Month: May 2021

Try a Terrine Tonight! Duck, Pork and Hazelnut Terrine

Duck and Hazelnut Terrine

Print Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Time in Oven 2 hours
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack
Servings 1 Terrine

Ingredients
  

  • 2 duck breasts
  • 1 set duck giblets (organs from 1 whole duck)
  • 450 g ground pork
  • 2 garlic cloves (peeled and shredded)
  • 10 peppercorns
  • 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
  • 3 whole cloves
  • 2 shallots (peeled and minced)
  • 1/2 cup whole hazelnuts
  • 1 cup fresh parsley (chopped)
  • 1 egg
  • 3 Tbsps panko crumbs
  • 3 Tbsps sour cherry preserves
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 Tbsps duck fat
  • 2 Tbsps cognac (or other brandy)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400ºF/205ºC. Separate skin from the duck breasts. Lay the skins along the bottom of the terrine mold/loaf tin.
  • Add the ducks breasts, giblets and pork to a food processor and pulse until mostly broken down and mixed, leave some of the pieces of meat intact.
  • Using a mortar and pestle, grind the peppercorns, mustard seeds and cloves together.
  • Mix together the meat mixture, spices, garlic, shallots, parsley, egg, panko crumbs, salt, duck fat, and cognac. Fold in the hazelnuts and cherry preserves. Spoon this mixture over the skins in the terrine mold, press it down and smooth out. Cover with foil, place in a water bath in the oven and bake for 1 hour.
  • Turn off oven, but leave terrine in the oven for 2 hours without opening the door. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Slice the terrine and serve with crusty bread. Remaining terrine can be re-covered and stored in the fridge.
Keyword Duck, Duck Breast, Duck Giblets, Hazelnut, Pork

And now for the details…

I am sure I am not the only one, but I have been dreaming and reminiscing of travelling a LOT lately. One of the ways I have been trying to feed my travel bug is through food. I have been doing this a number of ways, like finding new and imported foods (I tried Spanish Lomo for the first time that I got from our local Italian grocer, soooo yummy), getting takeaway from different restaurants (for those in Calgary, I would be remiss to not recommend Bar Von Der Fels, UNA Pizza or Myung Ga), and the last way I have been feeding my travel bug is through trying to recreate foods that we have had when we have been travelling. That last case is where this recipe came from. I was reminiscing of our trip to France several years ago; in particular the spread we would set up for ourselves in the late morning from the goodies we picked up at the local marchés. One of the items I fell in love with there were the terrines. There would be a selection of different terrines, and could including a wide variety of meats, like duck, pork or rabbit. I would simply tell the vendor how thick of a slice I would like and they would cut off the generous slab of terrine and wrap it in thick butcher paper, and hand it over for us to take home. We would pick up baguettes on the way back to where we were staying and then have the terrine with the fresh, crusty bread and a generous dollop of mustard. Oh boy. I am drooling.

If you have never had a terrine before and are looking at the ingredients and thinking “this looks a lot like a meatloaf”… yep! Think of a terrine as a cousin to the traditional North American meatloaf. After all, they are both meat dishes made in a loaf pan and baked in the oven. But the terrine differs in a few ways, one of them being the type of meat used. Terrines often use a mix of different meats, and often use organ meat. In this case, we are using duck and pork, which leaves the delicacy in flavour profile to allow the spices and nuts to also shine. Another way that the terrine often differs is in the fat content. The terrine is usually higher in fat, which is one of the reason why it has some spreadability when smushing it over a piece of crusty bread, or scooping it up with crackers. In our case, we are getting some of the fat content from the pork, but also from the duck skin and the duck fat that is being added to the mix. Finally, terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature. I like to serve it on a plate with other delicious charcuterie bits with mustard and fresh bread, trying to mimic the experience we had (which seems so long ago) in France.

So let’s get to making this thing.

First things first: preheat the oven! Always a good first step, so we do not get to the end of preparation, and then need to wait for the oven to catch up. We are going surprisingly high heat here, 400ºF/205ºC.

Next step, let’s get to the ingredients. The good news: since we have a decent amount of fat here, there is no need to grease the pan! We start by separating the duck skin from the duck breast. The easiest way to do this is to start at an end that the skin is already “floppy” off the meat. You should be able to pinch the meat with one hand, and pinch the skin in the other and start to pull them apart. There will be some connective tissue, so when it starts to pull at the skin a bit too much and you see the skin tearing, use a small knife and cut through the piece connecting the skin to the meat, and then continue to pull apart. Place the skins in your loaf pan and spread them out so they are covering most of the bottom of the pan.

The next step will be to get our spices ready. If you have a spice grinder, feel free to use that, I have an ol’ fashioned mortar and pestle, so that is what I went with. Grind the mustard seeds, peppercorns and cloves until mostly broken down, but leaving a couple little chunks. I feel they add some character and make the dish a bit more charmingly unrefined.

Our next step is to get the meat ready. I got my pork ground so I did not have to mess with a grinder. For the duck, I threw the giblets and duck breasts all together in a food processor and gave them a few whirs to break them down mostly, but leaving a few chunky bits, to try and get that coarse element to the terrine.

The last step is to mix all the ingredients together. I left the hazelnuts and cherry preserves for last, and mixed everything else quite well with my hands. Then, I folded the nuts and preserves in so the preserves did not fully mix in with the rest and you could get occasional bites where the cherries shone through. Pout the entire mixture into the pan over the skins, and press it down.

Finally, it is time to cover the loaf with foil and place in the oven. We will be placing it into a water bath, or bain-marie, to keep the cooking consistent. Place the loaf pan in a larger pan, and fill the outer pan with boiling water until it comes at least halfway up the pan with the terrine. Make sure you do not overfill, we do not want water coming into the terrine pan! Bake the terrine for one hour, then, NO PEEKING, turn off the oven and let the terrine rest for another two hours without opening the oven door.

If you want to go really traditional, this last step is for you! Take the terrine out of the oven, and place a heavy weight directly onto the meat while it cools to room temperature. Some terrine pans have the press included, but there are other DIY options. You could use another loaf pan that is the same size, placing it on top and adding in some weight. You could wrap some cardboard in tin foil and put the weight on top. Or, I have even seen a suggestion to use a brick! What to use as the weight? You could use canned goods, literal hand weights or anything you can find that weighs a few pounds (Julia Child recommends up to 5 pounds!) and you can balance on top of the terrine and press while it cools. The purpose of this step is to compress the terrine as it cools to keep it from forming air bubbles, contracting, and losing its consistency.

Once the terrine has cooled, you can either cut it right out of the pan (this is what we did, no dinner parties for us right now, so let’s just eat!) or flip the terrine onto a plate to serve.

Happy eating

Easy, Rich Tomato Bisque with Boursin Cheese

Tomato Bisque with Boursin Cheese

Print Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course, Soup
Servings 10 cups

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cans Italian tomatoes (796ml, 28oz)
  • 1 zucchini chopped in medallions
  • 2 garlic cloves peeled and minced (or 1 Tbsp freeze-dried garlic)
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 cup fresh basil loosely chopped
  • 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 3 Tbsps Garlic and Fine Herbs Boursin cheese (or preferred flavour cream cheese)

Instructions
 

  • Add all the ingredients except basil, cream and cheese into a large sauce pan over medium high heat. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover the pot and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until zucchini are fully cooked and very tender. Add basil and cook for another 5 minutes.
  • Remove the soup from heat, and blend until smooth either with an immersion blender in the pot, or by transferring to a blender in batches. Return the blended soup to the pot and place over low heat, stirring in the cream and cheese until the cheese has fully melted into the soup. Serve immediately.
Keyword Basil, Cheese, Soup, Tomatoes

And now for the details…

Tomato soup is one of my favourite lunches. Pair it up with a grilled cheese sandwich, and for a few moments, while eating, I am in heaven. In this recipe I have paired up the tangy, umami-ness of tomatoes with the freshness of basil, the richness of cream and the salty, creaminess of Boursin cheese. The use of the pre-seasoned garlic and herbs cheese adds its flavour, eliminating the need to add much else in the way of herbs or spices. If Boursin is not readily available, using a flavoured cream cheese like herb and garlic would do in a pinch, and if you could even just go with plain cream cheese or marscapone, as the basil and tomatoes do not need much seasoning, as they do so well just on their own! I have also added some zucchini to the soup to provide some added veg content and to “beef up” the soup, so to speak.

The best part of this soup is how quickly it comes together. We are using canned tomatoes, and only loosely chopping the zucchini and basil. No need for meticulous preparation (aka high knife skills) of the different ingredients, since we will just be blending it all together at the end anyhow. I even took the let’s-make-it-easy approach a step further and ended up using freeze-dried garlic pieces rather than peeling and chopping.

So to get this soup started, place all the ingredients except the basil, cream and cheese into a large saucepan and put it over medium-high heat. Make sure to add the tomatoes with their liquid!

We are not going to be cooking at this higher temperature the whole time, just until we heat the soup up enough that it starts to bubble. Then, turn the heat down to medium-low. Here is where the magic happens, since we are just going to cover it up and can leave it to cook to get all soft. After about 20-25 minutes, we will add the basil in. You can just tear the leaves off and toss them in, or even loosely chop the leaves and the stalks together and throw everything in, as long as the stalks are not too woody. Cook the soup for another 5 minutes, just until the basil has wilted and spread its lovely scent into the soup.

Now its time to go on a blender. Remove the pot from the heat. There are two options for blending. If you have an immersion blender, you can do this right in the pot, stirring it regularly to make sure we get all the bits so that the soup is smooth. The second option is to transfer the soup to a blender to get a smooth soup. If using a blender, you will also need a second container, since the soup will likely not all fit into the blender at once, and we will need to blend in parts. As discussed in other soup recipes that needed blending, be careful in this step, as the hot soup might burst from the blender container if you overfill it or go to high speed right away. Fill the blender no more that halfway and start on low speed before increasing. When done blending, transfer the soup back into the pot.

Put the pot with the smooth soup over low heat. Add the cream and cheese (breaking the cheese up into pieces/chunks to allow it to melt faster) and stir, heating until it is at your desired temperature and the cheese is fully melted and mixed into the soup.

Serve immediately. If there are leftovers, allow them to cool fully, then transfer to a freezable container. This soup keeps in the freezer for several months and reheats really well. A great meal to keep handy for a quick defrost and reheat!

Happy eating.