brocipes

When I mentioned making this, a lot of people asked me to post the recipe. Rabbit liver is pretty easy to find here in Costa Rica, I’m sure it is in certain parts of the states too, but you can pretty much make this with any kind of liver you’d like. Rabbit liver is just very mild compared to something like beef liver, so maybe try to go with something like calf/veal liver or amp up the spices if you use beef liver.

Rabbit Pate

Ingredients:

• 1 lb/500 g of rabbit liver
• 1 small onion, finely diced (I used one of the little brown ones that is shallot sized)
• 3 gloves of garlic, minced (or more if you can stand it)
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• tiny pinch of cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 cup/150 g butter, softened (I used salted because all butter here is salted, though less so than in the states)
• 4 tbsp gin
• 1/2 tsp oregano or whatever other herb(s) you’d like. Try to use stuff that will play off of the gin.
• salt/black pepper
• In order to amp up the garlic aspect and add a little more fat, I also added about a tbsp of what is essentially garlic-flavored margarine. They sell a bunch of flavors of this here, chicken, garlic, onion etc. I don’t think they really have it in the states, but if they do it would probably be near the bouillon and such.

Directions:

1. Boil the liver for about 7 minutes. Watch it pretty carefully, you don’t want it to overcook.
2. Saute the onion and garlic in a tiny bit of butter or olive oil until they’re soft.
3. Add livers, onion, garlic to a bowl and mash with a fork or potato masher (or use a food processor/blender/meat grinder. I am old school.)
4. Add the butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, and whatever other spices you chose and blend it all together by your preferred method.
5. Add the gin.
6. Taste it, and then add salt and pepper to your taste.
7. Stick it in a covered container and chill it in the fridge for at least 2 hours, but overnight is better.

That’s it. It’s super simple. You can use this method to make pate out of all sorts of things. I’ve made pate out of whole sardines this way, changed the gin out for bourbon and used chicken livers and honey….there are really all sorts of variations.

<begin rant>

And just as a side note, because I’ve seen people be confused about this several times on facebook and such, pate is NOT foie gras. I’m just going to paste a comment I made last night:

To the person above saying ducks were force fed: pate is pate, it’s a spread made from livers of ducks, rabbit, pigs, etc that are fed normally, and killed normally for other kinds of food. Foie gras is produced by force feeding in France according to strict laws governing that, though it can, and sometimes is, produced by normal feeding outside of France. It is just the straight up fattened liver. You can make pate out of foie but a majority of pate is straight up liver and is absolutely no different than eating meat, and in fact makes use of a piece of meat that most people are loathe to eat and just throw away. I made a delicious pate out of rabbit liver the other day and I assure you, no rabbits were subjected to “gavage” in order for me to do so.

People clearly have a problem with foie, and that’s fine. We all make our own decisions about what we’re ok with as far as the food we eat goes. I do think the knee jerk reactions I’ve seen people having regarding it are pretty over the top and display a clear lack of understanding about what eating meat, dairy, and eggs in the United States actually means. I don’t really see how gavage is any worse than factory farming, or egg farming where male chicks are routinely ground up while alive. Think buying “free-range” or “cage-free” absolves you of that? Yeah, not really. I don’t want to turn this into a debate, because this is really just a cooking site, but food, especially in the U.S., is absolutely fraught with problems and the choices that we make regarding the things we eat should be made with the full knowledge of what they mean for the health of animals, the environment, and ourselves. We should all try to be as informed as possible about what we eat and how we eat, and if you want to get judgey about other people’s food choices, at least have your facts straight.

This is a link to a great video and article discussing the protections that farm animals currently have. SPOILER ALERT: none. I clearly eat meat, and I eat a lot of it, but I was a vegetarian for this very reason for 5 years, and these matters are still incredibly important to me.

</end rant>

So we’ve been in our apartment for a month now and things have gotten significantly easier on the eating front. We’ve figured out the best places to shop for certain things, figured out that Costa Rican meat, especially pork, is fucking delicious, and have added several more things to our growing list of meals. Which is good since we eat all of our meals at home. The two that I am all about are fried avocado tacos and pupusas.

Avocado Tacos
I blatantly stole the idea for the tacos from Disco Volante in Oakland but I like mine a shit ton better. You’re basically replacing the meat in a taco with avocado that has been battered and fried until nice and crispy outside and hot and creamy inside. Yes, I did just say that. I used Masa flour, since we don’t do gluten and I have it around, and just slice avocado like I normally would, put the slices in a bowl with a beaten egg, coat them well, and then roll them in masa seasoned with salt and pepper until they’re coated really well. Drop them into some hot oil and fry them until they’re nice and crispy. A deep fryer would be awesome but I just use about half an inch of sunflower oil in a heavy skillet. The first time I did it I also battered and fried slices of habañero peppers but now I just add a drizzle of  habañero oil that I made once they’re done since I’m sick of having burny hands that I can’t touch anything with. (Also they call habañeros “Panama Chiles” here. No idea.)

Once you’ve got the avocado all done, stick them in some steamed corn tortillas with whatever else you like and nom the fuck out of them. It’s nice to balance the avocado out with something crisp, so we’ve been using match-sticked chayote, but raw cabbage or jicama would also work well. Beans and sour cream, fresh squeeze of lime, you’re set.

Pupusas

I’m just going to link to a couple of tutorials that I consulted instead of trying to explain it, because honestly it sounds more complicated than it really is.

This one is good because it has pictures of the actual ball making/flattening process but it uses rice flour, and I used masa/corn flour so I can’t tell you if it works well or not.

This one is basically what I did. It is so easy and they come out so awesomely good that we had them two nights in a row. It’s slightly time consuming, but if you have a big griddle pan and one person doing the frying while the other makes them it goes quickly.

And since I’m me, we didn’t do incredibly traditional fillings but all of them were delicious.

• crumbled pork chorizo and sauteed celery greens (basically the leaves from the tops of celery. These are my new favorite thing)
• mild white cheese (here it’s “Rico”, it’s sort of like a combo of jack and mozarella) and shredded zucchini. Contrary to the first link, I didn’t have to shred it the day before. Just shred it, salt it a bit, and put it in a few layers of paper towel or a kitchen towel and squeeze out all the water over the sink.
• cream cheese and chopped habañeros. I was going for a sort of japapeño popper thing with this. It was AWESOME
• shredded firm goat cheese and greens or zucchini
• combinations of all of the above

If the dough is cracking, it’s not wet enough. I found it easiest to add any extra water I would need to it in small batches as I was working with it. Also, I kept my hands pretty much coated in olive oil the whole time I was making them, because you don’t want the dough to stick to your hands and peel off of the pupusa. After that it’s pretty much ruined. And don’t try to fill them with anything too wet or liquidy. I tried to use some fresh goat cheese I made that is sort of ricotta like and it did not work out well at all. The dough just doesn’t want to stick to it.