Kosher Style Liverwurst

Tastes like old times

Liverwurst, or liver sausage is a Midwestern staple. When I was a kid we would go one town over to Cedarburg (not that i lived in a town per se, Mequon in those days had 62 square miles, 15,000 people and 4 stop lights) to buy meat. Paules’ Market (long gone sadly) was the place to get local meat. I can still recall the liverwurst, made from pork liver wrapped in a opaque casing that had to be peeled away. A quick lunch on the farm could be made from a few slices, sharp mustard and two slices of wheat bread.

The flavor of liverwurst is very distinctive, as opposed to liver pate or chopped chicken livers. It was this distinctive flavor that lead me to think that I could recreate it with beef or calves’ liver (which would make it kosher, if you use kosher meat). So a little internet research combined with consultation with Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing and I was ready to give it a try.

Some notes on materials and process. This takes a while to make. Leave yourself plenty of time and keep everything well chilled. If you break the emulsion (meaning the fat and meat separate) what you end up with is very tasty dog food. Also there are several options for casings. I used muslin cloth. You could also use a beef middle or hog bung.

Recipe after the break

Chopped Chicken Liver

Chopped Chicken Liver

Liver. In popular American culture this word is usually accompanied by a  child making a face of disgust and followed by a sneer of “yuck”. Being the unusual child that I was I have always loved liver although I didn’t always know I was eating it. My mother used to make me liverwurst sandwiches. When I was about 4 I asked her if there was liver in them and when she said no, I asked why it was called liverwurst. She replied that the city of Livermore (the next town over) wasn’t made of liver and I accepted this explanation as totally rational. I never bought the whole tooth fairy thing, but this I believed for a shockingly long time. It wasn’t until I entered 1st grade and started eating lunch at school that I discovered that most children find liver disgusting, but by then I developed a taste for it. As an adult I find myself periodically craving liver (this is probably due to my near constant state of iron-deficiency). I love it when there is one left inside of a whole chicken that I can fry up for a little snack and one of the greatest lunches I have ever had was a fried chicken liver po’ boy at Mahoney’s in New Orleans that Gordon and I split along with a cochon de’lait po’ boy (the ultimate in trayfe). It was a heart attack on a plate, with onion rings and an Abita beer on the side, but it was worth every moment of my lifespan I gave up. Marc and all his food intolerance chickened out and ended up eating a salad somewhere down the street. He may live longer as a result but I still dream of that sandwich.

Chopped chicken liver has been a staple of Jewish delis since they were invented (if you have ever seen the chopped chicken liver sandwich at Katz’s you’ve seen the holy grail of chopped chicken liver)  I remember my mother making it once with an old hand-crank  meat grinder. At some point everyone realized how bad it is for you and stopped making it, but once or twice a year we would go to Max’s and we would order it. Now that we have discovered that all things that taste really good are bad for you and some of the things we thought were better for you were actually making us obese (hello margarine) I decided that chopped chicken liver was coming out of my kitchen once again. Luckily I had two loaves of rye bread just dying for an accompaniment and two Rocky Jr. Liver Cups in the fridge. The cup is one pound of livers from organic sustainably farmed chickens.  It also just sound like the prize to a NASCAR race and I am always trying to think of an event where it can be the trophy.

recipe after the jump

Rye Bread

rye bread

Rye bread may be the quintessential Jewish bread. I know some people may argue that it is challah, but rye is the glue that holds so many Jewish lunches together. The reuben, pastrami sandwich, chopped liver, the patty melt … pretty much any Jewish deli will have loaves and loaves of rye any day of the week. Rye is a different kind of grain than wheat and is widely grown in Eastern Europe and Russia which explains how rye bread became a staple of  Ashkenazi kitchens.  The flours resulting from it vary as much as wheat flours do. (It also makes some pretty good whiskey) They are typically labeled light, medium or dark and this has to do with the bran content, with the dark containing the most bran and being the equivalent to whole wheat flour. The light rye will produce a softer spongier bread like you would find in a deli, but my household has been attempting to eat more whole grains so I sacrificed some texture for a bit more nutritional content this time. Rye breads is usually made with a mix of wheat and rye flours. Marc told me the other day the he is working on rye bread’s cousin, pumpernickel, which is made from all rye flour. Rye bread typically has a sour note to it and I consulted a number of recipes, which had wide variations in the sour starter but ultimately fell back on Cooks Illustrated.

Recipe after the jump