Guinea fowl pâté

I made a crisis pâté. Yesterday, that is, I decided to make one because of #stayathome, because I have a mountain of work to do, and because it would be nice to have something to eat at the weekend. Everyone knows pâté is the best thing to eat, especially when everything around you is such a mess.

While we’re at it, don’t you feel we’re being toyed with by people who pretend they know how to do anything at all? It drives me mad that we’re currently watching a festival of incompetents who have finally realised our money could be spent on healthcare. In fact, I find it astonishing that people are only now realising just how underfunded healthcare is.

Good grief, they make you wait 2 years for a hernia operation, and now you’re surprised that the system starts wobbling when 1000 people suddenly catch an infectious disease? Yes, you can live with a hernia and survive. Not very comfortably, but you can. So you don’t notice. That’s the paradox: the people pretending to “govern” us are now relying on the healthcare system they’ve underfunded themselves, hoping its people will manage. And I think they will. Once again, some enormous personal sacrifice will get us through, and the people pretending to “govern” will claim the credit.

Remember: it won’t be their achievement. We’ve reached a point where we hardly need those in power for anything beyond purely administrative matters. We’re not Japan, Korea or China — whether that’s fortunate or unfortunate, I honestly don’t know right now — where they might actually be useful in a crisis. It all comes down to responsibility. In autocratic countries, those in power are generally exempt from accountability, provided they don’t go too far. That doesn’t apply to North Korea: they regularly go too far there, but they’re very, very autocratic. In Asian democracies, meanwhile, the sense of responsibility is so strong, thanks to social mobilisation, that planning for the consequences of one’s actions is normal.

We’re disorganised and lazy, and the so-called authorities take advantage of that. Look, thankfully people in our part of the world are beginning to speak up about this, though I wonder whether it’s too late. The social consequences of this whole so-called lockdown could be worse than the epidemic itself. If the economy falls apart on the scale being predicted, far more people will die because of poverty, the collapse of healthcare — no taxes, no money to invest — and social unrest. What’s more, the virus will then be able to spread even more efficiently. By imposing a lockdown without planning how long it will last or what its consequences will be, those in power shift responsibility onto us. Now, if something happens to someone, it will be the fault of “irresponsible Joe Bloggs”: he was supposed to stay at home, after all, not put himself and others at risk. They completely limit their own responsibility. Are you comfortable with people who spend a fortune of your money passing the responsibility back to you anyway? To put it plainly, and mildly, I’m not very comfortable with it.

Now let’s compare this with wartime. Why do people go to war? Presumably nobody likes it, ever liked it, or would want it to happen again. War seems senseless, but people go nonetheless. They fight and die. In the name of what? Answer that for yourselves, then consider whether we shouldn’t treat this situation a little more like a war. It helps to be prepared for war. Protect the elderly and children, and let those who can fight do so, in the name of survival. Yet look: countries are prepared to wage wars. More or less, they know how to do it. Adults go off to fight while women, children and the elderly stay at home. But they can’t organise things that way when there is no war. Why? Why can’t we protect people in high-risk groups, isolate the sick, and let everyone else fight to stop our world falling apart, so we can save what we have today? Why can’t the people pretending to “govern” us take that responsibility? Just because nobody has declared war?

I’m very afraid for my loved ones, and very afraid that in a month or two none of us will have anything to go back to. I’m afraid that only then will we discover #stayathome wasn’t the best idea. Because nobody is really staying at home today — which of you hasn’t been to a shop in the past week? I’d much rather the elderly and the sick stayed at home and the state organised efficient, sterile grocery deliveries to protect them.

Still, somewhere inside I hope we’ll wake up and start acting, instead of flooding the internet with a consequence-free torrent of thoughtless thoughts about coronavirus. From what I can see, that’s what we do “best” while working from home. I also hope, though rather less confidently, that after this whole corona episode we’ll wake up and start making rational decisions about who spends our money and what they spend it on.

Meanwhile, after all that mess, let me offer you something delicious for a time of crisis, and something quite different: guinea fowl pâté (almost as deluxe as the duck version). Highly recommended.

PS

I did a bit of flying yesterday, and this is what post-apocalyptic Warsaw looks like 🙂

And here’s something to lift your spirits 🙂

At a glance:

Preparation time: including cooking, a good 3 hours easily (plenty to do during #stayathome)

Baking time: 55 minutes

Baking temperature: 180 degrees Celsius (top and bottom heat)

Serves: fills 4 standard small tins (the aluminium foil ones)

Calories: enough to make you #stayathome

Ingredients for guinea fowl pâté:

• 1 guinea fowl (about 1.2 kg)
• 0.45 kg poultry liver
• 1 duck leg
• 12 good-sized button mushrooms
• a small handful of dried mushrooms (I used bay boletes and porcini)
• a generous selection of soup vegetables (I used: 1 onion, 4 good-sized carrots, 1 large parsley root and a small bunch of parsley leaves, a piece of celeriac and a good-sized piece of leek)
• 4 hen’s eggs
• 1 slice of rye bread
• 1 slice of mixed rye and wheat bread (the proper stuff; I used the indispensable “Urodzinowy” loaf from Lubaszka)
• half a wheat bread roll (I used half a “rzymianka” roll)
• olive oil for frying
• a few slices of pancetta (why not!)
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper 
• dried marjoram
• a dozen or so red peppercorns
• breadcrumbs
• a little butter (for greasing the tins)

Recipe for wonderful, delicious, exclusive and altogether splendid guinea fowl pâté:

Time to get to work, because this pâté, like any pâté, takes a bit of effort. I started by washing the meat and liver. Then I jointed the guinea fowl, separating the legs, breasts and wings from the carcass. I put the meat into a large pot, covered it with water and started cooking it. I seasoned the liver with salt and black pepper and fried it in a frying pan. After about 15 minutes, I added the sliced button mushrooms and the drained dried mushrooms. I fried the whole lot over a medium “heat” for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, of course.

I also peeled and washed the vegetables. After the guinea fowl and duck had been cooking for about 20 minutes, and after skimming the water, I added the vegetables to the pot: the onion, carrots, parsley, leek and celeriac. Altogether, everything cooked for roughly 2, perhaps even 2.5 hours. The result was a very fatty broth. Every so often I skimmed it, removing the protein that rose to the surface.

Then I took the meat out of the broth and put it in a bowl to cool. I put the bread and half-roll into the stock. Once the meat had cooled a little, I removed the bones, leaving everything else in the bowl, including the skin: don’t throw it away. I added the liver and mushrooms I’d fried earlier.

I fitted the meat grinder with its finest plate and minced the meat, liver and mushrooms. The best thing about this pâté is that you only need to do it once: no repeated grinding. Next I transferred all the vegetables from the stock and the thoroughly soaked bread into a bowl. There will be some stock in the bowl too, and that’s how it should be. Don’t drain the vegetables: that fatty stock matters to the quality of the finished pâté. I put the vegetables and bread through the grinder too, and let me stress that they should be quite “wet”.

I mixed everything thoroughly and seasoned it with pepper, salt and marjoram. I tasted it to check it was salty and aromatic enough, then added 4 eggs. I mixed it again, very thoroughly — that takes some elbow grease. I poured the mixture into tins I’d already buttered and coated with breadcrumbs. I arranged slices of pancetta artistically on top and sprinkled them with dried marjoram. Into an oven preheated to 180 degrees Celsius it went, for 55 minutes. Then I took it out and let it cool.

The pâté is at its best after spending the night in the oven. Then it’s ready. I serve it with horseradish, obviously, but also with mustard with a currant liqueur — delicious. Enjoy!