Sunday, February 19, 2012

Pate Maison

Complete Techniques #189, with one major liberty taken.  If you don't have the book I'd recommend it.  It'd be hard to imagine a better cookbook for the price.

The recipe calls for equal parts pork liver (pureed), shoulder (ground), and fat (pureed).  I used 1 part liver and 2 parts belly.  Otherwise I followed proportions of ingredients pretty exact. The mix on the left is wrapped with some homemade bacon that got sliced a little too thin to enjoy breakfast style, and on the right it's wrapped in thin slices of ground pork fat that was frozen in a block--after barely thawing the block it was pretty easy to cut some cohesive slices off of it (if you have caul fat kicking around for wrapping more power too you).  That one on the right isn't pretty, but it worked, and the fat melts off anyway.

No detail here with technique because it's all in the book, but one thing to note is that this cooked a lot quicker for me than expected.  My oven runs hot, so it was more likely me than Jacques. A thermometer was helpful.  Also, despite Mr. Pepin's assurance that it wasn't necessary, I placed a brick (wrapped in foil) on plastic wrap over the terrines when they came out of the oven to weigh them down.  After trying a test min-terrine I'm not sure that was necessary, but sometimes it's just as easy to go belt and suspenders.

The liver, belly, and fat was from Millgate Farm.  Super clean meat and offal.

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