Fresh ribbons of pasta topped off with soft livers, and plenty of crunch; chestnut spaghetti with chicken livers is an unusually satisfying dish.
Let’s face it; chicken livers are not everybody’s favourite; perhaps they’re one of those things, like Marmite, that you either love or hate! If you’re one of the lovers, you’ll enjoy the combination of the soft livers with the crunch of the chestnuts in this dish. If you’re still not convinced, well, what’s the harm in giving it a try? You might just enjoy it, and livers are packed with nutrients, you know.
If livers really don’t float your boat, you could make this prawn and courgette tagliatelle instead. I recommend fresh pasta for this meal; or for the deeply committed pasta lover, you may want to make it yourself for the most delicate of textures and the best of tastes.
Fresh ribbons of pasta topped off with soft livers, and plenty of crunch; chestnut spaghetti with chicken livers is an unusually satisfying dish.
Ingredients
250g fresh chicken livers, each chopped in half
300g fresh spaghetti
1 small onion, peeled and finely sliced
120ml chicken stock, hot
100ml dry white wine
1tbsp butter
1tbsp olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced or minced
100g chestnuts, cooked and peeled
2 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Crème fraiche to serve
Olive oil to drizzle when serving
Parmesan shavings to serve
Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to season
Instructions
Heat the white wine and chicken stock together in a saucepan, reducing the liquid to about one third.
Melt half of the butter in a large heavy-based frying pan, turning it up to medium-high. Sprinkle salt generously over the chicken livers and flash-fry them in the butter for 1-2 minutes, browning them all over but so that they remain pink in the centres. Then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and put to one side.
Now, with the heat turned down a bit, melt the rest of the butter, combine it with the oil in the pan and cook the onions for 3-4 minutes until they begin to soften.
Add the chestnuts and the garlic to the frying pan and fry on until the onions are translucent, at which point add the reduced wine stock. Return the livers to the pan, season well with salt and pepper and stir everything together, including the crème fraiche.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and cook the spaghetti for 3-4 minutes until soft.
Stir the flat-leaf parsley into the livers. Serve the pasta with the chicken livers on top, a drizzle of oil and some Parmesan shavings.