After watching the video of Chef John making this (a million times) I decided to give it a try. Given that I had devoured the pistachio's and dried cherries during a snack binge the previous night my substitution of pecans and dried cranberries had to suffice. Even though pistachios look much better the pecans worked. Assembling the ingredients could well have been the 13th labor of Hercules (and cleaning the kitchen pots pans and tools the 14th). I felt that screaming for some French serf's to help with the prep-work would have worked but my family reminded me to consider how well that worked out for Louis XVI. I tried to stick with the recipe as written down to the last cardboard cutout for pressing the finished product. It has great texture and flavor but next time I'll go with the caul fat mentioned in the video.
After watching the video of Chef John making this (a million times) I decided to give it a try. Given that I had devoured the pistachio's and dried cherries during a snack binge the previous night my substitution of pecans and dried cranberries had to suffice. Even though pistachios look much better the pecans worked. Assembling the ingredients could well have been the 13th labor of Hercules (and cleaning the kitchen pots pans and tools the 14th). I felt that screaming for some French serf's to help with the prep-work would have worked but my family reminded me to consider how well that worked out for Louis XVI. I tried to stick with the recipe as written down to the last cardboard cutout for pressing the finished product. It has great texture and flavor but next time I'll go with the caul fat mentioned in the video.
We have used other recipes for pate de campagne but we like this one the best! Others we have tried were lacking in spices they just needed something extra. This one has a good spice mix and we like the addition of the dried cherries and the pistachios. We used our meat grinding attachment for the first time and felt the flavor of the meats was better as we knew exactly what went into it instead of buying ground meats to use which can be made from several different cuts of meat. I used boneless country rib meat for the pork and chicken thigh meat instead of duck which is not easy to find here. I also used twice as much chicken liver as the recipe calls for as you want to be able to taste it over the spices. About the spices the recipe lists a total of 4 tablespoons of spices yet after they are mixed and set aside it only ever tells you to add 3/4 of a teaspoon of the mix! We knew that this was not near enough spices from previous attempts so added half of the mix (2 tablespoons) instead. This was better than other pates we had made as to spices but it still needed more. Next time I make this I will add the entire 4 tablespoons of the spice mix to the meat. We have been enjoying this pate with grainy mustard ground horseradish and cornichons and froze about 2/3 of it in smaller packages to use over the next few months. Very good recipe!
Made it exactly to the recipe. It was amazing
This is well worth the effort I found it a little salty and would cut back on the salt next time. I used ground pork ground turkey chopped beef liver( the stores were out of chicken liver) spicey sausage meet and 0.5 centimetre square slices of cooked ham. When placing the meat mix in the pan I placed 1/3 then a layer of the ham slices another 1/3 rd of the meat another layer of ham strips and then the rest of the meat. Texture was marvellous and great tasting. Only problem was the speed with which it disappeared.
I went Old School with this grinder/chopper.
Excellent recipe. I modified it a little and used duck breast and a lot more of it. I also used pancetta as the liner instead of bacon.
