Every spring, I promise I’m going to share a recipe for chopped liver. And every year I lose steam, perhaps because there are probably few more divisive foods than organs, or maybe because my instructions on the matter are quite short: just make Ina Garten’s. Ina can do no wrong, and I like to amuse myself by imagining that I’m only eight bestselling cookbooks and three homes in two countries away from basically being her when I grow up. (Sure Deb. Okay.)
But I like this year’s distraction the most, which came from me wondering what a vegetarian chopped liver might entail. The first thing it would need to do is lose the word liver, so not to scare away children of any age. Second, I hoped it would embrace rather humble ingredients like mushrooms that when cooked down to concentrated nubs, pack an unexpectedly fragrant and earthy complexity. And finally, although there are recipes for wild mushroom pâté from one end of the web to the other, I was hoping it would have a Jewish/Eastern European vibe, reminiscent of the promised chopped liver — rich, ample browned onions, making use of hard-boiled eggs, and served on matzo crackers, likely with pickles.
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