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