[prev] [thread] [next] [lurker] [Date index for 2005/4/25]
I made a couple of patés last week and they'd 'matured' by the weekend so, in grand tradition, consider this a brief history of lessons learned etc. The first pate I made was a sort of country pork style. I fried up some chesnut mushrooms with onions and then stuck them in my appalling blender with about 500g of pork mince. I attempted to smoth it slightly but, as previosuly mentioned, the blender isn't very good. I didn't have a terrine so I lined one of those foil loaf tins (1 quid for 4 from the Poundland on Chapel Street Market!) with smoked streaky bacon and then spooned half of the mixture in. Meanwhile I'd got some (slightly sweet) apples and sliced and cored them and then fried the slices in butter until they were slightly softened. These I layed on the first layer of pate mix and then spooned the rest over the top and folded the bacon over. Then I put the handy dandy foil lid on. The second pate I did was about 400g of beef mince, 150-200g of pork mince, red onions and fried shitake mushrooms. I put buttered the inside of the tin and then laid a fish scale pattern of sliced mushrooms on the bottom. Then I spooned half of the mixture over, smoothed it and then spread horseradish and then filled up with the rest and put the lid on. I stuck these in a 150 oven until the centers were cooked (about an hour or so). They both turned out pretty good. Certainly not the distaster I was expecting for my first time ever. The two major problems is that they were both a bit course and under seasoned. The under seasoning was because, after accepting that I always over season stuff I've been endeavouing to cut back, not realising that, with patés, one actually needs to overseason. The courseness I think could be solved by blending half of the mixture to almost a paste and, in the case of the pork pate, the addition of blitzed chicken livers. I think if I was doing this again I'd want to do it in terrines and maybe cook for longer and slower, maybe whilst standing in a tray of water. And also maybe use higher quality mince for a better fat content. Both patés presented well - the core of apple looked very attractive in the pork and, although all the horseradish seeped out of the beef it was quite nice as a sauce on top. It also infused the beef to just the right level and neatly offset the nutty umami of the shitake. The slices of shitake on the top looked really nice. I was quite price of that. Eaten with slices of the Pain Levain from borough market. Expensive but lovely.
Generated at 00:00 on 06 May 2005 by mariachi 0.41