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.
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