Chestnut Pâté

A starter AND A main meal.

This is a yummy vegetarian starter served cold or a great alternative to the meat in a roast dinner served hot.

The Millbrooker Towers household once featured its own resident vegetarian and this was my favourite standby - it's quick and remarkably simple to make, but tastes fantastic.

Here's the podcast of this recipe being broadcast on Simon Pauley's Morning Mix on Insight Radio:

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Ingredients.

30g butter or (veggie alternative if the vegetarian in your life is strict)

2 onions (3 if they're very little)

2 or 3 cloves of garlic (finely chopped or crushed)

100ml red wine

400g chestnut purée (you can get this tinned or buy fresh and DIY)

100g fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs

salt and black pepper

What to do.

Melt the butter and gently fry the onions for about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes or so.

Pour in the wine, keep cooking and let it reduce until there's almost no liquid left.

Remove from the heat and stir in the chestnut purée, breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Then either:

Put the mixture into either a large paté dish or bread tin, cover with foil and cook in the bottom of the oven at Gas 7 (220C/425F) for 10 minutes before reducing the temperature to Gas 5 (190C/375F).

Cook for a further 20-25 minutes. Remove and allow to cool befroe refrigerating until needed.

OR

If you're using the paté hot as a meat substitute, put the mixture into individual timbalés or ramekins, cook in the same way as above, but reduce the final cooking time to around 15 minutes and keep checking so it doesn't burn or dry out. Serve hot, upending the container to make a little "tower" of paté.

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To drink? This is quite a rich paté; a light sparkling wine is just about ideal or a decent rosé (perhaps a Tavel might be just the thing.)