Must try Parfait

Thanks to Russell Blaikie and the Must Winebar team for inspiring me to try this recipe and adapt to the Thermomix. All who tried it agreed it was delicious and now I'll never be able to buy pâté from the shops again. I was missing a few ingredients and improvised here and there so don't be afraid to vary a bit! First preheat oven to 140 degrees c and prepare a deep-ish baking tray to hold 5 or 6 ramekins 3/4 cup capacity. Then trim and rinse chicken livers and leave to drain in a colander. You'll need to end up with around 550g of liver to use. Start with 25 g peeled brown shallots, 1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, 3 sage leaves and 1 clove of garlic and mix for 3 secs at speed 5 to finely dice. Add 200g of sherry (I only had Pedro Ximinez in the pantry how decadent!) and cook for 20 mins varoma speed 2. Check at about 15 min mark to make sure it's not completely dry and add a tbs water in need but it will cook down to a thick glaze. Scrape sides and add drained chicken livers and 2 whole eggs and blitz for 30 seconds at speed 10. Strain through a fine sieve and set aside. Melt 500g unsalted butter at 90 degrees speed 2 for 5 minutes. Add 10 g of ground sea salt and a few good grinds of pepper and then set to speed four and gradually pour the liver mix through the lid taking around 30 seconds. Replace the measuring cup and up the speed to 8 and blend for 2 minutes. The mix will now look paler and slightly thickened. Pour into ramekins and arrange in the baking tray before pouring in enough boiling water to come 2/3 way up the sides. Completely seal the tray with a couple of layers of cling wrap then top with a cople of layers of tin foil. Place in oven, immediately reduce heat to 110 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. They'll feel slightly spongy to touch and look a bit puffy when cooked but still quite a pink colour inside. Drain water from tray, reseal and refrigerate overnight. I topped them with melted clarified butter/ghee with a sprig of thyme for decoration. For variation I'm going to try with champagne instead of sherry, and also a peppercorn version adding the canned peppercorns in with the shallots to see what happens. I might also go a bit Maggie Beer and have a play with adding some different spices like star anise.