The Daring Cooks, June: Pâté and Bread

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice. I chose to make a Three Spice Pork Liver Pâté, and I made some bagels to go with it.

Three Spice Pork Liver Pâté (Recipe modified a bit to make sizes easier for me (rounding up from pounds, increasing garlic/spice quantity because garlic and spices are good)

Yields one 25 by 12,5 cm (10 by 5 inch) terrine or loaf pan

Oven: 180 centigrade

500 grams pork liver
250 grams ground pork
250 grams pork fat (or pork belly)
3 cloves garlic
2 shallots
1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp coriander (ground or crushed)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tbps coarse freshly cracked peppercorns
30 ml cognac (brandy)
2 bay leaves
250gm bacon (long strips)

I got the butcher to grind the pork belly for me, as I don't have a food processor, so the making it smooth was going to be fun at the best of times (stick blender almost works, it turns out). Basic plan for the recipe is to blend/grind/slice all the meats with the garlic, shallots and spices until the whole thing is as smooth as you want it to be. From there, mix it through the cognac and eggs.





Line your tin with bacon, overlapping the sides (see photo). Put a bay leaf in the bottom. Spoon in the mixture and fold the bacon over the top, sealing in a second bay leaf. Put in a water bath in the oven and bake for an hour and a half. Let it cool in the pan so it reabsorbs the liquid. Chill before turning out.


 

 I made a second Pâté, a Red Lentil and Goats Cheese one, as I was attending a party where I knew there would be vegetarians. The recipe for this one is tremendously easy: 1 cup lentils cooked in 2 cups vege stock + bay leaves until soft and the liquid is absorbed, 125gm soft goats cheese mixed with 3 eggs. Combine the two, season with salt/pepper, bake until they come away from the sides. I used individual size (300mL capacity) dishes for these, and they cooked in an hour in a 180 centigrade oven, at the same time as the other Pâté. Next time I would maybe add some paprika to darken the final colour of the dish, but that isn't a major.



I also made Bagels, as my bread contribution. The bagel recipe is from Gray - The Destitute Gourmet:

(1) 1/4 cup warm water, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp yeast (I used 2 sachets of the supermarket dry yeast)

(2) 4-5 cups plain flour, 1 tbsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 1/4 cups water (I used 5 cups flour and needed a little more water, say 1 1/2 cups)

2 tbsp molasses, 1 egg (beaten). Toppings (sesame seeds and sea salt, for mine)

Combine ingredients in (1), set aside.

Put ingredients in (2) in a mixing bowl. When (1) is frothy, add to (2), mix until combined. Then turn out and knead for 8-10 minutes (original recipe says 5-8, more works for the consistency, I find).

Put dough in greased bowl, covered with greased gladwrap/clingfilm, leave to rise until doubled in size. Punch down, knead lightly, break into 12 pieces.

Make the pieces round, poke a hole in the centre, then shape into bagels. This process is hard to describe, so here is what I did (with apologies for the description). I poked my forefinger through the centre of the ball, then smoothed the whole. Linked thumb and forefinger, and turned the doughball slowly, contracting/releasing the thumb/forefinger loop until I had performed a full rotation of the bagel. I then put a second finger through, repeated the process.

An alternative method is to make the hole with your thumb, and shape the dough around your thumb, using your other hand, then remove dough from thumb, and compress to a bagel shape. This produces a smaller hole, but if done right, a smoother ring. (Thumb length/width may be a factor).



Boil a bot of water. Add the molasses. Drop the bagels in for 20seconds, then flip and leave for 20 more (they may sink at first, should rise fairly quickly). Remove, drop immediately in cold water, then put on a tray. I did this step in batches of three, so they didn't bump as they rose, pan size will determine how many you can do at once.

200c oven, put the bagels on a tray, bake for 7 minutes, remove, flip, brush new topside with egg and add topping, return to oven and bake for 13 more minutes. Then eat them. (Recipe has a complex process to avoid bagel flattening, I ignored it, seemed to turn out fine anyway. It involves the first 7 minutes being baked on a wet cloth, then flipping out onto the tray proper for the last 13).

The whole thing turned out pretty well, as you can see from the photo's.