This essay is reposted with permission from The Bittman Project, where it originally appeared. My father-in-law always appreciates my cooking, no matter how unfamiliar he is with what I’ve made. In the 29 years since I married into the family, I’ve introduced him to matzah ball soup, brisket, rugelach, and other delicacies he’d never encountered…
Chopped liver and onions was my grandfather’s favorite dish. He would sit down at the kitchen table, loosen his belt, and prepare to dig into a heaping platter of the stuff while me and all my siblings turned up our noses. The mound of gray sludge interspersed with sauteed onions looked far from appetizing to…
Definition of “birthright” (courtesy Merriam-Webster dictionary): a right that you have because you were born into a particular position, family, place, etc. Well, okay, I was born into a Jewish family and I, therefore, consider noshing on chopped liver — be it sandwich, appetizer or full-scale platter — to be my birthright. So it seemed…
1) Matzo: There’s not much to like about this flatbread that looks and tastes like corrugated cardboard. But that’s because you’re probably buying the boxed square matzos. Boxed matzo is made by a machine and often sits on the shelf for months before you purchased it. What you end up with are stale, unsatisfying crackers….
Michael Kaphan’s bubbe helped get him into the New Yorker. No, she’s not his publicist. But Kaphan, chef-owner of recently opened Gramercy Farmer & the Fish in Manhattan, features her chopped liver recipe on his farm-to-table menu. “Sautéed in chicken fat and mixed with herbs and hard-boiled egg white, it’s luxuriant enough to be the…
In ‘The Book of Lost Recipes’, Gary Craig says that Jewish celebrities would come all the way “from uptown” for the restaurant’s chopped liver, which is made with beef liver rather than the traditional chicken liver. This gives it a richness most recipes lack, while the eggs keep it mousse-like in texture. Related Serves 6-8…
This is an elegy for chopped liver, a common appetizer with a distinguished pedigree. Its origins have been traced to 11th-century Alsace-Lorraine, where it was foie gras, made from the livers and fat of force-fed geese, plus a dash of Armagnac or Madeira, to add moisture as well as flavor, and salt. In France to…
Photography © 2014 by Jim Franco Although this recipe is fairly labor-intensive, it is well worth the work. You may want to double the recipe since it disappears quickly from the table, and you may want to keep some for delicious leftovers. It is also best to make it the day before you’re planning to…
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