Polish · Starter
Pasztet z Dziczyzny
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, richness that coats and comforts, on a drift of smoke.
Ingredients
- 600 g venison or wild boar shoulder, in 4 cm chunks
- 500 g pork belly, skinned, in 4 cm chunks
- 200 g pig's liver, in 2 cm slices
- 150 g onion, quartered
- 100 g carrot, in chunks
- 60 g celeriac, in chunks
- 8 juniper berries
- 4 allspice berries
- 2 bay leaves
- 1200 ml water
- 80 g stale white bread roll, torn
- 2 eggs
- 14 g fine salt
- 3 g ground black pepper
- 2 g ground allspice
- 1 g grated nutmeg
- 120 g smoked streaky bacon, in rashers
Equipment
Bain-marie · Grater / zester
The skills inside
The water bathSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the venison, pork belly, onion, carrot, celeriac, juniper, allspice berries and bay in the water, covered, for 2 hours, until the meat gives to a fork, topping up with boiling water whenever the level drops below the meat. 120 min
- Slip the liver in for the last 10 minutes only, then lift everything out, skim the fat off the broth and keep both, and soak the torn roll in a ladle of the hot broth. 10 min
- Mince the meat, vegetables, skimmed fat and soaked bread twice through a 3 mm plate, then beat in the eggs, salt, pepper, ground allspice and nutmeg until the mixture is sticky, loosening it with a little broth if it is stiff.
- Line a 1.5 kg loaf tin of about 2 litres with the bacon, press the mixture in without air pockets, fold the bacon over and bake at 150C to 160C (300F to 325F) in a water bath until the centre reads 71C (160F), 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. 60 min
- Cool it completely in the tin and chill it overnight before slicing.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The water bath 13 recipes
- The water stands two thirds of the way up the side of the inner dish and is still standing there at the end: filled only to the halfway mark, the upper band sets hard and pale long before the centre moves, and water lapping the rim or splashed over the top has thinned the surface into a loose, watery skin.
- The bath is silent, steaming, with at most one slow bubble rising at the wall of the outer vessel, held between 80C and 85C (176F and 185F). Any chatter of the dish against the base, any steady string of bubbles, any rolling of the surface means the water has run to 100C (212F) and the damage is already done.
- Nudged, the centre trembles as one piece, a coin of movement in a face that is otherwise still. A ripple that travels outward in waves means it is still liquid beneath the skin; a face that does not move at all has been carried past the set and will eat firm and grainy.
- Cut, the face is dense and glossy from edge to edge: no honeycomb of small bubbles along the outer band, and no bead of clear liquid weeping from the cut or pooling between the set and the side of the dish, which is the mark of protein wrung out by heat.
- It left the water before it was done and rested clear of it: the centre reads 78C (172F) as it is lifted out and climbs to roughly 82C (180F) standing. Anything left sitting in the hot bath after the heat was cut has gone on cooking, and it reaches the pass tight and split however well it looked when it went in.
Where it goes wrong The bath was pushed too hot and allowed to boil, usually an outer vessel set over direct heat that was never turned down, or a bath topped up part way through with boiling water, so the mixture against the wall of the dish ran past 85C (185F) and its protein seized and squeezed out its liquid. The outer band is pitted and grainy, a ring of watery liquid weeps into the dish as soon as it is cut, and the centre is still slack, because the outside was overcooked long before the middle set.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Zinfandel (old-vine)
- Also Right
- Shiraz or Malbec
- From the Taps
- Smoked porter
- Zero-Proof
- Cherry cola, honestly
Barbecue’s sweet-smoke wants jammy fruit that shakes hands with the sauce; dry austere reds argue with sugar and lose.
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