There are two ways I know to make duck liver mousse, and what they both have in common is the lavish use of cream and butter.
The first method is the quicker of the two. You brown the livers over high heat until they are just pink in the midddle, deglaze the pan with shallots and some kind of liqueur or fortified wine, then puree the livers in a food processor or blender along with lots of cream and butter. The result is flavorful but a little grainy for my taste.
The second method, for which the recipe is given below, takes a little longer. You remove the bile ducts from the livers, puree them with a reduction of shallots and vermouth, cream, melted butter and port, strain the mixture, then bake the mixture in a water bath. This method gives you a delicious duck liver mousse with an extraordinarily smooth mouth feel.
Over the years, I’ve refined this recipe, which I freely adapted from “Cooking with David Burke,” by David Burke and Carmel Berman Reingold, and have come to add ruby port and curing salt to it. The port adds a little sweetness to the mousse and the alcohol intensifies the other flavors in the recipe.
Curing salt, which is available at Savory Spice Shop, is a mixture of salt, nitrites and pink food coloring and acts as a colorant and a preservative. You can leave it out, but your mousse will have a dull, unappetizing brownish color without it.
A lot of recipes using duck livers call for an overnight soaking of the livers in milk to remove some of the bitterness. If you scrape out the bile duct, which holds much of the bitterness in the liver, this step is unnecessary.
Serve the duck liver mousse the way we do at Olivea, with toasted levain, pickles and something sweet like a fig jam.
Chef John Broening cooks at Olivea (olivearestaurant.com) and Duo (duodenver.com).
DUCK LIVER MOUSSE
Duck livers are available at many local butchers, including Oliver’s Meat Market (303-733-4629).
Ingredients
1 pound, 4 ounces duck livers
1/2 cup dry vermouth
1 shallot, minced
2 cups heavy cream
1 pound butter, melted
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
Few grinds freshly ground pepper
Few shavings nutmeg
1/3 cup ruby port
1/2 teaspoon curing salt
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Spray an 8-cup terrine mold or meatloaf pan with cooking spray. Carefully line the mold with plastic wrap, allowing for 6 inches overlap on all sides. Spray the plastic wrap with cooking spray.
Clean the livers: Place them on a cutting board and scrape them with a firm downward pressure to separate the bile duct and thin networks of veins from the flesh. Discard the bile ducts. You should have 1 pound left.
In a small saucepan, reduce the vermouth and shallot to about 1 tablespoon liquid, but don’t brown the shallot.
In a blender, blend all the ingredients. Strain through a fine strainer. Carefully pour the mixture into the lined pan. Cover the pan with a lid or with a piece of aluminum foil. Place the pan in a hot water bath, then carefully place it in the oven. Bake for about 75-90 minutes, or until the mousse feels springy to the touch.
Remove the mousse from the water bath and refrigerate at least two hours before serving.
