Simple Pork Terrine

- Alex Leave a comment

terrine

I made this terrine ages ago now and it’s taken me a long time to get around to writing it because I suspect this is going to be quite a lot of effort. Which is surprising, because making the terrine was actually very easy. When the title says “simple” I do mean it. Before this, I’d never made a terrine so I was a little apprehensive (especially as I was making it for a dinner party, so there was very little wriggle room!) but it turns out that this is perfect party food.

There are a couple of great things about terrine. Firstly, you have to make it in advance – thus guaranteeing that on the day of whatever event it is, you won’t be flapping around, trying to whip something up last minute. The finished product looks impressive and is easy to serve. And because terrines are so meaty and dense, unless you are entertaining a horde, you are more than likely to have leftovers for snacks and lunches. They are also relatively cheap.

This recipe is from Damien Pignolet’s French. Now with some terrine making expertise under my belt, I do feel that this is the type of dish that, with a little experience and commonsense, you can really make up as circumstances dictate.

You do really need some specialist kit though: a terrine dish (for this terrine, approximately 1.5L in capacity). And if your oven has a built in meat thermometer … well, even better.

The first thing to do is to place an order with your butcher. You will need: 12 rashers of bacon (if you can get streaky, so much the better), 400g pork shoulder, coarsely minced, 300g chicken mince, 300g pork back fat, coarsely minced, and 200g chicken livers.

Preheat the oven to 160°C and line the terrine dish with the bacon, making sure that it hangs over the sides (when you’ve filled the terrine dish you’re going to fold the bacon over the top). You don’t need to grease or oil the terrine dish in any way: the bacon and the terrine filling both provide plenty of fat!

To make the filling, combine your meats (roughly chop the chicken livers first!) and add about half a cup of cooked, chopped spinach. If you use frozen spinach for this you’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassle. You want to defrost and cook it off in a fry pan to get rid of the excess water: job done. Add 1 clove of finely chopped garlic, plenty of black pepper (ground), 50mL of Cognac (or Armagnac or brandy), ½ cup of chopped parsley, 4 sage leaves, finely chopped, and the leaves from 4 sprigs of fresh thyme.

And if there is ever a time to suck up the exorbitant cost of fresh herbs in the supermarket … it is now. Really, do not go substituting dried ones. You won’t have a good idea of the balance of flavours until it’s too late and the long, slow cook that the meat is about to enjoy really means you need to choose fresh.

Next you need to mix through ½ tsp of quatre épices. This is a blend of equal parts of white pepper, nutmeg, ground ginger and ground cloves. If you’re confident you’ll use this a lot, go ahead and make up a decent quantity. However, I knew that if I did that I’d have yet another jar in my spice drawer that would sit there … and sit there … and sit there. So I very much guestimated this one …

And finally you need to add the salt. Now don’t be scared here … you need 18g per kilo of meat. DON’T skimp on this. DO NOT skimp on this. Get the idea? Yes, it looks like a ton of salt but really, you do need to add it!

Once your meat mix is made up you need to leave it in the fridge, marinating, for at least a couple of hours. I left mine overnight.

When you’re ready to start assembling the terrine, remove the mix from the fridge, allow it to come up to room temperature (or thereabouts) and fry off a little in a fry pan. You eat this. Not for fun, but so you can check on the seasoning. Once you’re happy with the seasoning, start spooning the meat mix into the terrine dish.

Press the mix down firmly and make sure you push it out to the edges of the dish – you want to pack in as much as possible. In my case, I had quite a bit of meat mix left over – it works well fried up for breakfast.

When you’ve filled the terrine dish with the meat, place a rasher or two of bacon across the top of the terrine dish & fold over the bacon you left hanging over the edge.

Cover with the terrine lid (or use tin foil) and place in a roasting dish half filled with water (you want the water to come half way up the terrine dish) and bake in a 160°C oven for an hour. Then reduce the temperature to 140°C and cook until the juices run clear or the internal temperature hits 70-72°C. This is where an oven with a meat probe comes in handy: it gives you a good idea of how things are going. But this will take at least another hour. Remember you are dealing with a very dense meat mixture!

When the cooking has finished, remove from the oven and the water bath, remove the lid and cover with some baking paper before weighting the terrine. I used tins from the cupboard for this. Allow to cool with the weights in place. Once cool, refrigerate overnight.

See – you do need to begin this in advance!

When you’re ready to serve, remove from the fridge a few hours in advance, run a knife around the edges of the terrine and upend the terrine dish on the serving platter. You’re unlikely to get lucky and have it come out straight away. But don’t worry – leave the terrine dish upended and over time the fat will warm up and eventually the terrine will just fall out. All you need to do is leave it alone.

Serve by slicing into fine or generous portions, with good bread, and plenty of pickle. We used a green tomato pickle, but your favourite will work well!

And to drink? Well, we opted for a Grüner Veltiner, but a dry Riesling would also work a treat.

Chorizo and Pork Belly

- Alex 4 Comments

pork belly 2
Let’s face it – that just sounds unbelievably good, no? I’d only just spotted this recipe on BBC’s Good Food site when one of my UK based friends mentioned having had a similar sounding dish at Chez Bruce. Not being a position to nip over to London to try it out for myself, I suspect the dish my friend had was the “thinly sliced pork with warm summer bean salad, salsa verde, chorizo and crackling” – so a summery version of the following very wintery dish.

Although there’s a bit of shopping to be done and some long slow cooking, this is really very easy. You just can’t be in a hurry. I also recommend that you ask your butcher to remove the skin from the pork belly but to score it and hand it over. We left the skin in the fridge to dry out and then rubbed it with olive oil and plenty of salt before crisping it up in a hot oven. Absolute bliss – and perfect crackling because of the drying out time!

Preheat oven to 140°C fan.

You need a 750g piece of boneless (and skinless!) pork belly, cut into large cubes. Heat some olive oil in a large casserole (you need something both stove and oven proof) and brown the pork belly in batches, setting aside on a plate or in a bowl as you go.

Once the pork belly is all browned, fry off 3 rashers of bacon, roughly chopped. If you can get hold of pancetta easily, use that. Reduce the heat and add a chopped onion and chopped garlic to taste (let’s say 2 large cloves). Cook until the onion starts to soften and then add two roughly chopped chorizos and stir through a teaspoon of paprika (I used sweet because that’s what I had, use hot if that is to hand).

When the chorizos start to give off a bit of fat, return the pork (and any juices that have collected) to the pan and stir through one tin of crushed tomatoes and 150mL of red wine. If you need to add a little water to ensure the pork is covered, do so.

Cover the pan and cook in the oven for about 2 hours. You needn’t be too fussy about the timing here – the important thing is that it’s a long slow cook. Over two hours is absolutely fine.

About half an hour before serving, remove from the oven, stir through a tin of cannellini beans (rinse the beans first) and return to the oven uncovered for about half an hour. This will not only heat up the beans but it will also help thicken the sauce. For this reason you don’t want to go too mad adding water for the final cook … something like this needs a thick, rich gravy.

We served with mashed potato and a few steamed vegetables.

This was a big hit – if it hadn’t all been eaten for snacks and lunches the remainder would have been frozen for an emergency dinner. If you use the quantities above you’ll have enough for 6 for an easy dinner – or plenty of leftovers!

To drink: you need something reasonably big to stand up to all the rich flavours. I think a Zinfandel (or Primitivo) would work well. Or a softer style Shiraz. You want some gentle acidity but not too many tannins.

Mexican Baked Fish

- Alex 3 Comments

mexican baked fish 1

Earlier in the week I bought a few too many Coorong mullet fillets and we weren’t able to eat them all in one go (er, strictly speaking, we weren’t able to fit them in the pan all in one go – I’m sure if we tried we’d have been able to eat them all up!).

Rather than just pan fry them again I wanted to do something a bit more warming and filling.  I’m not going to complain about Adelaide’s weather again (especially not as it was 22°C yesterday) but we did need something more substantial than just a bit of pan fried fish!

This Mexican baked fish recipe sounded perfect. It verges on being a store cupboard recipe and, when made with a thinner fish fillet, such as the mullet, is super speedy.

Quantities below are for two people – assuming one fillet of fish each.

Take your fish fillets and rub in some salt and lime juice. Set aside while you get yourself sorted.

If you are using thinner fillets, you can get away with doing this all in the one pan, on the stove top. If you’re using thicker fillets, preheat your oven to 200°C.

Heat some oil in the pan and fry the fish. Thinner fillets, you really want to cook the fish, thicker ones, just sear the fish’s skin side. Remove the fish from the pan.

In the now empty pan, cook a single sliced onion until translucent. Add a crushed clove of garlic (or more, if you fancy) and cook for another minute or two before adding 200g (half a tin) of crushed tomatoes. Stir and then add half a red capsicum, finely sliced, a generous splash of water, and the juice of at least half a lime. Add roughly chopped green olives, capers and chilli flakes to taste (I used about 10 olives, about 1 tbsp of capers and a generous sprinkling of chilli). Allow this to cook for 10 minutes or so and adjust seasoning. You want the sauce to thicken up a fair bit, so you may need to cook for a little longer to evaporate off any extra liquid and to intensify flavours.

When you’re happy with the sauce, return the fish to the pan and cover it with the sauce. Thin fillets – you are just heating through, but if you’re using thicker fillets, pop the pan in the oven to finish cooking the fish.

We served this with coriander and lime rice (yes, that’s plain rice with lime juice and chopped coriander stirred through it – as I was using left over rice, I also gave it a quick fry up … delicious!) and an extra wedge of lime.

The really important thing here is to not omit the lime juice. Really and truly. You can forget about the capers or the olives if they’re not your thing, or they’re not in the cupboard but you really CANNOT do without the lime. It lifts the dish and, I think, makes it feel Mexican.

To drink: a cold beer would work, as would a lime-like Clare Valley Riesling.