Pate with Italian Sausage Seasonings is the second pâté with sausage seasonings inspired by Alice Waters. Summer chicken livers are easy to find and perfect for this pâté. And they boast the sacred combination of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, and K2) that must work together. The media can be so fickle: D getting all the love, A sometimes vilified, and K2 often absent… But the reality is that one without the others may be harmful; these three go hand-in-hand.
How the fat-soluble vitamins work together
First, a very simplified summary of how the fat-soluble vitamins works together:
- Vitamin A breaks things down (out with the old and weak),
- D builds things back up (in with the new and strong), and
- K2 provides the instructions to your body for how to do those things.
Consider vitamin A your most important detox vitamin. Meanwhile, after you’ve cleaned house, vitamin K2 miraculously tells the vitamin D where to place calcium as it rebuilds bone tissue. If we don’t have enough K2, that calcium very well may end up in the wrong place (read: calcification of soft tissues).
What we know about the fat-soluble vitamins
In the 1920s and 30s, Weston A Price found that cultures that were free of modern diseases all had diets very high in vitamin K2. This vitamin was not known at the time and he referred to it as ‘Activator X.’
These cultures had a reverence for foods that contained ‘Activator X.’ These same cultures were free of dental decay and had immunity to tuberculosis and cardiovascular disease. Food consumed in these cultures contained 10 times more of these fat-soluble vitamins than the American diet at the time. (And four times the mineral content.) These sacred foods were considered essential for growing children and for reproduction.
‘Activator X’ turned out to be an apt name. We now know it provides blueprint instructions that activate vitamins A and D to do their work. As Price noted,
‘It is possible to starve for minerals that are abundant in the foods eaten because they cannot be utilized without an adequate quantity of the fat-soluble activators. The amounts [of nutrients] utilized depends directly on the presence of other substances, particularly the fat-soluble vitamins…’
Another great resource for understanding vitamin K2 and the fat-soluble vitamins is Kate Rheaume-Bleue’s book, The Calcium Paradox.
Where to find fat-soluble vitamins
Weston A Price knew that these sacred foods included organ meats, butter, cheese, and eggs – from pastured and grass-fed animals.
Perhaps you know that leafy greens provide vitamin K1 (helps blood clotting). When animals eat their leafy greens, this K1 becomes K2 available in the animal fats. And sunlight is still a great source of vitamin D. Hence, on ‘green pasture with abundant sunlight’ is essential if you are looking for these nutrients in your animal foods.
Liver is the highest source of vitamin A. Period.
Find and support your local, regenerative, grass farmers! Ask for grass-fed, grass-finished from your local butcher. (Absolutely not possible? Do the best you can and don’t worry about it!)
Pate with Italian Sausage Seasonings
In the Art of Simple Food, Alice Waters shares a couple of homemade sausage recipes. I loved the seasonings from the first one so much, I turned it into (my all-time favorite) pâté. It was only a matter of time before I adopted the second recipe as well. Hence, Pate with Italian Sausage Seasonings was born.
Of course, I always make pate in batches. High efficiency, easy to freeze. Meanwhile, this is perfect for a picnic or if you are thinking ‘easy Italian’ for breakfast, lunch or dinner!
Pate with Italian Sausage Seasonings
Ingredients
- 1 t fennel seeds, toasted and ground
- 1 large garlic clove, pressed
- 4 oz (8 T) lard, duck fat or butter, divided
- 1/2 lb chicken livers
- 1/2 t salt
- 2 t parsley, coarsely chopped
- 1/4 t chile flakes
- 1/4 cup red wine
Instructions
- In a dry pan, add fennel seeds over medium-high heat. Stand by, stir occasionally and toast seeds. When fragrant, remove seeds to a pestle and mortar and pound/stir to powder. Press your garlic and set aside.
- Add 2 tablespoons lard, duck fat or butter to pan on medium heat. When melted, add chicken livers and gently cook for ~4-5 minutes, turning halfway through - quite pink in the center is ok, as long as the livers are cooked on both sides. (They will continue cooking in your blender.) Add garlic to the pan and mix together for about 30 seconds until garlic is fragrant.
- Pour livers, juice and garlic into food processor or blender. Add salt, parsley and chile flakes and start food processor/blender. While it's running, put your pan back on medium high heat, add red wine. Cook until it has reduced a bit more than half. Add the remaining lard, duck fat or butter and when melted, pour all this into your food processor while it continues to run.
- Optionally, pour pate from food processor through a medium mesh sieve over a bowl and press with the back of a ladle continuously until most/all of the pate has been pressed through the sieve.
- Spoon your pate/mousse into a jar for serving and storage. Enjoy!
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