Pate en Croute

I must admit that this didn’t end up as pretty as I was hoping. First, I couldn’t find a pretty pate mould and had to use a small tin. The pastry had to be patched. The camera battery died in the middle of trying to take photos. I almost forgot to include the tongue! However, this still tasted ridiculously good with all the flavours combining well and the pastry being flaky and light – so I still consider it a definite success!

I used the basic recipes from Charcuterie for both the pork terrine with tenderloin inlay, and the pate dough. However, it’s fair to say that I used these recipes more as a guide and adapted and changed things along the way. To start with, I got my terrine mix of pork shoulder, pork fat, spices and sage, and ground them together. Incidentally, I found another supplier of pork fat and sausage casings while buying supplies for this challenge, so I was very pleased!

I cooked some garlic and shallots in brandy and sloe gin (my substitution for madeira) and, when they had cooled, mixed them into the ground pork mix. I got my piece of pork tenderloin and seared it well and also left this to cool while I turned to my pastry.

One of the nice things about participating in Charcutepalooza is having all the leftover things to use in other contexts. This time, I was able to use the goose fat I’d rendered after making these sausages, in the pastry crust for the pate. I substituted the amount of butter for goose fat, and left the dough in the fridge.

When I’d read the recipe for pork pate en croute, I’d been intrigued by the use of ham, which went between the pastry and the terrine meat. The purpose of this was to help insulate the filling from the pastry, so that the pastry did not get soggy. I decided to substitute the ham for slices of tongue. So, the night before, I cooked and peeled the tongue, and let it refrigerate overnight (no photos of this but here’s an account of when I’ve prepared tongue previously). Now I took the tongue and cut it into fairly thin pieces.

Next came the assembly of all the bits. And here’s where it went in the not-pretty direction… I started with rolling out the pastry and lining a loaf tin with it. Oops, the pastry tore; oh well, I’ll just patch it up…

Oh, the tongue pieces aren’t long enough to go all the way around the pastry; oh well, I’ll just whack in a few more pieces…

And now the pastry has torn when I’ve pulled the edges over; let’s just pretend that’s an air hole.

The good thing about these recipes is that they’re very forgiving, and don’t really care if they’re not pretty. I cooked the pate in the oven for a couple of hours, until the internal temperature reached 65ºC. I upended the tin almost straight after taking it out of the oven, and after it had cooled a bit, I was able to just lift the tin up and see the pate on the plate below.

The not-prettiness continued when I cut slices of the pate, only to have the pastry crumble off the edges.

However, the lack of prettiness didn’t matter when I was able to bite into the pate. The pastry was ridiculously good: flaky and rich. The tongue held everything together while the pork tenderloin added some lovely smoky flavours. And the terrine mix itself was flavoursome and on the sweet side, which contrasted nicely to the other elements. Prettiness notwithstanding, this was a great pate en croute.