Chopped liver

4 chicken livers
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 medium onion
chicken schmaltz (or duck/goose fat)

When I was a child, more than thirty years ago, my mother usually did a chicken for Sunday lunch. If it was a boiling fowl we had the neck skin stuffed with dumpling ingredients, stitched at both ends into a large sausage shape and boiled alongside the fowl to eat greedily in slices with the chicken soup first course.

More usually my mother roasted the chicken and would save every scrap of chicken fat (schmaltz) from the roasting pan to make chopped liver for supper. The butcher was always happy to throw in a few extra chicken livers; most of his customers didn’t seem to want the giblets.

Once lunch things were put away I had the job of chopping the onion and boiling the eggs. My mother fried the onion in plenty of schmaltz until it softened and then added the livers. When the livers were cooked they were left to cool a little in the pan. She then tipped the pan on to a board and chopped the mix with the hard-boiled eggs until she had a coarse pate–like texture. Every little bit was scraped carefully into a bowl, including any fat still lingering in the pan.

Eaten slightly warm with toast turned Sunday evenings into something more than the lull before Monday morning school. I still make chopped liver occasionally and each time I wonder why I don’t make it every week; it tastes of childhood and is simply delicious.