Asian Burrito

A Frankenstein's monster of bits and pieces from all over, not at all authentic, but its own creation. Should these things be put together? Probably not, but the end result is magical, something fiery, hot, fulfilling, and perfect with something cooling and refreshing to wash it down.

There isn't much to making it, but presentation is everything, something is just not the same unless it’s wrapped up snugly in a layer of tinfoil and left to stand for a few minutes before being unwrapped, like a greedy child on Christmas morning, make it hot enough and it’ll be the gift that keeps on giving, the rest in its sheath allows the heat and moisture to permeate through the burrito, warming and softening the tortilla, the rice noodles soak up the excess oils from the chilli pork and everything equilibrates to a perfect eating temperature.


The only real cooking is the chilli pork, which I’m not sure how much instruction you need. Take a good wok, get it hot, add a dash of sesame oil and a tablespoon or two of peanut oil, stir fry the pork mince until cooked through, tip into a bowl. Get the wok back on the heat, add another splash of peanut oil, when nice and hot toss through some sliced ginger and crushed garlic, add the pork back, take care not to add any liquid that may of seeped out, cook until the mince is golden with some tasty crunchy bits. Add in some chilli crisp, that wonderful condiment that you get in jars from asian marts with the surely multi millionairess on the label, somehow disapproving of buying it and giving her more money, if you can’t find her chilli crisp, chilli in oil is good too, get the one with peanuts in it, three ingredient chilli sauce is a winner too, I think she can do no wrong when it comes to her combinations of oil and chilli and other bits and bobs. Back on track, add in a spoon, two, half a jar, two jars, whatever you think your palette can take. Cook through until the meat is coloured that wonderful golden red and the house carries that scent that if you sniff too hard you’ll be hacking up half a lung. Toss through some scallions, add the resting liquids and tip out into a bowl ready to assemble.


The rest is a cinch. Get a square of tinfoil bigger than your tortilla, lay the tortilla on the square, spread with gochujang, add a layer of rice noodles, I use that wonderful Pho brand with the elephant on it, soaked for 10 minutes in boiling water before draining and placing in a bowl with cling film over them, on the nest of rice noodles add the chilli pork, dot with as many Thai red chilli as you think you can handle, add the cabbage, scallions, and mung beans. Finally top with a scattering of the seaweed and fried shallots. Tuck the ends over and roll up, you don’t have to be too tight or careful just make the general idea of a burrito, place it seam side down on the tin foil, fold the foil ends over and then roll up tightly, take care not to use too much pressure though. Set aside in a warmish area.

What you’ll need for the above
Tin Foil, a must for authentic classy presentation.
Tortillas
Rice Noodles
Chilli pork: pork mince, chilli crisp, ginger, garlic, scallions
Gochujang
Korean seasoned seaweed, shredded
Red cabbage, shredded and tossed in fish sauce
Pickled Thai red chilli
Mung bean sprouts
Scallions
Fried Shallots

Pork and Pepperoni

The inspiration for this dish riffs pretty heavily on a post from Ideas in Food, I highly recommend getting them into your daily reading list, or hit them up on twitter. I actually have version two of this on the go now as I write, I’ve amped up the seasoning and am going to experiment a little more with the cooking and serving, so not really the same dish but this served as a springboard to push ideas further.

Counter to my last post about getting maximum comfort for little effort this post is really pushing things in the other direction, but holy heck is it worth it! It’ll take a little time and a little bit of investment of going to a butcher and getting a decent slab of pork belly, which may or may not be frozen, a supermarket is not going to have what you need, I’ve never seen a good three inch thick slab of belly at one, and quite frankly you’ll probably be paying twice the price. I ended up by chance at Preston's in town after doing my restock at Yan's Asian supermarket and they just happened to have a good deal going on frozen bellies, so $20 later and more than 2kg heavier, I left a happy chappy.

There is a bit to this but it’s not really all active, there is a lot of down time, so there are no stress about getting stuff done on time. You’re going to have to plan ahead a few days, so here is the rough break down.

• Defrost the belly if you have to, in the fridge.
• Cure the pork, 24 hours.
• Remove, rinse and dry the pork. Dust with white pepper and place on a rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Place in a roasting pan with the braising ingredients, cook for 8 hours at 120ºC.
• Sometime during that 8 hours make some cavatelli, which is about half an hours work.
• Remove and rest for half an hour, uncovered.
• Cook cavatelli and remove excess fat from the braising liquid, taste and season, combine.

So as you can see not really a whole lot of work, mostly down time, but it’s 56 hour investment of time, totally worth it I promise.

Ingredients
Pork belly, 2kg or so
Pepperoni
Bottle of red wine
Tomatoes, 2 cans crushed
White pepper
Cure mix

Cure mix
1 Part Sugar
1 Part Salt
Chilli powder
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Bay leaf powder


Weigh the pork and work out what 2.5% of the total weight is, that is the weight of sugar and salt to use.


Score the pork deeply to the meat, rub the cure mix in and transfer to a zip lock bag, refrigerate for 24 hours, try to flip it once or twice during that time.


Remove the pork from the bag and rinse, pat dry, coat in white pepper and place on a rack on a pan. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours.

Time to cook!

Place the pork in a roasting dish. Dice the whole pepperoni and scatter around, add in the tomatoes and the whole bottle of wine, I used a tasty Shiraz. Place the tray into an oven preheated at 120ºC. Set a timer for 8 hours and forget about it.


Well apart from the cavatelli you need to make. Just follow the recipe on this page, I subbed out roasted rye for wholemeal flour but rye would be pretty awesome here too.


Take the pork out of the oven and very carefully transfer it to a board. Pour the braising liquid into a pot and let it settle for a while, skim off any excessive fat as this will be a sauce, place it over a very low flame to keep warm.


Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cavatelli, drain and stir through the sauce, keep warm.
By now the pork should have rested for 30–45 minutes. Slice into thick slabs, cutting along the scores, serve with a generous spoon of cavatelli.

Orecchiette with broken pork sausage

With winter comes comfort food, the down side of the desire for warming rich flavours is time, usually the comfort comes from rich unctuous stews and slow cooks, sure you can cheat with a pressure cooker and little tricks, but it’s not quite the same. Thankfully there are a few dishes that really fulfil that winter rich dish feel and don’t take hours to prepare, there is risotto or other creamy rice dishes, always a crowd pleaser, or you can get really quick and indulgent with the dish pictured above, a simple pasta dish that packs a unctuous punch and is deep in flavour.

There are only a few ingredients in this dish, the main one being sausages, it’s important to spend that little bit extra and get good quality ones with high meat content, sausages shouldn’t be viewed as cheap or budget, unless we’re talking about cocktail wieners then I say cheaper the better. The sausage is also a good place to inject a bit of extra flavour into the dish, I used some good quality pork with fennel with great success, don’t be afraid to experiment.

Pasta is another quick way to change up the dish easily, my go to dried pasta for this is the little ears of orecchiette or shells of conchiglie, if I’m feeling particularly virtuous or ambitious for a throw together meal I’d make the orecchiette myself or make a batch of roasted rye cavatelli, but all and all dried pasta is good, it’s easy, and that’s what this is meant to be, a quick and easy throw together that packs a punch of flavour.

Ingredients
Pasta
3 Sausages, removed from casing.
Basil, handful of leaves sliced
Red onion, thinly sliced
Cream
Garlic, crushed
Chilli flakes, optional

Get a pot of heavily salted water on the to boil, and I mean really get it salty, we want the pasta seasoned well. Cook the pasta according to the packet minus a minute.

Put a heavy based pan on a medium high heat, and break the sausage meat in to the pan while still heating, as the pan heats it will help release the fat from the force meat, leave it to brown, resist the temptation to stir, I like it to sit until it has a nice brown crust and then break it up.

When the meat is thoroughly browned, with crisp crunchy bits and is almost cooked add in the crushed garlic clove, and chilli flakes. When the garlic is cooked, lower the heat and add in a good splash of cream, about 150ml, add most of the basil and stir through. Let it cook for a couple of minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

The pasta should be cooked by now, so strain and dump into the sauce, give it a good stir through and cook for the remaining minute.

Serve with a grate of sharp cheese, garnished with the reserved basil and thinly sliced onion.

Hot braised pork and noodles

This is a hot dish, it’s meant to be, it looks like the fiery red pits from hell when cooked, but it’s a little deceiving, the spice hits you hard, climbs up your nose and slaps you round a bit, then the sweetness comes in, gives you a hug and lets you know everything is going to be OK, then it headbutts you and calls you its bitch, and in a daze you slurp down another noodle, scoop another spoonful of rich saucy soup into your mouth as it splashes and flicks burning dots of oily red pain into your eyeballs. But you don’t care, it’s all worth it.


Hot and spicy braised pork belly
This is a little to taste, not precise if any measurements, so trust you palette. The main ingredients are:
500g pork belly, cut into bite size pieces.
2 onions, sliced
1 red pepper, diced
2 tbsp Gochujang, heaped, add more if you like
2-4 tbsp soy, sweet kicap soya*
1 tbsp Korean chilli powder, heaped, more if you want
1 tsp five spice
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
6 large garlic cloves, minced
1 large thumb of ginger, minced
2 tbsp sesame oil
Salt
2 cups chicken stock**
2–3 tbsp rice vinegar

* add some sugar if you have regular soy
** more if cooking traditionally.

• This recipe is done in a pressure cooker, you could do this in a heavy based pan over a low heat simmering for a couple of hour until everything is tender.
• Heat the sesame oil in the cooker, add a large pinch of salt, toss in the pork and cook until browned.
• Add the Gochujang, dry spices, garlic and ginger, stir through a cook through a little.
• Stir through the pepper, onions and soy, make sure it’s all nicely coated.
• Pour in the stock, bring up to high pressure and cook for 60 minutes.
• Remove from the heat and taste, adjust the seasoning with salt and rice vinegar.

Serve with pulled noodles and some sprouts, wet wipes are handy too!


Hand pulled noodles
The recipe and method can be found covered in the Cheat Sheet and in more depth via couple of posts on this blog, Cumin lamb with hand pulled noodles is a good one.

The basic run down of the recipe is as follows:

• Form a ball of dough from 5 parts flour with 3 parts water, and 1% salt by weight.
• Cover and rest for 15 minutes.
• Knead by rolling in to a log and folding in half and repeating for 15 minutes.
• Wrap and rest for 60 minutes.
• Shape into a log and cut into 1cm slices, coat in oil and place on tray.
• Refrigerate and leave for 60 minutes.
• Pull out of the fridge 10 minutes before cooking.
• Stretch the noodles and cook in salted boiling water for a couple of minutes.

Throw together

Not sure if this is really going to be a much of a recipe post. I have been doing a lot of stuff recently where I'm not sure if I should bother sharing it as it seems so simple, so expect a couple of easy ones coming up. I'm quite happy with a dry noodle stir fry I've been working on, lots of black pepper and Sichuan pepper, very moreish and not much too it. So to kick off these easy, kind of what my nights are like at the moment, throw together, haven't done much research, meals, here is pretty much my go to meal when I can't think of what to cook, items switch out here and there but the basis is pretty much the same, salad of some sort, protein, rice, greens, sauce.

The Rice:
Well don't take me as an expert on this, there are better written and researched cooking methods, this works for me and it's easy.

• Add jasmine rice to a pot, add cold water so it's covered by about an inch.
• Place on a high heat, when it has begun to boil place a lid on and reduce heat to low. 
• Time for 9 minutes.
• Drain quickly, don't be too fussy, and dump the rice back in the pot, put the lid back on.
• Leave to sit on a board until ready to serve.

The Pork:
This will of course depend on what kind of meat you have, I had some bone off sirloin that were about 20mm thick. The steaks were seasoned both sides with salt and cooked in a hot a cast iron pan with a little peanut oil for about 2 minutes a side, still pink in the middle, set aside on a board to rest. When ready to serve, slice and lay on a bed of odd flavour sauce and sprinkle with roasted peanuts.


The Bok Choy:
Prepare a little dressing first, 1 Tbsp sesame oil, 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp fish sauce, 1 garlic clove (crushed). Cooking this is dead simple, quarter and rinse the bok choy, after the meat has cooked place the greens in the pan cut side down and cook until browned, turn over and cook a little longer, transfer to a bowl and toss the sauce through.
 


Odd flavour sauce:
I've covered this recipe before.


Celery Salad:
Make up a batch of spicy dressing, cut up about 2 cups worth of celery and toss together.

Pork Schnitzel

Schnitzel, the porky kind, but works equally well with beef, if you’re a traditionalist, is a pretty easy throw together kind of meal, ideally you’ll be getting the crumbing done an hour or so before cooking so it has a chance to set in the fridge. And don’t be afraid of the oil, yes this is shallow fried, yes fried foods are not every day foods, but it’s not really all that bad for you.

We had this golden crunchy schnitzel with a fresh salad, tomatoes and herbs (and herb flowers, thyme flowers are awesome) straight from the garden and heart of celery leaves torn up, red onion a vinaigrette of cider vinegar, garlic and olive oil bought it all together, I like a bit of acid kick with fried foods. Not pictured but essential in my opinion is a good schmear of hot english mustard, there is something about crumbed meat and that hot nasal clearing condiment that works oh so well.

Stage one, preparing your meat.

• Get three bowls and a sheet pan ready, also clear a shelf in your fridge.
• Bowl one, add about a cup of wholemeal flour, a good pinch of fine salt, white pepper and sumac, mix together.
• Bowl two, beat 2 eggs with a pinch of salt until homogeneous.
• Bowl three, add enough breadcrumbs, I prefer panko.

Place the schnitzel in the bowl of flour and toss, ensure the meat is completely coated. Shake off any excess.


Transfer the floured meat to the egg bowl and coat, don’t leave any dry spots.


One at a time, take the meat from the egg mixture, shake off any excess liquid and lay on top of the bread crumbs, press down, flip and press down again, make sure there is an even coating, transfer to the sheet pan and repeat with the remaining meat.


Place the sheet pan in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Stage two, cooking your meat.
Set up your cook area, place a rack near by to drain the cooked schnitzel and put a pan on a medium high heat, I use a 12 inch cast iron skillet to cook with. Pour in about an inch of oil into the pan, rice bran is a good inexpensive neutral oil to use (much better than canola), heat the oil to 190ºC, you can test with a cube of bread by placing it in and seeing if it fries up golden brown, it shouldn’t take long to heat up.

Carefully place one or two pieces (depending on size) of schnitzel in the pan, laying away from you to avoid splashes, and cook for 90 seconds per side, when cooked transfer to the rack to drain, repeat with the remaining schnitzel.

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie

Hot water pastry–Pork Pie
500g flour
200ml water
100g dripping (or lard)
80g butter
1tsp salt (5–10g)

• Gently heat the water, butter and dripping over a low heat. Once melted bring to a boil.
• Sieve the flour and salt together into a bowl, make a well in the centre.
• Mix together to form a ball of dough.

• Wrap and leave to rest for an hour at room temperature.

• Roll the pastry into a rectangle and then fold in thirds, repeat until the dough is smooth, 2 or 3 times).

• Roll out the pastry to about 5mm thick. Line the dish, fill and bake. I used a terrine to make this pie, it was greased with butter and then put in the fridge to set before lining with the pastry.
• The filling was a mixture of pork, nutmeg, chilli, salt, pepper, and mustard. Half of the filling was placed in the pastry lined terrine, hard boiled eggs placed down the centre, the remaining filling tightly packed in and the whole terrine banged to dislodge any air bubbles.

• An egg yolk wash was brushed on before laying the pastry lid, with air vents cut out, on top and crimping the edges, then a final egg yolk wash.
• Cook in a 200ºC oven for 30 minutes before lowering the temperature to 180ºC and cooking for a further hour.

• Allow the pie to cool in the dish completely before carefully turning out. Best served room temperature with some relish or hot mustard.

Christmas Pork

Well I hope everyone had a good break, I probably over did the sun, food and drink a bit too much, but then again that is what the holiday season is about. I got lazy with a brew and instead of bottling it I put it on top of a kilo or so of raspberries, a choice I would repeat.


I managed to secure a good 4.5 kg chunk of pork belly for the festive day, the plan was to roll it and rotisserie, but the BBQ could only take 3 kg length, so the smaller chunk went into a brine and then eventually into a slow oven to cook out chill and roast again on boxing day for a post festive dinner, excessive yes, but waste not want not.


The remaining 3 kg was massaged skin side with some kosher salt to remove impurities, the inside was smeared with crushed garlic, rosemary, thyme, lemon rind, salt, chilli. A brined pork fillet laid down the centre and the belly rolled around. the whole log tied together in a butcher's knot.


The small addition to the rotisserie was potatoes. So the spit was loaded and the flame set to medium and drip pans set and loaded with new potatoes placed right below the rolled pork and then the pork set and forget for 3 odd hours.


The exterior was golden brown, skin tooth crackling crunchy, and the interior was moist and fragrant, being constantly basted in the spiced herby melting fat as it rotated slowly.

Ramen

Alkaline noodles

400g Flour
200ml Water
12 g Baked Soda*

• Dissolve the Baked soda in half the water (warm) then add the other half (cold). 
• Add the flour and knead for 5 minutes, it’s tough work rather like kneading a brick. 
• Wrap in cling-film, leave for 20 minutes at room temp. 
• Knead for another 5 minutes, it’s a little less brick like but still damn hard work. 
• Re-wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour. 
• Cut into 5 portions and run through a pasta machine getting it down to the 2nd thinnest setting.
• Either slice by hand or run through the fine cutter.

Cook for 2–3 minutes in plenty of salted water and give a quick rinse in cold water once cooked.


*Cook baking soda in a 120ºC oven for an hour.

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Pork Cheek

Pork Cheek
Ginger
Garlic
Chilli flakes
Katsuobushi
Oyster sauce
Cider vinegar
Soy sauce
Water
Tamarind
Rice wine
Fennel
Red onion
Celery
Apple
Parsley
Star anise
Bay

• Heat a heavy based oven proof dish over a medium high heat, brown the cheek all over.
• Add the vegetables, large dice, and all the liquids & spices, add enough water to almost cover everything. Place on a lid and braise for 2.5 hours at 130ºC.
• Cool, remove meat and refrigerate in a tight fitting container with some of the cooking liquid.
• Strain the remaining cooking liquid and refrigerate, when cooled the fat will solidify on the top, use this to crisp up the sliced pork cheek.

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Dashi

• Put 3 Litres of water in a pot, add 4-5 six inch pieces of kombu to the pot, bring to the boil cover and turn off the heat, leave it for an hour. 
• Add a packet of dried shiitake mushrooms, simmer for 30 minutes. 
• Scoop off the mushrooms and put in a container, cover with soy sauce, cool and place in the fridge (soy pickled shiitake). 


• Add a good portion of katsuobushi, about 1 cup heaped, simmer for about 30 minutes. 
• Strain, cool and refrigerate until ready to use.

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Soup base

Add a 50/50 mix of Dashi and pork cheek cooking liquid to a pot and bring to a simmer, adjust seasoning with vinegar, chilli flakes and salt.

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13 minute egg

• Bring a pot of water to 75°C, using a large volume of water will make maintaining a constant temperature easier. 
• Place eggs into the water and cook for 13 minutes, don’t use eggs straight from the fridge. Transfer the eggs to an ice bath to cool. 
• Reheat the eggs at 60°C for 10 minutes (run under the hot tap), or store in the fridge for up to 2 days. 
• Crack around the fat end of the egg, remove the shell and pour the egg out.

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Build the bowl
Add the cooked noodles to the bowl and lay on slices of the pork cheek, either sliced thinly cold or sliced thicker and grill to give it a nice caramelised side and warm through, pickled vegetables (ginger, daikon), soy pickled shiitake, chilli flakes or fresh slices, scallions, nori sheets and 13 minute eggs, up to you really. Gently pour over the soup base.

sweet, sour, salty braised pork with hand pulled noodles

I’ve covered hand pulled noodles before on this site, so this is not a rehash of the noodle recipe, how to make the slurpy tasty noodles can be found in previous posts. The following is a tasty sweet, sour, salty braised pork dish that is unctuous, sticky and delicious. Served with the liquids and vegetables tossed through the fresh cooked noodles and topped with slices of the wobbly caramelised pork belly, makes for an insatiably devourable dish.

Pork belly, bones removed (put in the braise if you have them)
2 Oranges, zest and juice
1 Large chunk of ginger, peeled and grated
5 Cloves of garlic, grated
Large Bunch of coriander, leaves chopped and root set aside
4 or 5 large dried red chillies
1 Large fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 Large onion, sliced thinly
3 Tbsp of fennel seed
6 Allspice berries
Soy sauce
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Palm sugar (or brown)
Rice wine vinegar
500ml Chicken Stock
Salt

Preheat the oven to 160ºC, fan forced.

Heat an oven proof casserole pan over a medium high heat, or use a large frying pan and transfer to a dish later, season the pork belly all over with salt and then place skin side down in the pan and brown for about 5 minutes, flip and brown on the flesh side.

While the pork cooks, grind the allspice and fennel seeds together. Combine about 2-3 Tbsp each of the fish, soy and oyster sauce, also grate the same amount of palm sugar, you may require more depending on how sweet your oranges are.

Remove the pork from the pan and set aside. Sauté the onion and fennel until translucent, add the garlic, ginger, dried ground spices, chillies and coriander root. Cook until fragrant. Pour in the orange juice and zest and reduce. Add the fish, soy and oyster sauce along with the palm sugar and chicken stock.

Simmer for a few minutes, taste and season with oyster sauce, sugar and rice wine vinegar. You want a good balance of sweet/sour/salty, you need enough sweetness so it will become a lovely sticky sweet and sour sauce.

Stir through a handful of coriander leaves, keep some aside for garnish, nestle the pork into the sauce and cover. Cook for 2.5 hours. Remove the lid and cook for a further 30 minutes.

Slice the meat with a sharp knife and let it rest in the sauce while you prep and cook the noodles. Toss the cooked noodles with some of the soft fennel and onion and a good helping of the liquid, top with slices of melt in the mouth pork, garnish with mung bean sprouts, chilli oil and coriander leaves.

Brined to Grill

Brining meat is a great way to get a little more flavour in it and retain a bit of moisture. When you brine a couple of already awesome pork shoulder chops you’re almost transforming them into quick brined ham. As it’s a pretty quick brine you don’t have to be too precise with the salt levels, I used about a cup of cider, which adds a nice sweetness and sugars to help caramelise, a good pinch or four of kosher salt, probably about 3 percent, a good dollop of Dijon mustard, because well apple; pork and mustard is a winning combination. The liquid along with the chops were placed in a ziplock bag and sealed, leaving just a corner unsealed, then submerged in a sink of water, forcing all the air out of the unsealed corner which is finally sealed. Placed in the fridge for a few hours or overnight, thrown on a hot grill, letting all the fat drip out and sugars caramelise they made a quick and easy dinner with a side of spicy potato salad. Sometimes quick and easy may take 5 minutes of prep and a little patience.

Pâté de Campagne

I bought myself a wee early Christmas present, a Le Creuset Terrine, I’ve always wanted one but the price tag has put me off until now, however I had plans for my contributions toward the Christmas fare and it seemed as good of an excuse as any to indulge myself. I’ve previously mentioned the Walnut bread and Chicken Liver Pâté, but they were mere sides to my ambitious plans, well maybe not that ambitious, of Pâté de Campagne is pretty simple to put together, although the mincer from hell almost broke my wrist but apart from that it’s just few simple steps and patience.

You’ll have to excuse the lack of gram measurements, as these will depend on how large your terrine is. Also if you can get pork liver, great, if not use chicken, the same can be said of caul fat which I couldn’t get my hands on so I used very fatty belly bacon.


Meat
2 parts pork shoulder
1 part pork back fat
1 part liver

Trim the livers and cut in half, cut the back fat and should in to cubes small enough to fit through your mincer feeder. Chuck the whole lot in a bowl that will fit in your fridge.


Marinade
Brandy
White wine
Sage
Thyme
Parsley
Shallots
Nutmeg
Pink Salt (optional, use 1% by weight of the meat)

Roughly chop the herbs and shallots and toss into the bowl with the meat, grate in nutmeg to taste. Pour in a glass of wine and a splash of brandy. Add the pink salt if you’re using. Stir through and cover. Refrigerate overnight.


Other
Streaky bacon/caul fat
1 egg
Salt (around 2% by weight, this can be adjusted later)

Set your mincer up with a medium die and pass through the meat mixture. Using your fingers mix through the salt and egg. Take a small portion and wrap in cling film, making it water tight, and poach in some simmering water until cooked, taste and adjust the seasoning as needed, remember that the terrine is served cool so the seasoning will be more muted.


Line the terrine with the bacon (or fat) and pour in the minced mixture. Tap the terrine on the bench to get rid of any air pockets. Fold the bacon over the top of the mixture and place on the lid. Place the terrine in a bain-marie (with hot water) and into an oven set at 150–160°C, cook for about 2.5 hours, or until the internal temperature is about 70°C (65°C should be enough though).


Remove from the bain-marie and let cool, then weigh down a tight fitting lid with a couple of cans, use a stiff piece of cardboard cut to the correct shape and wrap in tin foil, refrigerate overnight.

Serve with pickled onions, cornichons, hot mustard and my walnut flat bread.