Recipe of the week: Wood pigeon pâté

09 February 2022
Recipe of the week: Wood pigeon pâté

Discover Simon Bonswick's recipe for wood pigeon pâté from his first book, Cooking in Pubs

  • 20 pigeon breasts
  • 250g chicken livers
  • 500g good butcher's sausages, skinned
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 2tsp redcurrant jelly
  • 1 large glass of Port and Armagnac
  • ¼ quatre spice (quatre épices)
  • 2 juniper berries, crushed
  • 1tsp chopped fresh sarriette
  • 2 eggs
  • 24 rashers streaky bacon
  • Butter
  • Salt and pepper

Sauté the onion and garlic gently for about five minutes until soft, golden and translucent. Put aside.

Chop the pigeon breasts and chicken livers. Quickly brown the pigeon and liver in batches and put aside in a bowl. Deglaze the pan with the port and Armagnac and add to the meat.

Put the meat and port, sausage meat, quatre spice, eggs, onions and garlic, thyme, juniper and redcurrant jelly into a food processor. Blend to a smooth, but slightly grainy texture. You may have to do this in several batches. Remove from the food processor into a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Test the seasoning by frying a teaspoon of the mixture for a few minutes and taste. Adjust seasoning as required.

Using a heavy knife, flatten and stretch the rashers of bacon. Line the bread tins with the bacon, with the bacon overlapping the sides so that it can be folded over to cover the top of the pâté.

Fill the tins with the mixture and fold over the bacon. Cover the tins with double thickness foil and tie the foil in place.

Place tins in a roasting tin and fill half full with hot water. Cook at 180°C for 1 hour 20 minutes. Remove and check: the pâté should have shrunk away from the sides. Leave to cool with the foil in place and with a heavy weight on each tin to compress the pâté as it cools.

Leave in the fridge for a day or two, fetching out half an hour before serving.

Continue reading

You need to create an account to read this article. It's free and only requires a few basic details.

Already subscribed?

TagsRecipes and Recipe
The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking