Chopped Liver for Pregnancy

It has been quite some time since I last updated the blog. Now I finally have some breathing room after an extremely busy year of being on the job market and teaching a full coarse load. But of course, life has its ways of ruining our best-laid plans. I'm pregnant! Cooking and eating have been a challenge for the past few months due to my nausea and food aversions, but I am finally coming around to enjoying cooking again. One of the unexpected things I have found about being pregnant is that my taste seems to have changed. I frequently desire things that seldom interested me before pregnancy—mainly fresh dairy and steak. I think my body can actually digest these things better now than I could before pregnancy. Wild, right?

I am also trying to eat a super nutritious pregnancy diet so that I can grow a healthy baby without taking lots of supplements with added sugar and dubious absorbability. That means I'm often trying finding creative ways to add offal, leafy greens, pasture raised eggs, chia seeds, and oily fish to my diet. Chicken liver is probably one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can find. It is naturally full of folate, choline, and Vitamin A. Prepared pates are off limits because of the possibility of listeria, but they are my favorite way to eat liver. I tried some ragouts and adding liver to ground meat dishes, but it just...isn't the same. So I decided to make my own pate/chopped liver to eat hot, that way there is no risk of listeria.

At some point in the near future, I will make a post about pregnancy nutrition. There is so much misinformation out there, idiotic (and in my opinion, racist) bans on things like sushi (the flash-freezing process that makes sushi-grade fish safe to eat kills parasites and bacteria) and the typical sexist crap about encouraging women to eat low fat/less nutritious things so they don't gain "too much" weight. As you will see, this recipe is full of tasty fats. This recipe is very not-Kosher for a chopped liver recipe, but you kasher the livers and sub schmaltz or duck fat for the butter and ghee to make it kosher. You'll notice pretty much everything I'm including is grass fed, pasture-raised, and/or organic. That's because they have a better nutritional profile, which is especially important for pregnancy. Also I hate to admit it because the price is hard to swallow, but they just taste better.

There's no way to make chopped liver/pate look cute, so I included a picture of Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby eating a raw chicken liver. Feels pretty relatable to me right now.

Ingredients:

• 4 oz chicken livers—the best quality you can find. I used Bell and Evans, but something pasture raised and local would be even better.

• 1 tsp grass fed ghee

• 2 shallots, chopped

• 1/4 cup white wine. The alcohol will cook out.

• 1 tbsp grass fed butter

• 1 tsp Red Boat Fish Sauce or anchovy paste

• 1 tsp herbs de Provence

• salt and pepper (to taste)

Instructions:

1. heat the ghee in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until translucent and fragrant. You may need to lower the heat depending on the strength of your stove.

2. add the chicken livers, fish sauce, herbs de provence, and white wine to the pan. Cook until livers are cooked through and most of the wine is evaporated—roughly five minutes.

3. stir in the tbsp of butter and add salt and pepper to taste.

4. put the contents of the saucepan in a food processor and pulse until smooth and creamy.

5. eat right away with toast or crackers.