I’ve been hearing about the Daring Cooks/Daring Bakers challenges FOREVER. I actually signed up for it about a year ago but totally forgot about it until recently. I’ve officially joined both groups! For more information visit this site.
Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a 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.
Truth be told when I saw the selection I was a bit freaked out. Pate isn’t one of my favourite things. Maybe that isn’t fair. I never really gravitate towards pate as an option when I’m faced with nibblies. When I was little I used to love liver but have recently been put off by it for some reason. I figured this would be my opportunity to fall in love with pate. I looked at the recipe and immediately knew that this recipe would have to be halved. With no upcoming dinner parties or social gatherings an entire 10″ x 5″ pate would be entirely too much.
The bread making I was excited for! I already had plans to make some brioche for the first time so the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
When it came down to making the pate I was significantly less freaked out than I thought I would be. I love 3 of the 4 meats featured in the recipe. Pork belly, good. Ground pork, good. Bacon, double good. It’s only the chicken livers that gave me pause. Luckily when it came time to work with the livers I didn’t find them that gross at all.
The actual preparation of the pate was pretty straightforward. The ingredients were easy enough for me to find (although try finding a small portion of pork belly, I had to buy two pounds!) and the process wasn’t too tricky. The one part that was pretty hilarious was the flambe. As I was sauteeing the onions and the livers I realized that I had no clue how to flambe! Luckily I had my computer in the kitchen so I started watching YouTube videos. Most of the examples showed flambeing with a gas stove. Of course I’m using electric and would have to use a match. The first example that I could find was entitled “Flambe Disaster”. I was a bit freaked out to say the least. Of course my flambe barely flambed! It was BEYOND anticlimactic.
The bread making was the perfect excuse to break out my new KitchenAid Stand Mixer! I recently borrowed Thomas Keller’s cookbook from the library and was for whatever reason taken by the brioche recipe and just had to make it. To make a long story short my yeast was wonky, the butter didn’t mix in properly and my dough didn’t rise as much as it should have (twice!). So while my loaf tasted great it didn’t look as hot as it could have. I will definitely make this again though because I’ve seen some great posts on the interwebs about the results.
The final dish turned out well! The pate was really flavourful and didn’t taste too liver-y. I could definitely taste the bacon and loved the fattiness that the various types of pork added to it. This may just end up in my lunch tomorrow. The buttery brioche really worked well with the pate. Perhaps not the most heart healthy snack but dare I say I might be coming around to pate.
Looking forward to the next Daring Cooks challenge!
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{new blog entry} Daring Cooks: Pates and Breads (Chicken Liver Terrine) http://goo.gl/fb/NyCAW
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I just made a mushroom pate last week! Much lighter and heart-healthier than your recipe, but I can absolutely see the merits of both =). A good pate is one of the finer things in life, I think!
Ah, in Quebec, one can find pork belly in various sizes at the grocery. We are like that here: pork fat friendly.