold water before adding them to a little of the warmed consomme:



Add the rest of the consomme, the port and the soy sauce to the mixture and let it cool and thicken slightly before pouring over the baked and decorated pastej:



Let the aspic-coverd pastej cool and set:



This season's first bite of homemade leverpastej (on hardbread with bread-and-butter-style pickles):





This type of preparation tones down the flavor of liver slightly which is why I'd suggested it in another threadas a suggestion for what to do with liver when one isn't really too wild about its flavor. There's enough flavor left, however, for liver lovers, too!

You, sir, are a treasure.

I'll most likely never make much of what you post here, but I always really enjoy the details, the process and the photos.

Another triumph, Bridgestone. God Jul to you and your family!

Thanks for the recipe, Bridgestone - definitely going to have to try this one (I certainly have enough of the ingredients!) I also wanted to compliment your garnish, simple though it is - spectacular - it's not easy to make ground liver and pork fat look beautiful*!


*Well, unless you're looking through Ronnie Suburban's camera...

Well, since I didn't have a grinder handy (I have several that can be borrowed, but not right before Christmas) but your post inspired me to use the liver somehow, so I decided to go with a more traditional terrine. It turned out pretty well, and we added it to our cheese tray for Christmas lunch - though mine didn't have pretty carrot flowers on it I still have 3 lbs of liver left, though, so after we eat through it I think I'll take a whack...

So, Bridgestone, after you kindly posted this recipe for me, it took me almost a year to try it - but here it is:



It was a real hit at the picnic, and I should mention that I think the aspic is vitally important: it added a silky texture and a punch of flavor that was a counterpoint to the cloves in the seasoning. (not to mention the garnishes with the aspic covered up all the aesthetic imperfections I wound up with)

I made very few alterations: of course, leaf lard isn't so easy to find here, so I went to a local mexican butcher and asked for grasa crudo de puerco or, raw pig fat (which, if I'd been thinking, should have come out grasa crudo de cerdo, or raw pork fat - but he got the idea and let me off the hook by finishing our conversation in English ) I came out with lovely slabs of white fat with a little meat, which worked fine after chopping in the food processor. At Brigestone's suggestion, I subbed sardines for the Swedish anchovies - just ordinary canned sardines in oil. I also made some minor alterations to the aspic: homemade chicken stock for veal, sherry for port, and Chinese soy for Japanese (well, and an orange pepper flower for the carrot flower, if we're being nitpicky) It didn't appear to suffer from the substitutions.

I don't have a meat grinder, but took from the recipe that this was to be a more emulsified pate, so I used my food processor with the blade and it did the job.

Thank you, Bridgestone - and thanks for the note about freezing, I've got two smaller batches in the freezer waiting for Christmas now. It was fun bringing a Brigestone recipe to the picnic!

Mhays - you are truly the one who deserves thanks!

Thanks for trying one of "my" recipies. (And extra thanks for picking such an, um, advanced one!)

Thanks for posting such a detailed report of your experiences.

Thanks for "representing" me at the LTH picnic. Your kind action was the one thing that could cheer me up after missing yet another incredible-sounding event.

In short - thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'm very happy that everything turned out to your satisfaction, Mhays.

I have to admit, I had a scary moment - when making things like meatloaf, I always fry up a little drop and taste it for seasoning. The little leverpastej patty was AWFUL - tough, chewy and tasted only of sardines - however, I'd reached the point of no return, and tossed it hopefully into the bain-marie, where it somehow became beautiful.

We love your recipes, Bridgestone - keep 'em coming!