Sarah Kaplan Drus 's and Fay Baker Drus 's Chopped Liver all the way from Krakow in Poland

Gehockte Leber

This forspeis is so simple and straightforward that it is underappreciated as the gourmet dish it really is. My general rules for making chopped liver are:

1. Use only chicken liver to make this dish. Do not use beef or calf liver. Their flavors are too strong.
2. Use schmaltz. Do not substitute oil or any other fat. If you are concerned about cholesterol, eat chopped liver less often, but eat the uncompromised version. Anyway, the amount of schmaltz per portion of chopped liver in this recipe is the equivalent of no more than one pat of butter.
3. Chop all the ingredients by hand rather than by machine. Chopped liver should not look like a puree or a pâté. In texture it resembles French pate du campagne or the Quebecois rillets du gran'mère, coarse and rustic.
4. Eat it in small portions — it is very rich — and make it only for special occasions. Then you eat it less often and enjoy it more when you do.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb. chicken livers (fresh, not previously frozen)
2 cups finely chopped onions
3 hard-boiled eggs
6 Tblsp schmaltz.
Salt and black pepper to taste
A few gribenes (optional)

PREPARATION

Preheat broiler to 500°. Broil livers on broiler rack 4 inches from the heat source for 3 minutes on each side. Remove from the oven and finely chop livers.
Melt 6 Tblsp. schmaltz in skillet and sauté onions over medium/low heat until soft and just beginning to brown. Add chopped liver pieces and sauté 1 minute more. Remove from heat.
Pour contents of skillet into a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, chop the eggs and add them to the liver mixture. Mix in the salt, pepper, and gribenes (if using). Mix everything together until well blended. Chill at least 3 hours in the refrigerator before serving.

Serving Suggestions: Serve small portions of chopped liver garnished with kosher dill pickles and pickled beet slices during the winter. Garnish the liver with fresh tomato and English cucumber slices in the summer.

A medium-dry white wine, such as chardonnay, goes very well with chopped liver. So does a white zinfandel.

Gribenes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chicken Gribenes

Gribenes or grieven (Yiddish: גריבענעס‎, [ˈɡrɪbənəs], "scraps") are crisp chicken or goose skin cracklings with fried onions, a kosher food somewhat similar to pork rinds. Gribenes are a byproduct of schmaltz preparation.

A favored food in the past among Ashkenazi Jews, gribenes is frequently mentioned in Jewish stories and parables.

Holiday food

This food is often associated with the Jewish holidays Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah. Traditionally, gribenes were served with potato kugel or latkes during Hannukkah.

Gribenes is also associated with Passover, as large amounts of schmaltz, with its resulting gribenes, were traditionally used in Passover recipes.

Servings

Gribenes can be eaten as a snack, typically on rye or pumpernickel bread with salt, or used in recipes such as chopped liver, or all of the above. It is often served as a side dish with pastrami on rye or hot dogs.

This food has also been eaten as a midnight snack, or as an appetizer. Some Jews in Louisiana add gribenes to Jambalaya in place of non-Kosher shrimp. It was served to children on challah bread as a treat.

Etymology

The word gribenes is related to Griebe (plural Grieben) in various German dialects (from Old High German griobo via Middle High German griebe), where Griebenschmalz is lard from which the cracklings have not been removed. German "Geriebenes" is a matter which has been grated or ground, from German "reiben", to grind