Dad’s pork pâté

A promise is a promise. So here’s the first “guest” post. I got here quite late in the evening and I’ve already been well and truly fed. That’s why I’m a little scared of the second half of the weekend. What the hell did I spend half the week on the “herring diet” for?

The worst thing is I can’t stop myself. It’s always like that when I visit my parents. And this time it’s Mum’s birthday to boot. The family are descending on us tomorrow, so there’s masses of everything. I’m genuinely scared 😉 This pâté recipe has been tried and tested. And not just because as soon as I got here at 22.05 I ate the piece in the photo (any dietitians here?). Oh, that’s nothing. My dad makes this pâté at every possible opportunity. So it’s really, truly tried and tested. I love it, with horseradish of course. Pâté and horseradish, the perfect pairing to tickle any primitive bloke’s palate.

Pâté generally makes me think of three things. First, the usual student standby, Podlaski pâté. Cheap grub for a złoty fifty. Podlaski was in Poland, of course. I remember once in Mongolia we were in a pretty tight spot. The choice was simple: “fancy” food or better cigarettes (fancy food in this case meant a tin of Russian sardines). We went for the better cigarettes. For food we bought “shprotny pashtet”, like this. Sprat pâté. It cost the equivalent of somewhere between 40 and 60 groszy. After that we only ever smoked the cheaper cigarettes.

Second, pâté reminds me of that sad period when I was a vegetarian. Back then the greatest treat really was “soya pâté” with lovage. I suspect it was the lovage.

And third, by far the happiest association: this homemade pâté. A different thing altogether. The first two were a necessity. This one’s a real pleasure. Don’t let the name fool you. Pâté you make yourself is a world away from the shop-bought kind (even pâté from the deli counter, baked much the same way).

As for who owns the copyright, Dad says, “I make the pâté and Mum seasons it.” So the recipe belongs a little to each of them. It is Mum’s birthday after all 🙂 Fair’s fair.

One important point: I can’t make this recipe myself because it involves mincing. You need a meat mincer. If you haven’t got one you can safely click that little cross on your browser tab and stop reading here :p Apart from that it’s pretty simple to make, just a bit time-consuming.

At a glance:

Prep time: 1 hour

Cooking time: about 2 hours

Baking time: 70 minutes

Oven temperature: 180 degrees Celsius

How many people? You could feed the whole Red Army

How many calories? At Christmas, who thinks about that?

Ingredients for a wonderful pâté:

•  1 kg of pork leg
• 0.5 kg of pork liver (Dad’s comment: for a firmer pâté, use more liver)
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 hen’s eggs
• 2 stale bread rolls
• 1 medium parsley root (the root, the white bit)
• a very small celeriac (or half a larger one)
• salt
• nutmeg
• ground black pepper
• lovage

The recipe (Dad’s rules):

Here’s how Dad does it. He peels the vegetables and cooks the meat and vegetables together in one pot for about 2 hours. Then he leaves everything to cool in the cooking liquid and puts the 2 rolls in with it (so they can soak up the meat and vegetable broth). Once it’s all cool, he puts all the cooked ingredients and the bread rolls through the mincer twice.

After mincing, he adds 3 eggs and the seasonings (you have to taste it to see if it’s right) and mixes everything thoroughly. He gets the tin ready by greasing it and dusting it with breadcrumbs, then fills it with the pâté mixture. He bakes it for 70 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Once baked, he takes the pâté out of the tins. You can eat it for a good few days. Horseradish or cranberries are a must. Enjoy!