Paté en croute (terrine in a pie crust)

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 paté, you will need:

• 1 300 g Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)
• 2 30 g dried morels
• 3 300 g veal
• 4 300 g pork loin
• 5 300 g chicken breast
• 6 300 g ham
• 7 100 g onion
• 8 1 garlic clove
• 9 1 bayleaf
• 10 thyme
• 11 50 ml Brandy (Cognac or Armagnac)
• 12 50 ml Port
• 13 1 shallot
• 14 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 15 50 ml cream
• 16 2 Eggs
• 17 6 g fine (or table) salt
• 18 1 g pepper
• 19 150 g Foie gras (optional)
• 20 1 beaten egg
• 21 salt
• 22 pepper
• Total weight: 1,955 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
2 hours 30 min.	1 hour	3 hours 20 min.	6 hours 50 min.

Step by step recipe

1	The day before Prepare 300 g Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée) (unsweetened). Wrap in stretch plastic film and leave in the fridge.
2	Rehydrate 30 g dried morels.
3	Cut 300 g veal into strips about 1 or 2 cm ( ½ to 1 inch) thick. Do the same with 300 g chicken breast. Chop 300 g pork loin into large dice.
4	Chop 300 g ham into large dice.
5	Prepare the marinade: Chop 100 g onion and 1 garlic clove. Put the pieces of chicken, veal, ham and pork loin into a large bowl. Sprinkle them with 50 ml Brandy (Cognac or Armagnac) and 50 ml Port, add the chopped garlic and onion, 1 bayleaf and thyme. Salt and pepper lightly and mix well. Cover with plastic film and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight.
6	On the day Chop the shallot. Put 2 tablespoons olive oil into a saucepan on medium heat and when hot, add the chopped shallot, salt and pepper. Cook for 1 minute the add the drained mushrooms and cook these for 2 minutes. Then add 50 ml cream and leave to thicken on low heat.
7	Pick the parsley leaves off the stalks and only keep the leaves.
8	Put through the mincer (coarse setting) the pork loin, ham, parsley, onions/garlic and the liquid from the marinade as well as the mushrooms and cream. You should now only have the chicken and veal left to deal with.
9	Add 2 Eggs, 6 g fine (or table) salt and 1 g pepper to the minced mixture. These proportions are correct if you are using 300 g of pork loin (the ham is already salted), otherwise use this small calculator: Pork loin : grams Recalculate
10	Roll out the shrotcrust pastry into a large rectangle and sit your paté mould (a loaf tin works well) on top of it. Cut a triangle of pastry out of each corner so that it will fit neatly in the mould.
11	Fold the pastry in half.
12	Then unfold it into the mould, leaving about 1 cm overlapping all round. Fit it to the inside of the mould, using scissors to snip it if necessary, until you have an even pastry case. Spread a first layer of minced mixture in the bottom.
13	Salt and pepper the strips of chicken and veal, then spread these in layers on top of the minced mixture. You can also weigh the veal and chicken and salt them all at once in a bowl (use the calculator again to know what weight of salt and pepper to use), then spread them in layers after seasoning.
14	You can also make layers of meat and foie gras if you like.
15	Add layers of meats like this, adding salt and pepper each time, alternating with layers of the minced mixture. Finish with a layer of the minced mixture. Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F).
16	Roll out the remaining pastry to make a lid. Make a hole in the centre (the chimney) to allow steam to escape during cooking. You can cut decorations out of left-over pastry if you like.
17	Glaze around the top of the pastry case.
18	Place the lid on the pie and press down around the edge to seal it. Glaze all over the top with beaten egg, stick on any pastry decorations and glaze them too.
19	Bake in the oven for 3 hours. This long cooking allows the paté to cook the middle without burning the crust. The paté will shrink as it cools, leaving a space between the lid and the top of the meat filling. If you wish, you can fill this space with jelly by pouring it in through the chimney hole (though personally, I don't see that this adds anything).
20	Leave to cool, then leave in the fridge, ideally for 3 or 4 days, to allow the flavours to develop fully. Cut into slices and serve with mustard or mayonnaise, and gherkins in vinegar.

Remarks

You can vary this recipe a thousand ways: use different meats, vary their proportions, the marinade, with or without mushrooms chopped or whole, foie gras, etc. Use your imagination, but keep to the basic idea: alternate layers of minced meat and morsels in a pastry crust.
It is important not to make the pastry crust too thick, unlike the very stodgy versions available commercially with their 1 cm or more of pastry.

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