Nothing Says Love Like Pate

February 12, 2012

My faith strives to achieve a certain balance with nature. We cultivate a high regard for life, so when we take a life - whether plant or animal - it is imperative that we do not let anything go to waste as this shows a lack of respect for the life that was taken. My counterpart goes along with this, and as a result, I regularly get home made pate.

Pate is one of those fancy dishes that is actually easier to make than most people realize. It its simplest form, it is liver, flour, brandy, cream, fat, and seasoning. In keeping with the respectful aspects of my faith, my counterpart has expanded upon this basic theme, and now he uses a wide variety of giblets as the base, including turkey, rabbit, chicken, and anything else we have eaten recently. His choices for fat have included butter, bacon, duck grease, chicken fat skimmed off the stock pot, and rendered pig fat. He favors red onion and shallots and garlic along with salt and pepper for the seasoning.

It is also important to note that proper equipment is necessary for making pate. The main objective is to mix everything together into a paste, including the giblets. There will be casualties. Over the years, we've burnt out four immersion blenders and three food processors, and I think an ice blender in making pate. We are now on the mighty Cuisinart Smart Stick, and so far it is holding up.

First, you want to prep your veg - in this case, red onion, shallot, and garlic.

Shallot

Garlic

Red Onion

Prepped and Ready

Then, prep the giblets. To preserve the life of your kitchen gear, cut down the giblets into smaller pieces, and puree them in batches, transferring the puree to a larger container as you work.

Cut the giblets into small pieces

Puree them in small batches

And don't forget about the cat

The mighty Cuisinart Smart Stick

Add the remaining ingredients, paying close attention as you go. Pate is one of those things that is made by sight and smell, not by taste. Once you add the cognac, things will start to smell pretty good.

Heavy cream added before moving to a larger container

Separate the eggs as you will only need the yolk

Once things are transferred to the larger container, my counterpart switched to the immersion blender to mix the remaining ingredients. Use the blender to mix in each of the ingredients as you add them.

Mmmmmmmm cognac

Butter is our fat for today

Add a little salt

Add a little cake flour

Add a little olive oil

Add the veg

This is the right consistency

Pyrex or Corning Ware are excellent choices for baking pate. Line them with fat and bacon to help the pate release from the pan with it is done baking. We used butter and pancetta.

Lining the Pyrex

Pour the pate into the pan and bake at 350 until cooked through.

Mini-pate

To release the pate from the pan, place a plate over the top and flip it over. Set it down and let gravity work for you.

The pate is releaseing

Carefully remove the pan, shaking it gently to help the pate release. Serve with brie, chopped hard-boiled eggs, capers, and a baguette or water crackers.

Pate is served

How to Bind Meat

January 14, 2012

I am admittedly a bit of a tourist in the kitchen. I wander around with my camera and take pictures of all the pretty sights but usually leave for more familiar terrain pretty quickly. My counterpart over at Very Chefy is a full-time resident and probably the Grand Marshall. He is responsible for the majority of food seen here and on my Facebook page.

With the acquisition of the mighty Canon 7D and my excitement to get familiar with it, we embarked on a joint venture this evening. We picked up a couple of Porterhouse steaks during last night's grocery shopping and decided to work on our meat binding and photography skills together.

Mis en Place

First, Gareth made a filling out of leek, shallot, blue cheese, and butter. The idea is that as the meat roasts, the filling melts and provides additional flavor to the meat. He used a rubber spatula to cream everything together in a large mixing bowl.

Then he cut the steak off the bones, taking care to ensure he had several large pieces of meat.

He layered the meat and the filling together until he had a pile of meaty-shalloty-cheesy goodness.

Then, using kitchen twine, he very carefully bound it all together for cooking. If this process looks a bit like macrame or crochet, it is similar. The trick is to create loops and to loop back on yourself, creating a large-weave, custom-knit netting around your meat.

Once bound, he seasoned it with a little salt and pepper.

With a nice pan-searing in olive oil, it was ready for a quick 10-minute roast in a hot oven. He placed the meat on a small rack inside a heavy pan for the roasting as with the rabbit and Frenched rack of lamb.

When the meat was roasted to his satisfaction, he removed it from the oven and transferred it to a ceramic plate to cool for a few minutes. Using kitchen shears and tongs, he carefully cut and removed the twine.

The meat was sliced and served with mashed potatoes seasoned with goat butter, leek, and shallot.

During this whole process, I took about a jillion photos. I'll post a gallery of my favorites in my Picasa gallery. Look for the link on my Facebook page.

Frenched Rack of Lamb

January 6, 2012

In recent weeks my counterpart has turned once again to French cooking. Aiolis are giving way to wine-based cream sauces and pans are deglaced with glee. We've dabbled with game as well, eating partridge and rabbit over the holidays. As the work week started up again and we returned to our day-to-day routine, the French influence has remained in the kitchen. Earlier in the week, lamb (a standard in our current diet) was given a French makeover when it was bundled with fresh rosemary and roasted in a similar manner to our New Year's rabbit. We chose a rack of ribs for our dinner.

A note on Frenching: This is not as exciting as it may first appear. When meat is Frenched, the butcher removes the meat surrounding the rib bone by vigorously pulling a string between the meat and the bone. Here's a helpful video for more information.

First season the lamb with a little salt and pepper. Then bundle it up with some fresh rosemary sprigs.

Pan sear the rack in hot oil, flipping after a few minutes.

Place it on a rack in a heavy skillet and roast in the oven until medium rare. While the meat is in the oven, make your vegetable medley. We used shoestringed green beans with a little leek, red pepper and fresh oregano and sauteed them with a little chicken stock and white wine.

Pull the rack and remove the rosemary bundle. Using your kitchen tongs in this process is very chefy. Try to remove as much of the rosemary as possible. I got a bite with a hidden twig still attached and it was quite the flavor experience.

Slice the rack into individual ribs.

Serve with your vegetable medley and a little orzo.

Crossing a Culinary Threshold

November 5, 2011

The truffle is one of several varieties of edible mushroom. Its culinary usage dates back to the early Roman Empire where they were considered a rare delicacy created when lightning struck warm, wet soil. Truffle hunting continued in Europe past the Fall of Rome with the wild mushroom gaining vast popularity among the aristocracy during the Renaissance. Resistant to cultivation efforts, pigs were used to sniff them out in the vast forests of Italy and France. The 18th century French lawyer and foodie Jean Anthelem Brillat-Savarin dubbed them "the diamond of the kitchen". Now I know what all the fuss is about.

The Wegman's in Abingdon carries truffles. Sometime while I was in Italy, my counterpart decided that one day we would venture into this new world of true delicacies, price be damned. And the per pound price is pretty hefty - usually between $300-$600 per pound. But truffles are fairly light, and at the high end of the price spectrum, you can still get them for about $10 each. A little goes a long way, so one or two at a time should be sufficient.

Last night we took the plunge and have now joined the limited population who have had cooked with actual truffles. They are truly unique in flavor and texture. If saffron tastes like sunshine, truffles taste like the forest. They are dark and woody and bitter and add something mysterious to the food. I don't think they are ever the main course, but as a flavor enhancer, they are really quite amazing. For our first truffle experience, Gareth prepared duck breast and eggs with a hollandaise sauce. About half a truffle was grated into the eggs at the very end of cooking. While it was indeed superlative, we both agreed that perhaps eggs weren't the best vehicle for the truffle. We used up less than half of one of them, so we have plenty of opportunity to try again.