Duck Liver Pâté with Pepper Pears
Oh, pâté, how I love you. We have had a relationship for years, mostly because first I ate you in your truffled form , thus establishing a love of you in your most expensive state. Then I ate you in your country form, thus establishing that I love you any way you come. Then I just ate you whenever I could, while still trying to exhibit some restraint. Consequently, when Christmas Eve dinner rolled around and I saw you staring back on me from the pages of Donna Hay's Entertaining , I knew we were destined for one another. I couldn't find duck livers for you--in part because of my poor planning on the day before Christmas when everyone and their neighbor happened to be at the grocery store purchasing their last-minute supplies. Instead, we had to go with chicken livers. I think we did alright in the end. Then, I needed to purchase cognac, a liquor that I know little about. However, a very nice, very young man at the liquor store told me that cognac is simply a very...