eG Cook-Off #89: Pâtés and Terrines

[heidih]

39 minutes ago, Baron d'Apcher said:

Headcheese qualifies as a terrine.  The parts of the head are cooked first, diced up and then put in a mold with some very gelatinous juices which makes it nice and firm.  

So like this gorgeous headcheese that looks like staned glass I posted long ago (upper right)

Edited April 10 by heidih (log)

[Duvel]

14 hours ago, Baron d'Apcher said:

Anything "wurst" is a sausage and there are quite a few varieties of Bauer. Bauerwurst is a coarse ground sausage, smaller than Bauernwurst, which is smoked pork & beef but I'm confident there are fluctuations by region, town, personality and temperament. Bauernleberwurst is invariably put in a casing raw and not much different than liverwurst, except that liverwurst has more liver and is generally eaten cold.

Headcheese qualifies as a terrine.  The parts of the head are cooked first, diced up and then put in a mold with some very gelatinous juices which makes it nice and firm.  Scrapple is also a sort of terrine.  Cooked parts of the head ground up with raw liver and then the paste is cooked with buckwheat or cornmeal until thick and left to cool in a mold.

 

At least over here, the Bauer/Bauern prefix typically denotes a rustic preparation: coarse, mostly with all parts of the pig  (beef is not often used here), robust spices (think majoram, caraway, allspice, ...). Country-style or de campagne will head in the same direction. 

Edited April 11 by Duvel (log)

[vogelap]

16 hours ago, gfweb said:

Pondering pistachios in a terrine. Do they soften up so much that cutting through them doesn't tear the terrine when cut by knife?

I just made a duck, cherry, and pistachio terrine. I roasted my pistachios a bit (and completely cooled them) before adding them to the terrine, and they're soft enough to not tear the terrine when cut with a knife.

 

I then lightly sear the slices of terrine to enhance the texture... It's a hit.

[Duvel]

26 minutes ago, vogelap said:

I just made a duck, cherry, and pistachio terrine. I roasted my pistachios a bit (and completely cooled them) before adding them to the terrine, and they're soft enough to not tear the terrine when cut with a knife.

 

I then lightly sear the slices of terrine to enhance the texture... It's a hit.

 

Would you mind sharing your recipe / pictures ?

[Baron d'Apcher]

17 hours ago, heidih said:

So like this gorgeous headcheese that looks like staned glass I posted long ago (upper right)

That looks like presskopf which is sort of a headcheese-sausage hybrid that is cooked in a large diameter casing.  The parts of the head are brined, diced & ground, stuffed into a casing, smoked and poached. 

[vogelap]

9 hours ago, Duvel said:

 

Would you mind sharing your recipe / pictures ?

Don't mind a bit... Here's pic of the finished plate.

 

The recipe is based on... https://www.acfchefs.org/ACFSource/Recipes/?id=657

[heidih]

On 4/11/2022 at 8:42 AM, Baron d'Apcher said:

That looks like presskopf which is sort of a headcheese-sausage hybrid that is cooked in a large diameter casing.  The parts of the head are brined, diced & ground, stuffed into a casing, smoked and poached. 

Maybe we arre not talking same image. I went back to my source material. The tag in the deli case and the  label on my purchased packet call it Hungarian Headcheese - imagine from paprika thus the bright color. Made in house.

[gfweb]

 

 

 

BBC recipe for ham hock terrine. 

It was OK. A bit salty. Needs work.

[Duvel]

4 hours ago, gfweb said:

 

 

 

BBC recipe for ham hock terrine. 

It was OK. A bit salty. Needs work.

Looking good, @gfweb …

 

Would you let us admire the money shot (a cross section of your terrine) and maybe share a link to the BBC recipe ..?

[Kerala]

On 4/12/2022 at 1:01 AM, vogelap said:

Don't mind a bit... Here's pic of the finished plate.

 

The recipe is based on... https://www.acfchefs.org/ACFSource/Recipes/?id=657

Looks great! Thanks for the recipe. What's the garnish, please?

[gfweb]

4 hours ago, Duvel said:

Looking good, @gfweb …

 

Would you let us admire the money shot (a cross section of your terrine) and maybe share a link to the BBC recipe ..?

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/ham-hock-mustard-terrine

is the link.

Alas, no shot of the sliced terrine exists.

[vogelap]

On 4/13/2022 at 5:14 AM, Kerala said:

Looks great! Thanks for the recipe. What's the garnish, please?

Thank you! The garnish is sprouts with a light lemon vinaigrette. I wanted different microgreens, but could not procure any. Simple green salad alongside.

[Tropicalsenior]

I made a country pâté for a light birthday dinner for my friend Leonora who is staying with me right now. I combined several recipes and adapted  them to fit our taste and product availability. 

I let the meat marinate with brandy and spices for 24 hours.

Ready for the oven.

Baked and pressed for 24 hours.

Served with pickles, homemade bread and homemade sweet mustard, (not shown).

[Duvel]

56 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Served with pickles, homemade bread and homemade sweet mustard, (not shown).

Well done, @Tropicalsenior ! A great looking pâté for a great looking meal. I am sure your friend was delighted 🤗

[Raw/Cooked]

Pork pâté: the forcemeat is 2/3 belly and sirloin, 1/3 liver. Garnishes are braised heart and tongue, and diced gammon. I marinated the meat and liver in cognac, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, lots of white and black pepper before grinding. 1/3 of the meat was ground with a 3mm plate, remainder and liver with a 1mm plate. Other additions include shallots, parsley,egg, cream, and flour. I made 4 of these in 15x7cm molds. This one is a little lopsided as my pressing weight shifted.

[blue_dolphin]

On 4/3/2022 at 12:52 PM, blue_dolphin said:

OK.  I've been thinking about using my Ninja Creami to make a Pacojet recipe for chicken liver paté.  

For some reason, it brings to mind Dan Aykroid's old Bass-o-matic sketch from SNL 🙃 but I think now is the time!

Well, it took a while but I finally got around to making the silky smooth chicken liver paté that I mentioned above.  It was quite correctly pointed out that it's not a paté at all but I'm going share it with you here anyway.  Feel free to delete if this is too far afield. 

 

I failed to take a video of the Bass-o-matic moment when the raw livers go into the blender with sautéed bacon, onion and shallot, raw eggs and seasonings, but lucky for you, the nice people at Modernist Pantry took care of that so you can watch:

 

After the blender, the mixture goes for a 154°F swim in an immersion circulator, then placed into Pacojet containers (for them) or Ninja Creami containers (for me) with frozen butter cubes and frozen solidly before going for 2 spins in the machine.  The first spin is done direct from the freezer and results in what looks like liver & butter sawdust.  Then you let it warm up and respin to get something that is impressively silky smooth, especially since there's no straining or sieving involved. Between the bacon and butter, there's quite a lot of rich stuff in there that's not chicken liver and I would like to try with more liver but the overall flavor is very good. 

 

My recipe notes:

I made a half recipe and got a total yield of ~ 650g which filled 2 one-cup (8oz) containers. The recipe lists a yield of 16 four-oz servings.  If that was correct, I should have gotten 8 4-oz servings and that did not happen so they are wrong.

Equal parts bourbon, cream sherry and Madiera are called for.  I used bourbon, Amontillado and Pedro-Ximenez sherry.

The recipe calls for 2.5 g (1.2 tsp) of Prague powder # 1.   I know nothing of this stuff but my package said to use 1 tsp/5 lbs of meat and when I weighed 1 tsp, it was ~ 5.25 g so I'd recommend using the weight and/or consulting your packaging or other guidance. I weighed out 1.25g for my half recipe.

The recipe says to run the Bass-o-matic until the mixture is smooth, about 4 minutes.  After about 2 min in the Blendtec, my mixture was almost up to the cooking temp and was starting to thicken so I deemed that sufficient. 

After the sous vide step, the recipe says to pour the mix into the beakers containing frozen cubes of butter.  My mix was quite thick and not of a pourable consistency so I divided it up between the 2 beakers, mixed the butter cubes in and flattened the top with a spatula, like so:

After freezing overnight, I spun it in the Ninja Creami on the ice cream setting and got this:

That's the liver & butter sawdust stage.  I used a spatula to pack it back down like this:

The recipe says to allow the mix to warm up to 60°F before the second spin.  I decided to try at 40°F but could still see little flecks of butter so I think 60°F is a good recommendation.  

Here's what it looked like, direct from the machine, after the 60°F second spin.  

Very smooth, no visible butter bits. 

 

 

 

[Shelby]

5 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Well, it took a while but I finally got around to making the silky smooth chicken liver paté that I mentioned above.  It was quite correctly pointed out that it's not a paté at all but I'm going share it with you here anyway.  Feel free to delete if this is too far afield. 

 

I failed to take a video of the Bass-o-matic moment when the raw livers go into the blender with sautéed bacon, onion and shallot, raw eggs and seasonings, but lucky for you, the nice people at Modernist Pantry took care of that so you can watch:

 

After the blender, the mixture goes for a 154°F swim in an immersion circulator, then placed into Pacojet containers (for them) or Ninja Creami containers (for me) with frozen butter cubes and frozen solidly before going for 2 spins in the machine.  The first spin is done direct from the freezer and results in what looks like liver & butter sawdust.  Then you let it warm up and respin to get something that is impressively silky smooth, especially since there's no straining or sieving involved. Between the bacon and butter, there's quite a lot of rich stuff in there that's not chicken liver and I would like to try with more liver but the overall flavor is very good. 

 

My recipe notes:

I made a half recipe and got a total yield of ~ 650g which filled 2 one-cup (8oz) containers. The recipe lists a yield of 16 four-oz servings.  If that was correct, I should have gotten 8 4-oz servings and that did not happen so they are wrong.

Equal parts bourbon, cream sherry and Madiera are called for.  I used bourbon, Amontillado and Pedro-Ximenez sherry.

The recipe calls for 2.5 g (1.2 tsp) of Prague powder # 1.   I know nothing of this stuff but my package said to use 1 tsp/5 lbs of meat and when I weighed 1 tsp, it was ~ 5.25 g so I'd recommend using the weight and/or consulting your packaging or other guidance. I weighed out 1.25g for my half recipe.

The recipe says to run the Bass-o-matic until the mixture is smooth, about 4 minutes.  After about 2 min in the Blendtec, my mixture was almost up to the cooking temp and was starting to thicken so I deemed that sufficient. 

After the sous vide step, the recipe says to pour the mix into the beakers containing frozen cubes of butter.  My mix was quite thick and not of a pourable consistency so I divided it up between the 2 beakers, mixed the butter cubes in and flattened the top with a spatula, like so:

After freezing overnight, I spun it in the Ninja Creami on the ice cream setting and got this:

That's the liver & butter sawdust stage.  I used a spatula to pack it back down like this:

The recipe says to allow the mix to warm up to 60°F before the second spin.  I decided to try at 40°F but could still see little flecks of butter so I think 60°F is a good recommendation.  

Here's what it looked like, direct from the machine, after the 60°F second spin.  

Very smooth, no visible butter bits. 

 

 

 

WOW!!!!  That looks amazing and so easy (ish) when using the Ninja.

 

I need to get my butt in gear and do the seafood one I mentioned.

[blue_dolphin]

4 minutes ago, Shelby said:

WOW!!!!  That looks amazing and so easy (ish) when using the Ninja.

 

I need to get my butt in gear and do the seafood one I mentioned.

Yes, you should!  Compared with pressing mixtures through a sieve or chinois, this was so easy and came out perfectly smooth!

[rotuts]

@blue_dolphin 

 

interesting Rx.

 

I have not looked at my current egg carton 

 

so0

 

what does 

 

200g (4 each) Whole Eggs

 

mean ?  4 eggs ?  

[blue_dolphin]

4 minutes ago, rotuts said:

@blue_dolphin 

 

interesting Rx.

 

I have not looked at my current egg carton 

 

so0

 

what does 

 

200g (4 each) Whole Eggs

 

mean ?  4 eggs ?  

That’s what I assumed. US large eggs generally weigh ~ 56g in the shell and have ~ 50g of contents. I used 2 whole eggs plus 1 yolk for a half recipe but did not weigh them.  

[Margaret Pilgrim]

If we are allowed to diverge from proper patés and terrines, I toss out a showstopper (perhaps variation on Child's chicken liver mousse) RUMAKI PATE.    Venerable Trader Vic restaurateur served an addictive hors d'oeuvre called rumaki.    Subsequently, it has made its way into a paté that is stupid easy to make and killer.

So with only a saute pan and blender, do try Rumaki Paté.    Pot  notes: do not overcook livers before blending.   And serve on baguette slices.    

[Duvel]

10 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

Well, it took a while but I finally got around to making the silky smooth chicken liver paté that I mentioned above.  It was quite correctly pointed out that it's not a paté at all but I'm going share it with you here anyway.  Feel free to delete if this is too far afield. 

 

Wow ... that looks smooooth 🤗

[Duvel]

6 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

If we are allowed to diverge from proper patés and terrines, I toss out a showstopper (perhaps variation on Child's chicken liver mousse) RUMAKI PATE.    Venerable Trader Vic restaurateur served an addictive hors d'oeuvre called rumaki.    Subsequently, it has made its way into a paté that is stupid easy to make and killer.

So with only a saute pan and blender, do try Rumaki Paté.    Pot  notes: do not overcook livers before blending.   And serve on baguette slices.    

 

This is a proper Cook-Off, so you have the proper blessing to deviate from whatever people perceive as proper patés and terrines 😜

[blue_dolphin]

My new cookbook, Six California Kitchens, has a recipe for oxtail terrine that I’ll try next. 
I like that she suggests to cook enough of the oxtail to serve on its own, then make the terrine the next day. 

[Raw/Cooked]

@blue_dolphin, your paté is gorgeous!