My mother, grandmother and mother-in-law made lots of chopped things to put on crackers. Most of them consisted of fried onions, hard boiled eggs and…something: chopped mushrooms, eggs and onions; chopped string beans, eggs and onions; chopped liver, eggs and onions.
The recipes are all basically the same. Boil some eggs. Fry some onions until brown, sweet and caramelized. Add the cooked eggs and onions to the variable ingredient – be it sautéed mushrooms, broiled livers or cooked string beans. Use the oil in which you fried the onions to bind the ingredients together. Chop the ingredients – either coarsely in a Cuisinart or using a double-bladed chopping knife in a wooden bowl (I use my mother-in-law’s). And voilà! You have something to eat with crackers.
When making chopped string beans, boil the string beans in salted water until soft. For chopped mushrooms, sauté them until brown and very flavorful. For chopped liver, broil salted livers until they are cooked through. And, although chopped liver is good with oil, it is a work of art when you use chicken fat to bind the ingredients. The result is silky and sublime, an old world treasure.
Ingredients
Kosher salt
1 ½ pounds string beans, ends snipped off
3 medium yellow onions, sliced
¼ cup vegetable oil
4 extra-large hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered
Freshly ground pepper
Preparation
- Fill 4-quart pot halfway with water set over high heat. Salt with 2 teaspoons Kosher salt; bring to boil. Place string beans in boiling water and allow to boil until beans are fully cooked and soft; drain and set aside.
- Heat vegetable oil in 10-inch frying pan. Place onions in oil and sauté onions until soft, brown and sweet.
- Place drained string beans, eggs, fried onions and some of the oil from the pan into a food processor bowl fitted with the steel blade. Grind black pepper into bowl to taste. Add 1 teaspoon Kosher salt. Pulse mixture until coarsely chopped. Add additional salt and pepper to taste. Add additional oil from pan if needed to bind the mixture.
Yield: 4
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