Last weekend I took on making my own bread and Pate, the reason for this was an old memory of my first ever job when I was 15 at the Hundred House Hotel, where one of the most popular dishes for light lunches or for first course in the evning was Rich Chicken Liver Paté made with cream & brandy Served with chutneys & briôche. I was browsing over at  a Table for Twoand came across Billy’s recipe for Chicken Liver Parfait which reminded me of this dish and the very talented Chefs that created it.. I can clearly remember back then as a young clueless waiter, thinking these people are so clever being able to make something so tasty..So 15 years on, could I create something as tasty using my own fair hand?… Damn right I can…

So as Billy says in his blog, the recipe is fairly simple but there are a fair amount of processes there. I decided to leave the livers to soak in the milk over night rather than the 6 hours suggested, I’m not sure if it made a difference either way, it definitely seem to make the livers less icky to handle when cutting away the fat and gristle.  I kind of found it difficult to to do the flambe which explains this face…

Also I found passing it through the fine sieve twice was fairly gross and time consuming process, but did make for an extremely smooth finish.

The finished product looked great, stupidly like I totally forgot to take a picture of the parfait under the butter top… ah well, I’m sure you get the picture so to speak…

The recipe made 4 generous servings, and was pretty cheap coming in at under $10.00 for all 4 servings… A sure fire winner at any dinner party or bring your own type gathering.

The Briôche

I got my recipe from Group Recipes, I have never made bread before ever so i was expecting it to be really hard to do, but supprisingly, as long as you have patience cause there is a whole lot of waiting about for yeast to activate and the like, its actually pretty easy.

Mix the dough.. Knead the dough...

Once the dough is fully kneaded you have to let it rest for a whole hour and rise with a cloth covering it, then it goes in the oven

Cook for 40-45 Mins...

Hey Presto!

The result was awesome buttery, slightly sweet deliciousness, even over the next couple of days it was fully great still once lightly toasted.

I have to say I was very happy with the result of this one, a delicious reminder of a great past taste, I had a little gander at the current menu at the Hundred House and the same Parfait is still on the menu all these years later, so shows you how great it is!

Until next time Eat Well!