Last night I found myself wondering what to do with extra chicken livers.  Not a typical conundrum, to be sure, but that’s neither here nor there.  Over the weekend, New Seasons has a huge tray of gorgeous organic chicken livers at the meat counter, and we couldn’t resist.  My wife and I are both chicken liver fans, and our son likes them too, as long as they are properly wrapped in bacon.  So we had a (moderate) pile of rumaki for brunch on Sunday, with good, thick nitrate free bacon.  I’m really loving my new oven (we moved recently) and one of its best features is the broiler.  I discovered that I had to turn the rumaki half way through to deal with the thick bacon, but everything worked out well. 

In order not to completely overdose on rumaki (easy to do) I only used about half the livers, which brings us to where I started this.  Too many livers. 

Anyhow, I decided that the best course what pasta sauce.  Chicken liver gives a very nice texture to tomato sauce, so I sauteed the livers with some ground beef until everything was well browned, then let the whole mess cool a bit and hit it with my trusty hand blender until it resembled course liverwurst.  Then I put it back on the heat, and added garlic, tomato sauce, some diced tomatoes, a bit of white wine that wasn’t getting any younger, and finally seasoned with some oregano, basil, and a fair dose of black pepper.  After most of the extra water had cooked off, I tasted it for seasoning, and decided to add some salt, a bit of thyme, and a small hit (maybe 1 1/2 T) of pomegranate molasses.  I’ve used that a few times in spaghetti sauce, and it makes a less harsh souring agent than vinegar. 

The whole came together well.  The taste of the livers was evident, but not strong at all, and it added a very nice texture to the sauce.  Definitely something I’d do again.