French · Starter
Pâté en Croûte
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 600 g pork shoulder, in 2 cm dice
- 250 g pork back fat, in 2 cm dice
- 200 g chicken livers, trimmed of green and sinew
- 150 g smoked ham, in 5 mm dice
- 18 g fine salt, 1.5 percent of the 1.2 kg of meat
- 3 g curing salt number 1, 0.25 percent of the meat, weighed on a scale reading to 0.01 g
- 60 ml Madeira
- 4 g ground white pepper
- 2 g quatre epices
- 2 eggs
- 50 g peeled pistachios
- 500 g plain flour
- 200 g cold butter, in 1 cm cubes
- 10 g fine salt and 120 ml iced water, for the dough
- 1 egg yolk beaten with 20 ml water, for the wash
- 400 ml clear chicken stock
- 8 g leaf gelatine
The skills inside
Brining & curingKneading doughKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasRubbing fat into flour
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · nuts
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
- Toss the pork, back fat, livers and ham with the 18 g salt, the curing salt, Madeira, white pepper and quatre epices, cover, and cure in the fridge for 12 hours; the cure has worked when the cubes feel tacky and cling to one another. 600 min
- Rub the butter into the flour and dough salt to the texture of gravel, bring it together with the iced water into a firm dough with no dry patches, and rest it cold for 1 hour. 60 min
- Grind the cured meat through a 6 mm plate into a chilled bowl, beat in the eggs and pistachios, then fry a teaspoon of the mixture and taste it for salt before it goes anywhere near the pastry.
- Line a 30 cm hinged mould with pastry, leaving 2 cm proud, pack the forcemeat in against the walls so no air is trapped, lay on a pastry lid, seal the edges with the wash, and cut two 15 mm chimneys. Bake at 200C (400F) for 20 minutes, then at 160C (325F) until the centre reads 71C (160F), about 1 hour 15 minutes. 20 min
- Cool it 1 hour at room temperature, then chill it overnight. Soften the gelatine, dissolve it in the warm stock, let it cool to the thickness of egg white, and pour it through the chimneys in three goes as the gap drinks it, then chill a further 24 hours before the first slice. 60 min
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.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.