Thanks for your quick replies, ChefRoss and EdB. I was having these suspicions about the cream cheese. I wonder, however... one of the recipes i used to make this hybrid recipe used melted butter instead of cream cheese. Could it work freezing it with butter instead of cream cheese? it seemed excessively rich with butter, but i could go back to that in exchange for having one less extremely messy procedure to do on the day of the party or the day before, when i cook two full days straight.
ChefRoss i don't get how egg white could substitute for cream cheese. Would it be cooked? this recipe calls for cooking the livers with the shallots, but then the rest is blended and put in the fridge. Which, i guess, is why it's a mousse and not a pate'? Apart from safety (much less of a problem here with salmonella than you have there, still i wouldn;t want to get 50 people sick!) raw egg white is pretty gross.
Ed, about freezing without the cream cheese and then adding it later, do you mean freezing the cooked livers and then defrosting them before blending in the blender with the cream cheese?
If, instead, I blended it to a smooth paste, froze that in small pkgs for quick defrosting, and then mixed cream cheese into them would the plain liver paste tend to also become grainy? I suppose the cream cheese would sort of bind it together in that case, if added later.
OK, to make it clearer, my questions are
1. freeze cooked livers before blending, defrost and then blend all to puree in blender with cream cheese?
2. substitute butter for cream cheese, and freeze finished mousse?
3. substitute egg white (raw? beaten? cooked somehow and how?) for cream cheese then freeze finished mousse?
4. puree livers and all ingredients except cream cheese, defrost, and mix cream cheese into the puree?
I know i could make up a little batch and test it, but really i barely have time to do what i have to do, and am hoping someone has some direct experience with this. I want to try to have one less messy process to do on the day of or the day before the party.
thanks lots
Siduri