Farmhouse Pâté: A meat feast starter

A Starter.

Vegetarians, look away now.

This is a yummy meat feast, it's an impressive start to a meal and provides loads of left over pâté for sandwiches and snacks.

I tend to like pâtés to be fairly coarse in texture, but of course they can be made according to taste; just chop the ingredients more finely or use a food processor or mincer/grinder for smoother results.

Best served with thickly sliced wholemeal toast and lashings of butter (with apologies to your arteries).

*****************

Ingredients.

Serves upwards of 10 people (I told you there'd be plenty left over!)

Enough streaky bacon to line your pâté dish.

500-600g belly pork

100g lard

100g smoked ham

300g ox liver

A large onion, finely chopped

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of cornflour (that's cornstarch to our American friends)

4-6 cloves of garlic (to taste), crushed or very finely chopped

Salt

Loads of freshly milled black pepper

A big heaped tablespoon of paprika

A tablespoon (or more) of soy sauce

Butter for greasing

What to do:

Chop the pork into little cubes (5mm) or pass through a mincer.

Cut the lard and ham into small cubes as well (or use a mincer).

Mince the liver as finely as possible (I use a food processor).

Mix all the meat together with the chopped onion.

Add all the other ingredients, EXCEPT the butter and the bacon, to the mix and stir well.

Use the butter to grease whatever you're going to use as a pâté dish

(a bread tin is ok but a ceramic pâté dish works best), then line the dish with the streaky bacon (bottom and sides).

Plop the pâté mixture into the dish and, cover it (seal it in) with more rashers of streaky bacon (if you haven't got enough bacon for this last step - it's not essential)

Put the pâté dish into a bain-marie (I use a roasting tin with a couple of centimetres depth of warm water); cover the dish with foil and bake in the bottom of the oven at Gas 6 / 200C / 400F for about an hour and a half.

Test the pâté with a skewer - are the juices running clear? If so - it's done, if not then back into the oven it goes to be checked every quarter hour or so until they do.

Cool the pâté in its dish and refrigerate overnight, turn out onto a serving tray or plate and plonk onto the centre of the table for people to serve themselves.

************

To drink? If you're on wine - try a young, lively red like a Beaujolais nouveau or a straightforward white such as a Muscadet.

This starter, though, goes just as well with a nice beer (make up your own mind which beers are "nice")!