Monique's Pork Paté recipe

Because the Internets demanded it, here's Monique's pork paté recipe, which originally came from her grandmother.  Having now spent many a Christmas season smelling this as she prepares it, let me assure you all that it smells just as good during the cooking as you think it would smell.

This recipe is also enthusiastically endorsed by Katie the Beagle who has spent hours drooling and staring adoringly at piles of pork, hoping for the one miraculous mistake that will drop it all on the floor.

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Mommer's Pork Paté

 

~ 6 lbs. -- Pork Shoulder (or another fatty cut of pork)

4 Large onions

Bacon strips

6 tablespoons -- Paprika (I use 3 tbs hot paprika and 3 tbs sweet paprika)

3 tablespoons -- Bouillon grains

Mustard

Dash of pepper

Dash of garlic powder

 

The measurements for bouillon, paprika, mustard, pepper and garlic are approximations. Use them to taste.

 

Cube the pork meat and onions and saute until the meat is well browned.

Move the meat and onion mix into a large pot and add water, bouillon, and paprika and simmer for a good hour. Add water as needed to keep the mix from burning or sticking to the pot. Because I make large quantities I have to do the browning in stages and I just keep adding the newly browned meat and onion mix to the pot as I go. When it is done cooking there will be a nice, thick sauce. (At this point, you can take a few spoonfuls out and have that for dinner....) Remove from heat and cool for a couple of hours or even refrigerate at this point for later mincing or creaming.

 

Mince the meat and onion mixture in a meat grinder or food processor adding a few dollops of mustard as you go. The idea is to produce a creamed consistency that will form a nice ball if you take a hand full and squeeze it.

 

Preheat the oven to 375

 

Take a meat loaf pan and place strips of bacon on the bottom. Form a loaf shape with the creamed meat mix, packing it together firmly. Put that in the loaf pan, then cover the top with strips of bacon. Bake for however long it takes to cook the bacon on top, around 45 minutes. I sometimes make several smaller loafs in one loaf dish by wrapping each on the bottom and sides with tin foil and placing them all in the loaf pan together, tightly.

 

This recipe is a lot of work which is why I only make this once a year... And, I have to admit, my pate sometimes comes out a little crumbly which I think has to do with the fattiness of the meat used. Crumbly is not ideal since you want a nice, smooth, pate-like consistency in the end but whether crumbly or smooth, it always tastes great!

Quince Week Comes to the Patio Boat Blog

After the arrival of the bucket of quinces from our neighbor's quince tree it was a quinciful week around the Magee residence. The drama played out on Facebook, so I thought I'd copy a few posts and comments back here.

As to rumors that this blog is on the take from the American Quince Growers Association, I have no comment. I can, however, assure you all that the AQGA is, "Making America great again, once quince at a time!"

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Saturday, October 9

John Magee As long as we're talking food, you'll all be glad to know that I moved on from spaghetti tacos for lunch to the best pot roast I've ever had for dinner.

Patio Boat: Quince Pot Roast

Daniel Steinbach I am glad

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Sunday, October 10

John Magee Monique to John this morning: "What do you mean you can't figure out what to make us for Sunday breakfast with what's left in the fridge? You have quinces. You have beets. You have half an eggplant. I'm sure you can figure something out."

Justine Carson Hmmm, challenging ingredients; so what did you come up with?

Dean Tiernan Time to turn the duties over to Monique.

John Magee I kept the quinces and beets on the sideline, and made an eggplant, bacon, and gruyere omelet with rye toast. Yum.

Daniel Steinbach Hmmm. I had a bowl of cereal with lactose reduced skim milk.

Sheila Nason That's cheating. You didn't say you had eggs, bacon and gruyere. Where's the challenge in that?

John Magee What I figured out was that I needed to keep digging through the fridge to find better ingredients.

Marti Bush WHAT?!?!?! No spagetti tacos?

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Friday, October 15

John Magee We finished up the leftovers last night, so I thought I'd give folks a second crack at the quince pot roast recipe. It was truly amazing.

Patio Boat: Quince Pot Roast

Pamela Tolleson John I posted a question a few weeks ago but I just looked and it's not there...hmmm odd. Anyways, it was asking if I can buy the quince at any grocery store?

John Magee ‎@Pam - I think it depends on your store, and how far down the "specialty fruits and veggies" they go in their produce aisle. I don't recall having seen them very often, but it is the season and it might be worth asking the produce manager if you have an adventurous store. The best bet might be a farmer's market or an orchard. We got ours from our neighbor, who has a little quince tree.

John Magee P.S. You might also try an ethnic foods store if there's one near you. They tend to see a lot of use in Turkish, Southern European, Middle Eastern, and South American foods.

Pamela Tolleson Thank you, I will ask Wegmans, i go there almost everyday (the grocery store) ............ I will keep you posted on how that goes ♥

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Friday, October 15

John Magee Monique made quince crumble for dinner tonight. Oh, so yummy. Alas, we're now down to two final quinces.

Marti Bush I wish I could have had dinner at your house. That sounds wonderful! Tell your lovely wife I said hello!

John Magee Um, I guess technically the quince crumble was for dessert. But who's kidding who? Dinner was just a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches designed to move us quickly on to dessert.

Catherine Dufresne-Magee I need a wife!

Lori Pasto With all of the rain and wind -- we opted for grilled cheese and tomato soup . . . no dessert -- sounds way better in Michigan! :)

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Saturday, Oct. 16

John Magee Quince Week continues. Yesterday, quince crumble, then quince syrup with the leftover bits of quince. The latter led to today's treat: quincetinis on the pontoon boat for a sunset cruise. Tomorrow? Quince and green tomato mincemeat pie.

Marti Bush And still no dinner invite?

Susan Magee Riordan I suspect the Patio Boat blog has been purchased by the American Quince Growers Association.

John Magee Ahhh, the good folks of the AQGA, "Making this nation stronger one quince at a time."

Mary Campbell-Droze Good grief, Muggy---keep this up & I'll have to add "quince" to the Colts/Katie/Kaylee haiku! (well, it *would* maintain the alliteration)

John Magee I'm beginning to sense a lot of jealousy from all those who had to go without a quince-tini this evening.

Jon Hopwood Like I've said, the only Quince I know about was played by Jack Klugman in the 1970s.

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Sunday, Oct. 17

John Magee just made a big batch of green-tomato-and-quince mincemeat. ("Quincemeat"?) We canned a couple of big quart bottles worth, and the rest will just have to go into pies now.

John Magee Well, into pies tomorrow. It's a bit late to start baking pies.

Quince Pot Roast

This was the best pot roast I've ever had. How did it come to be?

We have a neighbor with a small quince tree, and a couple of days ago he gave Monique a small bucketful of little hard golden fruits that looked a bit like unripe apples. And so, since all I knew about quinces was that they were a handy crossword puzzle word if you need a six-letter fruit beginning with a "Q", I launched myself into the world of the quince.

My first surprise as I researched the quince came when I discovered that they need to be cooked quite a while before they're edible, but that once cooked they take on a tart and fruity flavor, a bit like an extreme apple. Even more surprising, they eventually turn in color from golden yellow to pink or even ruby red.

The alchemy of the quince is interesting. Raw quinces are very heavy in tannins, which makes them so astringent as to be inedible. When cooked over time the tannins break down, which removes the bitter taste and releases a deep, complex fruit flavor. The end products of the tannin breakdown contain anthocyanins, the pigments that give plants their red color. And thus a bitter golden quince becomes a ruby red treasure. In addition to tannins, quinces are very heavy in pectin, which is what makes them a favorite as the base for an assortment of jams, jellies, sauces, and fruit pastes.

Quinces originated in Southwest Asia near the Caucuses, and Turkey remains the world's largest quince producer. They were more popular than apples in much of the ancient world, and because of their golden color may be the fruit actually referred to where the name of the fruit has been translated as "apple" or "golden apple." (For example, the mythological tale when Paris chooses Aphrodite for the prize of a golden apple, thus kicking off the Trojan War.) Quinces were popular with the Romans and the Franks, and so became widespread across Europe, especially Southern Europe.

Alas for the quince, it's fallen out of favor in modern times, undoubtedly because it doesn't fit an immediate-gratification world.

So, when it was time to decide what to do with our bucketful of quinces, I reckoned, "How better to give a few old-fashioned quinces a good thorough cooking than to pop them into a good ol' pot roast?"

Here's the recipe we put together. You could probably add a few quinces (or even a single quince) to any pot roast recipe you like -- just be sure to add them early enough in the process to give them a couple of hours to cook and mellow.

Ingredients
1 large pot roast (We used an English-cut chuck roast.)
Olive oil
4-6 quinces (We may have used 7 ... they were small. Really you could get a nice flavor out of just a couple of quinces, though.)
3 pounds baby red potatoes
1 pound carrots
1 large red onion (A pound of baby onions might do nicely here ... or perhaps a leek or two.)
3 stalks celery
1/2 red bell pepper and 1/2 green bell pepper (You could use one bell pepper of either color, but I thought the color mix would look pretty.)

Steps
1) Brown the pot roast in some olive oil.
2) Peel and core the quinces, cut into quarters. (A sharp paring knife is good for this, but be careful, they're hard and tricky.)
3) Once the roast is browned on each side, add the quince quarters, cover with water, and simmer for an hour-and-a-half or two.
4) Peel and cut the carrots, onion, celery, and bell pepper into chunks. (Do the same with potatoes if they're large.)
5) About 45 minutes or so before you're ready to eat, add the veggies.
6) Add a bit more water if you need it to cover the veggies. Keep your pot simmering.
7) When the potatoes and carrots are tender to the fork, you're ready to eat.
8) Use a slotted spoon to pull out the veggies and the roast.
9) The juices are delicious. Ladle them into a gravy boat and pour some over your potatoes, meat, and veggies on the plate.

Enjoy! As I said at the top, this was the single most delicious pot roast we've ever made. The quinces mostly fell apart after all that simmering, and they never really turned red, but their flavor spread through everything.

It was quince-a-licious!


*True culinary confessions time: after I added the veggies we headed out for a quick pontoon cruise on this lovely October afternoon. I didn't want the veggies to boil over while we were away, so I turned it down very low ... a bit too low as it turned out, and so our veggies really got about an hour on very low heat and then another 30 or 40 minutes at a decent simmer after we got home and discovered that the potatoes were still rock hard. It was almost a bit more like crock-potting by the time it was done. Come to think of it, a crock pot might be a very good way to go with a quince, since it would give you a nice, long cooking time.

A Brief John/Julia Update

Triumph and tragedy with the ol' John/Julia project. Friday night I made us a lovely stir-fry with scallops, red bell pepper, onion, and beurre au citron over a bed of rice. Yummy!

This morning, I totally botched a hollandaise sauce. I had a very clever plan for Spam Benedict -- that's a sort of eggs Benedict with Spam, which means that Julia Child is probably rolling over in her grave at the moment -- and utterly and completely screwed up the steps in the hollandaise sauce. So instead of a thick, creamy hollandaise, we had a runny lemon-butter sauce.

Also, we only had one English muffin, so I had toasted up some rye bread. And instead of poached eggs I was concocting an omelet with some leftover portabellow mushroom and onions. So, other than the English muffins, the poached eggs, the hollandaise, and the Spam, it was just like eggs Benedict.

And yet, when served on some rye toast with fried slices of Spam and fresh tomatoes, the runny sauce was still darned yummy.

Yes, I suppose this means I'll have to keep practicing the hollandaise family of sauces. Monique and Katie the Beagle seem okay with that.

Beurre au Citron: Okay, THAT was ridiculously good!

The wee little John/Julia experiment continued this evening, with beurre au citron, a member of the "Hot Butter Sauces" family. To make beurre au citron, you reduce 1/4-cup of lemon juice, slowly whisk in a stick of cold butter one tablespoon at a time, and then beat in a bit of hot fish or vegetable stock at the end.

I had thought that sort of a lemon-butter sauce might go nicely over a nice slab of salmon, perhaps some pork cutlets, or maybe even some grilled tuna steaks. But we didn't have any of those things. I had a can of clams and some leftover asparagus that had been kicking around in the fridge for a few days. But I reckoned I could sautée the asparagus with an onion and some canned mushrooms, the clam juice could fill the "fish stock" role at the end of the beurre au citron recipe, we could serve the whole kit and kaboodle over some pasta, and we could call it dinner. And that way, I'd have given beurre au citron a whirl, and we could figure out what to do with it on another night, once we knew what we had.

It turns out that beurre au citron doesn't really need much more than an old can o'clams to be delicious.

Yeah, it was yummy. I mean, I expected it to be good, but it was really delicious. The sauce was creamy and tart, the sautéed veggies mixed in nicely, the flavors were light and complex, and ... frankly, the whole thing was just ridiculously good. And easy.

Oh yes, we're going to do beurre au citron again. Oh yes we will.

And if you're wondering, yes, Katie the Beagle does find clams with beurre au citron to be an acceptable post-dinner treat.

John & Julia Project Update

Day 2 -- Worry not, hollandaise sauce fans, not all the leftover hollandaise went to Katie the Beagle. Most of it went into the refrigerator, and we took good care of it today. For today's brunch I warmed up the sauce, added a bit of hot curry, and spread it on more poached eggs, tomato, and English muffins.

Unfortunately, in the midst of poaching and toasting, I slacked off the stirring and the hollandaise began to separate. So the hollandaise curry was a bit lumpy and a bit greasy.

Hey, gaining "a thorough familiarity with the vagaries of egg yolks under all conditions" ain't for sissies. And it was yummy, anyway!

P.S. In regard to Michelle's question about what culinary adventures would be underway if we'd seen "Ratatouille", even rat tastes good when it's smothered in hollandaise sauce!

The John & Julia Project

So, you might ask, "Why is Katie the Beagle enjoying hollandaise sauce and eggs for lunch today?:


It's all part of a brand new project here at Patio Boat central: The John & Julia Project.

You see, after the movie Julie & Julia inspired the scrambled-egg fest earlier this week, discussion of more yummy French food hasn't been far from the fore in these parts. And, in a bit of culinary synchronicity, I saw a copy of the book Julie & Julia at our annual used book sale at work, and picked it up. So, yummy French food has been both a discussion topic and a reading topic this week.

Naturally, all of this led to a new copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking making its way home with me last night. Of course, where aspiring blogger Julie Powell set an ambitious 365-day target for making it all the way through all 500+ recipes in the book, I reckon it'll take me about 20 or 30 years. We do have something in common, though. Where Julie was inspired to take the plunge by the angst created by a series of dead-end jobs and the approach of her 30th birthday, a rather embarrassing personal problem inspired me to take my mini-plunge.

I'd hate for this to get out in public -- this is just between you and me, gentle reader, right? -- you see, I have a personal issue that has created some angst for me over the years. It's just that ... well ... it's sort of shameful to admit, but ... um ... here it is:

Sauces have always been a bit problematic.

Mind you, it's not spaghetti sauces or chili sauces or that sort of thing. It's just that although I can put together a nice white cheese sauce or a gravy when I follow a recipe, my other cream sauces or reductions have a bit of a random quality to them. Usually they're yummy enough in the flavoring, but their texture is pretty random. And nobody -- especially me -- can ever predict their consistency.

This can not stand.

After watching the movie last week, I picked up a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking at the book store, started leafing through it, and was immediately impressed by what a good teaching book it seemed to be, especially in terms of its mixture of theory and practical advice. Over the week, the memory of its easy-to-follow tutoring preyed upon the secret shame of my sauces until I was forced to buy it yesterday.

I don't really intend to master the full and entire art of French cooking. I just darn well intend to improve my sauce improvisation skills. And so -- armed with a goal and a tome first published in 1961 -- I decided to tackle the hollandaise family first, starting with today's brunch:


Book, tools, and ingredients in hand, I was ready to start.

Now here's the sort of thing that I'm talking about, in terms of the teaching nature of this book. This is from the first paragraph under the section on The Hollandaise Family:

It is extremely easy and almost foolproof to make (Hollandaise sauce) in the electric blender, and we give the recipe on page 81. But we feel it is of great importance that you learn how to make hollandaise by hand, for part of every good cook's general knowledge is a thorough familiarity with the vagaries of egg yolks under all conditions.

Okay, Julia. I eschew the easy-peasy blender hollandaise. I shall learn the vagaries of egg yolks.

The result? Poached eggs with hollandaise on English muffins. (I was originally aiming for Eggs Benedict, but I forgot to pick up any ham or Canadian bacon when I stopped by the store last night. Oh, how we suffer.)

It was yummy!

There was lots and lots of leftover hollandaise, plus some leftover egg whites, so we moved on to scrambled egg whites, tomato, and hollandaise sauce on English muffins:

More yumminess!

Then it was time to clean up, and Katie the Beagle came to make a suggestion.


Leftover egg-white crisps scraped from the frying pan, with hollandaise. (Perhaps we should call it Blancs d'Oeufs Frites, avec Hollandaise, to class it up a little bit.)



The Result? The most spoiled beagle in the world.

Alas, there's more work yet to be done with the hollandaise family before we can declare victory and move on to other sauces. We still have Hollandaise avec Herbes, Hollandaise avec Purees ou Minces, Hollandaise avec Blanc d'Oeufs, Sauce Mousseline, Sauce Chantilly, Sauce Maltaise, Sauce Vin Blanc, Sauce Mousseline Sabayon, Sauce Bearnaise, Sauce Choron, and Sauce Colbert to go.

Work, work, work. Hey, mastering the vagaries of egg yolks under all conditions doesn't come easy.