CHARCUTEPALOOZA 10: CHICKEN GALANTINE with MADEIRA WINE JELLY or MADEIRA WINE SAUCE and APPLE PEPPER RELISH

Although we’ve dabbled in charcuterie for the past few years, over these ten Charcutepalooza months we’ve still tried to stretch ourselves, trying to make new things in new ways. But this is the month we tried something entirely new. Chicken Galantine. What the heck is that? It is a sort of a chicken meat loaf that is poached in a gelatiney broth, chilled, sliced, and eaten cold. It’s lovely and light, and I was even able to tweak it so that it’s still on the eating plan!

It is a fairly healthy recipe to begin with, so to bring down the unhealthy fat, all that I had to do was to replace the added pork fat with frozen olive oil, as I’ve done in the past with sausage making. Now I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to convert those of us who are in the Great Cult of Pork Fat to consider Chicken Galantine or any kind of sausage made with olive oil, but, really, it’s not bad! 

For this I used the recipe from Rhulman and Polcyn’s Charcuterie, which looked like a fine recipe and differs from the other recipes I’ve seen that it uses Madeira instead of brandy.

The first thing you do is strip the skin off the chicken in one piece. Then you cut the meat off the bones, and use those bones, along with chicken feet, to make a slow cooked broth. The chicken feet are what will make your broth an aspic. I can’t ever put chicken feet in a broth without remembering the year our cute little neighbor child, Laura, told me about giving her dad chicken feet for his birthday, saying she gave him chicken feet “so that he can cook with it”.

Next, you make a forcemeat with the dark meat, shallots, garlic, Madeira, and some of the chicken liver if you like, running it through the grinder and adding a bit of fat, in this case frozen olive oil. It may not be necessary to freeze the oil, and it may blend in just as well as a liquid, but I’ve been freezing it anyway with the idea that it might incorporate better if it’s been frozen.

The meat and fat mixture gets ground again in a food processor with some cream and a few egg whites. I cut back on the fat again by using 1/3 the amount of light cream instead of heavy cream. You then fold in your garnish and seasonings: I added sliced and sautéed mushrooms, pistachios, a pinch of Spice Parisienne*, truffle salt, and some finely chopped fresh marjoram, thyme, and winter savory.

This mixture, with some seared breast meat running down the center is then wrapped in the chicken skin, bound with cheesecloth, poached in the aspic, chilled, sliced, and served with some kind of a sauce. (I know, I know, that chicken skin isn’t so good for you, and neither is that cream, but I just couldn’t resist! I did peel it off after it was poached and chilled).

*To make Espices Fines (Spice Parisienne)*, mix a teaspoon each minced bay leaves, white pepper, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and mace with ½ teaspoon each ground cloves, minced sage, marjoram and rosemary.

This Madeira sauce is inspired by a wine sauce recipe from Mary Margaret McBride’s 1957 Harvest of American Cooking, which uses sherry, lime, and currant jelly. Wine jelly can be made with any type of wine, and Marsala would be similar to the Madeira in this. For this, simply jell the same base with either gelatin or pectin. Apple pepper relish is also nice with the galantine.

MADEIRA WINE SAUCE & MADEIRA WINE JELLY

For the base, simmer all ingredients until reduced by about a third, and then strain:

2 shallots, minced

½ c grape or apple jelly (use a non or low sugar type, the kind that is naturally sweetened with fruit juice. If you only have regular jelly, you may want to use less so that its won’t become too sweet)

a few sprigs each of marjoram, savory, and thyme

1 tsp pink peppercorns, crushed slightly

dash of cayenne

½ - 1 tsp salt

½ c water

1-2 T lemon juice

½ c Madeira

For the sauce, mix ½ tsp arrowroot or corn starch with ¼ c water and mix into strained sauce. Heat, stirring or whisking, over medium low heat until it begins to thicken, and cook for another minute or two. Serve at room temperature.            

For the jelly, you can either jell with plain gelatin, which you use right away, or with pectin, which can be canned. For gelatin, which will make it more of a gelatin than a jelly, dissolve 1 packet of gelatin into 1/3 c water until dissolved and stir into strained sauce base (without the corn/arrowroot starch and butter). Chill for several hours until firm, and use right away. To jell with pectin, which will make it more of a jelly, use a low sugar type of pectin, like Pimona pectin or freezer jam pectin. Measure the sauce base and use the amount of pectin recommended for the quantity of liquid you have. Add the pectin to the sauce base, and heat, stirring, until it becomes glossy.  Pour into warm, sterilized jars, cap tightly, and process for 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature and refrigerate after opening.  You can also use approximately ½ c. apple pectin made from young apples instead of Pimona or freezer jam pectin.

 APPLE PEPPER RELISH

1 c minced apple, green, honey crisp or any other firm, tart type of cooking apple

½ c minced onion

¼ c minced of your favorite red pepper, as mild or as hot as you like. I use a hot Thai chili. (HLC, skip the pepper and use an extra ¼ c onions for a nice apple onion relish).

1 c apple cider vinegar

3 T brown or turbinado sugar, or honey

Put onion, apple and red pepper and cider vinegar and brown sugar or honey in a heavy saucepan and heat to boiling point. Lower heat and cook until thickened slightly.  Can be canned; process 10 minutes. 

And now, for a laugh, check out the Blog Breakdown Pie Chart cartoon from The New Yorker, September 26, 2011 issue.

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE 9: A Paté Revival - Small Pate en Croute, with Chicken Livers, Duck Livers and Pork Confit

OK. It’s a sinful, soulful food, paté is, and it’s not on my eating plan, as it tends to be high in fat and cholesterol, and as I have a tendency to eat an awful lot of it. But it is on Charcutepalooza, so I welcomed the excuse to break with said eating plan. I’ll repent by swimming extra laps and eating a slew of seaweed salad!

Though it can be extravagant, as it is when made with foie gras, it can also be humble, as when made from scraps of leftover this and that. I always like the idea of making something with whatever you happen to have (that’s the "how we live our lives" part), so I dug into the freezer to see what I could find. No pork liver - how ever could I have let that happen? - but there was some chicken and duck liver that would do. No pork pieces, but there was bag of fat scraps cut from various pieces of pork. There were also a few pieces of veal in there, but I’m not about to give them up when the season for Veal Stew with Lemon and Cream (also not really on my eating plan either – more laps and seaweed for me!) is just around the corner. I did find a little bit of ground veal left from something or other that would do instead. Though I’m sure some would say that to make a proper paté I should grind it all from the start, I’m also sure that there have been plenty a fine paté made from pre-ground meat, back in some other day before there was a Kitchen Aid mixer with grinder attachment in every kitchen

In this recipe, I use the aspic and the crust from a recipe for Raised Pork Pie, posted on food52 by luvcookbooks. It is simple yet rich and flavorful, and one of my favorite recipes I’ve tried from the site.

The center of the paté has a layer of sliced duck liver on top of a layer of pork confit. Now confit isn’t necessary for the paté, and it may even be overkill. You could certainly just layer small pieces of raw meat into your paté, grind it in with the veal, or even leave it out altogether. But for this paté, I liked the way the confit blended in seamlessly, soft enough to slice through and spread, but still retaining its character.

Small Paté en Croute, with Chicken Livers, Duck Livers and Pork Confit

Makes about 1 ½ c paté for 1 c in pastry for the day after tomorrow, and about  ½ c plain paté for supper tomorrow.

This paté en croute is a three to four day recipe. On day one you start the broth, render fat for the crust, and glean bits of pork from that fat, and then bake it for the confit. On day two you reduce the stock further, creating aspic, chill it again, and you also make, bake, and chill the paté. On day three you pour aspic into the paté, chill it again so that the aspic can firm up, and finally at the end of day three or on day four you may slice it up and at last enjoy it. That’s why it’s nice to have a little plain paté to whet your appetite in the meanwhile.

Day One:

Get started on some pork broth for aspic: You’ll only need about ½ to 1 c for the paté, but make a good sized batch so that you have lots left over-you can freeze it to have around to add amazing flavor to beans, vegetables, soups, etc. Take a few pork bones, with some meat still on them, place in a large pot and cover with water. Add an onion, cut in quarters, and bring to a simmer.  For the Raised Pork Pie, luvcookbooks has you add a carrot stalk, a bay leaf, and some thyme, oregano, and peppercorns, and you can do this too, but for pate I prefer the aspic made with just an onion. Turn heat as low as you can get it so that it continues to release steam, but is not bubbling away. Cook the broth like this for several hours, until reduced by 2/3, every once in a while skimming off any gunk that comes to the surface. Remove bones, strain and chill broth.

Render some pork fat: put a few pieces of pork fat (about 6 or 8 oz.) into a small saucepan with and add cool water just to the top of the fat. Put the heat on very low and cook uncovered for a few hours until the fat comes apart and becomes mostly liquid. Remove any still solid pieces of fat, and at this point, if you’re a sloppy butcher as I am, you’ll be able to poke through the fat and the pot and pull out any little pieces of meat that were left on the fat. Strain and chill the pan liquids. When chilled, remove the fat and ad any liquid at the bottom to your pork broth. (Alternatively, use purchased lard for the crust and a few small pieces fresh pork – butt or fatty chop- for the confit).

Make the confit: if you’re using meat and fat from the rendering process, put the meat scraps and fat solids in a ramekin with a bay leaf. Place in a baking dish filled with water to halfway up the side of ramekin, cover with foil and bake in a 300 oven for an hour or so. If you’re using fresh fat and meat bake for two or three hours, until it is super soft and pulls apart with just a fork. When it’s cooked and still warm, spread some of it onto a piece of bread or cracker, sprinkle with salt, and eat it right then and there, standing barefoot in your kitchen. Chill the rest.

Get ready for making paté:  freeze your grinder or food processor components, discs, blades, and bowls.

Day Two:

Reduce Broth, Making an Aspic: remove pork broth from refrigerator and remove fat. Return to large pot and simmer, continuing to skim until it is reduced to just a few cups of liquid. It should be slightly thick. Strain again and refrigerate. It should firm up to a jell, but if it doesn’t,  just blend in 2 tsp plain gelatin dissolved in ¼ c water.

Make Paté: First, in a small bowl, marinate 6 oz veal cut into 1” pieces and 1 oz pork backfat cut into 1” pieces (or 6 oz ground veal and 1 oz minced pork backfat) with 1T Cognac. In another small bowl, combine 3 oz chicken livers, 1 minced shallot and 2 T Cognac. Refrigerate veal mixture and liver mixture for at least an hour.

Make a panade by heating in a small pan 1 ½ T rendered pork fat with 1 ½ T water. When it is melted together, add 3 or 4 T flour (fine or cake flour is best, but regular flour is fine too) and stir, over low heat, for a few minutes until it comes together in a ball. Keep at room temperature until ready to use.

Saute marinated chicken livers and their liquid in 1T butter just until they are browned slightly on the outside, but so they’re still squishy soft to the touch. Add another tablespoon or two of Cognac, ignite, and let flame burn out. Cool to room temperature. Mix up the pate. If you’re using chunks of meat and fat, run it through your grinder, along with the chicken livers and panade, using a medium or large disc, one pass if you want a coarse pate, two if you would like it smoother. If you don’t have a grinder, you can pulse it all in your food processor, but don’t turn it to a paste. If you're using pre-ground meat you could either run it through the grinder, pulse it in the processor, or mix it up by hand, take your pick. Mix in ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp Espices Fines (Spice Parisienne)* or allspice, 2 T cream and a pinch of pink preserving salt (not necessary if you don’t have it, but it will help to keep your paté a nice pink color when cooked). Fry up a little piece, taste, and adjust seasonings. Slice 6 oz duck or chicken liver lengthwise.

*To make Espices Fines (Spice Parisienne)*, which is much preferable to allspice, mix a teaspoon each minced bay leaves, white pepper, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and mace with ½ teaspoon each ground cloves, minced sage, marjoram and rosemary.

Make Crust: heat 1/4 c rendered pork fat or lard and ¼ c water. Add ¾ tsp salt and then stir in 1 to 1 ¼ c flour. Stir until just combined. No need to chill this dough; you can roll this out right away. I roll it between layers of plastic wrap.

Assemble and Bake Paté: preheat oven to 300. Line a 1 c ramekin, tin, or pate form with foil or plastic wrap, (optional, but helpful if you want to remove it from the ramekin to serve it), and then roll out crust, and line pan with the crust, reserving a piece of crust for the top. Next, line the crust with a layer of very thinly sliced pork backfat. Put down a layer with about a half a cup of the veal and liver mixture. Cover with a layer of pork confit, and “paste” it down with a teaspoon or two more of the veal and liver.

Cover evenly with a layer of sliced duck or chicken liver, sprinkle with salt, and finish with another half cup or so of the veal and liver mixture, followed by another layer of thinly sliced fat. Top with a few bay leaves if you like, fresh are better if you have them, and cover with top crust.

Cut a 1” hole in the top crust and remove. Cover loosely with foil and place in a baking pan. Place in preheated oven and fill pan with water to halfway up the paté pan. You can also make it free-form on a cookie sheet, wrapping the pate like a present, covering loosely with foil, and baking without water.

Bake for about an hour, remove foil, brush crust with beaten egg, and bake another 30-40 minutes until browned nicely.

Remove from oven, let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate.

If you’ve got leftover ground meat mixture and sliced liver, grease a small ramekin, fill with veal and chicken liver mixture, and top with sliced liver. Brush with some rendered pork fat or oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake in 300 oven for 30 or 40 minutes. You can eat this right away, warm or cold.

Day Three:

Fill Pate with Aspic: Warm a cup of the jelled broth and put it in a pitcher with a good pour spout. Pour a bit of the broth into the pate through the cut hole in the top crust till it fills to the top. Wait a few minutes until it has absorbed, and fill again. Continue this many times, until the broth is no longer absorbed into the paté. Chill thoroughly, at least several hours, so that the aspic can jell. Slice and serve with some sort of pickle.

Pickled Watermelon Rind is my absolute favorite pickle to serve with this, as the seasonings reflect the seasonings in the paté, and it also has a bit of sweet to play off the bit of salt in the paté. This recipe, from The Philadelphia Cook Book of Town and Country, by Anna Wetherill Reed, (NY: Bramhall House, 1963,) with sliced lemon and preserved ginger, is fabulous.

Spiced Melon Rind

Cut off all green and pink from rind of 1 large watermelon. Weigh prepared rind and soak overnight in brine made with 2T table salt to every1quart water.

Drain and cook rind in fresh water until tender and drain again. For each 2 lbs prepared rind, boil together 4 ½ c sugar, 2 c water, 1 lemon, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced, 2 c vinegar, 1 stick cinnamon, 1 tsp whole cloves, and 1 tsp allspice berries, and pour over rind and add ¼ c preserved (candied) ginger, sliced. Cook about 5 minutes until rind becomes clear and translucent. Pack in clean sterilized jars, fill with syrup and process at once. (Reed has you use plain preserved ginger and remove it before processing, but I prefer to use sliced candied ginger and mix it in with the rind).

I promise, this is one of the best watermelon rind recipes around, and it is so good with pate!

A last note on paté.

The general consensus is that it doesn’t freeze well, which is true. It looses its soft  and smooth texture when frozen.  But it can be revived and reinvented into a very nice spread, and you won’t need to waste any of your lovely paté. Be sure to freeze what you won’t be eating right away, while it is still fresh. When you’re ready to thaw it, do so in the refrigerator. When your paté has thawed, whir it up, fat and all, in your food processor with a little cream, or ideally some of that pork aspic you made, or a little of both.

You can add some fresh thyme, savory, paprika, and a pinch of salt to perk it up. It’s not the pate you made in the first place, but it ain’t half shabby this way.

And a Confession:
I burned the top of that pate!

And simultaneously undercooked the bottom crust!

Thinking I should get with the program and start testing my pate temperatures with a thermometer, I pulled it too soon, thought it should be a little browner on the top, turned on the broiler, and then got distracted!
So the top got scraped, brushed with egg, and re-browned.

Later when I removed it from the mold I saw that the bottom crust was underdone, so it went back into the oven again, this time bottom side up, and then it was returned to the ramekin for the pouring of the aspic.

A pate revival, but still, be sure your sins will find you out!

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE: BINDING Liver Terrine, Fish/Seafood Mouselline, Headcheese, Feet, or Trotters…A Tale of Two, or Four Mousellines. Mousellines of Scallop and Lobster with Watercress and Sorrel

What a cruel and tempting challenge! As much as I love a nice fatty terrine and have been eager to make a good head cheese, I dislike that dreadful diabetes medication Metformin, and am even more eager to have my numbers come out “good” when I go to have my bloodwork done the next time. But the thing about Charcutepalooza is it keeps coming back around on itself.

Back in April, after we did the Charcutepalooza smoking challenge, one of the things that I did with the salmon we smoked was to mold some of it in an aspic and to bake some of it in a terrine. I didn’t put the recipes on the blog, though. The terrines were pretty, and the flavors were good, but I wasn’t quite pleased with either one. There were lots of layers and varied textures, with smoked salmon, asparagus, sorrel, roasted red peppers, capers, and leeks. The aspic had layers of the pre-cooked ingredients with a rich aspic made from a highly concentrated fish stock. The terrine was similar, but was bound with whole eggs and then baked. In both there was just too much going on, and they fell apart when sliced.

So when Mrs. Wheelbarrow included making a fish/seafood mouselline in her binding challenge, I thought I might revisit the fish terrine, and see if I could make it better this time.

I thought I’d take a different approach this time. First off, I made sure to follow the advice of Mrs. W and Mr. R, and to chill all parts of the food processor. This really does make a difference; when the blade and bowl are chilled there is a point in the grinding that the mixture “turns”, and it lightens and fluffs out beautifully. To help with the taste, I went with just egg whites, as I thought the whole eggs were overpowering, too “eggy”. To help with the health aspect, I skipped the heavy cream, and used a panade* made with olive oil instead. And since slicing had been an issue I pureed everything but a few pieces of lobster and scallop. And to rein in my tendency to get too enthusiastic and then have too much going on at once, I limited my “green” layer to watercress and sorrel.

All in all, I think that these mouselline terrines came out pretty well. So here’s the strategy, formula, and technique. The proportions are more or less, give or take. This should make enough for two 1C or one 2C terrine.  Multiply or divide as you wish:

Prepare your layer ingredients:

Roast, seed, peel, and chop an Italian sweet red pepper (skip this if you don’t care for peppers, and just add more lobster to this layer).

Wash and remove the stems from a handful of watercress and a handful of sorrel (if you don’t have watercress, use just sorrel, if you don’t have sorrel, use just watercress, and if you don’t have either, spinach will do, but it won’t be as interesting).

Check to make sure your herbs are clean: parsley, chives

Put a small lobster in a pot of boiling water and cook for about 5 minutes. It will be on the underdone side. Remove from water. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from claws and tail, and chop it into fairly small pieces. You’ll need about 1/2 c. (Use the shells in either bisque or to flavor fish broth, and save any remaining lobster meat for something nice like crepes or ravioli).

Slice 1 or 2 scallops into 3 or 4 thin rounds each.

Make the panade: heat 2/3 c water, a pinch of salt, and 1 T olive oil just to boiling. Add ¼ c flour and stir over low heat until the mixture comes together and pulls away from the side of the pan. Let cool to room temperature before adding to forcemeat.

Make the forcemeat: 1 lb mild fish such as swai or tilapia, 4 or 5 scallops, 3 egg whites, ½ recipe panade. Blend these together in a chilled food processor until smooth and light.

Run this mixture through a sieve. Do this. Really. Even after being pulverized in a food processor there are still strings and strands of things that will mess up your mousselline!

Mix the different layers: Puree  about ¼  of the forcemeat with watercress, sorrel, and the zest and juice of ½ lemon.

Puree about another ¼ of the forcemeat with the roasted red pepper and ¼ c lobster meat.

Reserve remaining forcemeat for scallop layer.

Prepare your terrine or molds:

Line with aluminum foil or plastic wrap, and cut a piece of parchment to fit across the bottom of the mold. Rub parchment with a drop or two of olive oil. I’d never tried using plastic wrap in a terrine, so I tried both this time. I think I prefer using the foil, as the one in the foil had a firmer, more uniform shape, and I didn’t care for the imprint the plastic wrap made on the other one.

Layer the molds:

Place some parsley leaves (no stems), chopped chives, and small or chopped capers in the bottom of the mold.

Carefully spread a layer of the roasted red pepper forcemeat mixture.

Cover with chopped lobster meat.

Carefully spread a layer of the plain scallop and fish forcemeat.

Cover with sliced scallops.

Carefully spread a layer of the watercress and sorrel forcemeat mixture.

Cover with another piece of parchment, cut to fit pan.

Cover with plastic wrap or foil and place in a shallow baking pan.

Pour hot water around molds to reach about halfway up the sides.

Bake at 325F until internal temperature is 145F

Remove from oven, let cool slightly, and pour water from pan.

Weigh the terrines down by placing a plate on the top of the terrine and placing a jar of something on top of the plate.

Refrigerate until very cold, at least overnight.

Unmold and serve on bread or crackers, or by itself. I served mine with avocado and red tomato coulis, and preferred it simply by itself.

*To see a nice illustration of how to make a panade, and also a seafood terrine, visit one of my favorite web sites, Chef Simon. To have a good laugh, have Google translate it from French to English for you… a saucepan is a Russian and forcemeat is a joke!