Friday 25 October 2013

Pork Pate - Vegetarians Look Away Now!

I've often said that if I really knew what went into pate it wouldn't eat it.
Well, now I have made it from first principles and its yummy.
We picked up our half a happy pig from Hempsal's Farm last week. This time I was spared no realities - we got the lot. Head, bones (extracted), feet.....
The rest of the family stayed totally clear of the kitchen while all this was going on.....
And here is why:

Liver, trotters and half a head: the cheek is the best meat...though not much of it.
What to do with half a pig's head?

I reasearched a little here and there....considered boiling the head as for brawn (Head cheese to US readers - sounds a bit like toe cheese to me....) Somehow, having a head in the pot and watching the gums recede as it boiled did not appeal. Settled on using the meat for a variant on Delia Smith's Coarse Country Pate.


The first job was to remove the meat from its various hiding places.
So I whipped out my nice sharp Sabatier and investigated. I left the brain alone - it was a lot smaller than I expected.
The teeth could have done with better brushing and flossing - another reason to avoid boiling the whole head.

I did boil the trotters because the meat was encapsulated in very tough connective tissue. Also, it made AMAZING stock.  Would you believe that from 6 trotters (Not bad when I had only bought for only half a pig....) this was all the meat I could find:

Apparently trotter meat is delicious.
I had about 600g of liver, a few micrograms of trotter meat (!), about 400g head meat, so I added 400g unsmoked streaky bacon and a chunk of unspecified weight from the belly.
Blend it all up with 3 cloves of garlic, 20 juniper berries crushed, 20 black pepper corns crushed, and a dollop of trotter stock.
I pressed it into a loaf pan and some ramekins and baked them in a bain marie at low heat for 1.5 hours.
Out of the oven, covered with foil, and weighted down with whatever I had to hand that was heavy....tomato cans, pestle and mortar, bookstand etc.

And here is the result:
I have sliced this up and frozen it now.
One member of the family couldn't wait to try the pate, so he jumped on the counter when no one was looking, knocked the weight off one of the ramekins, clawed back the foil and helped himself. I hope he had indigestion from all that pate - his breath was certainly rather garlicky, hence we identified the culprit after the event.
Who me?

We agree with him though - it was quite delicious on crusty bread with a cornichon.  Garlic breath all round.

2 comments:

  1. very brave re the pigs head.... i blithely said to my neighbours son in law, that i love pheasant which we do. Having been presented one and not wanting the bird to die in vain we will be doing a plucking chopping process on wednesday, the kids/kits eyes will be averted also. love px

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  2. Trotters means feet? That is a new English word for me:) This is one cooking lesson from you I am glad I missed:) So did any one eat it besides the cat? LOL

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