Pate Gratinee
When life gets hectic, everything can seem like a chore. All you want to do is to sit down and take a break but there is always something that needs to be done. That seems to describe our summer this year and left us reacting to the last two charcutepalooza challenges rather than planning out the our recipes and taking time to properly source the ingredients.
This time the challenge was packing. We had some free time on Sunday to make the pate and decided that for the sake of expediency we would do the pate gratinee with the pork tenderloin inlay from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, the Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing (pg.219)
Ready for the Oven
The only ingredient we needed to buy was pork back fat, the only problem was the butcher shop we usually get that from was closed for renovations so 6 butcher shops and grocery stores later I was forced to buy a number of small strips of pork belly to carve out the fat myself.
Most of the day was done and we hadn’t even started making the pate but failure was not an option after 8 successful challenges!
Fresh from the Oven
It was ironic that the keys to success for this project were proper preparation and planning. The secret was to get the get all the equipment ready, with everything that can go into the freezer in and chilling. The ingredients had to be prepped and then refrigerated until needed. Once that was done everything was relatively easy. Easier than making hotdogs anyways.
Putting Charcuterie to Work!
The pate smelled so good coming out of the oven that it was difficult to let it refrigerate overnight until we could taste it.
Filed under: Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Charcuterie the Craft of Salting Smoking and Curing, Pate Gratinee, Pork Tagged: | Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, pate gratinee, pork belly, Ruhlman
As usual this looks as though it would taste delicious. (If you do figure out how to make the day last more than 24 hours let me know. I too have been trying to do this for a bit longer than you!!)
Cheers from Toronto,
EA and GR