25.2 Charcuterie: forcemeats, terrines and pâtés

Charcuterie is the craft of making sausages, fresh and dried, as well as rillettes, terrines, pâtés and galantines; the word can also mean the people who make them. It comes from the French chair, flesh, and cuite, cooked.

Charcuterie makes good use of the cheaper, tougher cuts from low on the animal. The saying "eating high off the hog" refers to the costly, tender cuts higher up. Tough cuts are made pleasant to eat by braising them slowly or by grinding them. Sausage, its six basic parts, its casings and grinding are taught with meat. see chapter 11: What sausage is

Forcemeats

Decide first what texture you want. A rustic country pâté should be coarse and chewy, so grinding may be enough. A smooth one needs processing, puréeing and sieving. Two rules hold for every kind: keep the equipment cold, and taste before you cook the whole batch.

There are four kinds of forcemeat:

• Straight. Pork and pork fat, plus an equal amount of the main meat. The meat and fat are cubed, seasoned and cured, rested cold, then ground through a coarse die and again through a smaller one. This is called progressive grinding. Some cooks grind through a medium die and then finish the mixture in a mixer or food processor. Raw egg can help it bind, and heavy cream makes it smoother and richer. Keep the emulsion cold over ice baths as you work. Straight forcemeats fill pâté en croûte, terrines and galantines.
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• Country style. Coarse and boldly flavored, usually pork, pork fat and liver with other garnish ingredients; one country pâté was made mostly of mushrooms. Grind everything once through the coarse die. Keep some of it back, and grind the rest again through the medium die. Mix that twice-ground part with a panada (a binder of starch and liquid), then fold the two grinds together. The panada holds them together during and after cooking.
• Gratin. Close to a straight forcemeat, except that the meat, usually liver, is seared lightly first for color and deeper flavor. Work in small batches in a hot pan, and do not cook the meat through. Set each batch aside and leave the browned bits (the fond) in the pan. Some recipes then cook finely diced shallot or onion in the fond and flame it with brandy. Chill everything, then process it like a straight forcemeat.
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• Mousseline. Very light, made from lean white fish, chicken, veal or shellfish, with cream and egg to make it airy. Process the diced meat with the salt to a paste, then add the egg white, then the cream. Scrape the bowl down so the mixture is even, and stop as soon as it is smooth; it is quickly overworked. Scallops hold more water, so add the cream to them with care. A very fine mousseline can be pressed through a drum sieve called a tamis; with rabbit, the tamis also catches the sinew.
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A standard mousseline ratio, to be checked against your recipe:

Test before you fill. Cook a small amount and taste it, so you can fix the seasoning. Cook the test the same way as the finished dish. For a poached galantine, shape a spoonful into a small log inside plastic wrap, tie it off at both ends, and poach that. A test fried in a pan browns, and the browning changes the taste. Tasting is taught earlier. see chapter 6: Tasting like a cook: the senses

Terrines

A terrine is a pâté made in an earthenware mold. It may be baked in a water bath, or, as with a cold vegetable terrine, built up in layers of aspic. Any kind of forcemeat can become a terrine. Some are lined with plastic wrap so they come out of the mold easily; others are wrapped in bacon, ham or vegetables for flavor and looks. A terrine en croûte is baked inside a pastry crust. A terrine is sliced from the loaf, or, like rillettes, served as a single portion; it is usually its own course, alone or with a salad.

• Line the mold. Use thin slices of fatback, bacon, ham or prosciutto, blanched green leek leaves, caul fat, or plastic wrap. For plastic wrap, spray the inside of the mold lightly with water, lay the film in, and press it into the corners with a towel or brush. Leave no air between the lining and the mold.
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• Fill it. Pipe a fine mousseline in from a pastry bag. A country pâté can be thrown in by the handful, which packs it and drives out air; a spatula also works. Fold the lining over the top, tap the mold on the table to bring up trapped air, and put on the lid.
• Cook it in a bain-marie (a water bath), which shields the forcemeat from harsh heat. Lay a towel in a hotel pan, set the covered mold on it, and pour in simmering water most of the way up the mold's sides. Hold the water at 165°F, with the oven at about 300°F.
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• Cook to a safe internal temperature. Ground meat, including ground pork, beef and fish, must reach 70°C (158°F); poultry, and any food mixture containing poultry, eggs, meat or fish, must reach an internal 74°C (165°F) held for 15 seconds or longer. Cook the terrine until it reaches that internal temperature: 165°F for poultry.
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• Cool, press and chill. Cooked food must drop from 60°C (140°F) to 20°C (68°F) in two hours or less, then on down to 4°C (40°F) in no more than four further hours. Take the terrine out of the water bath and leave it on the table until it falls to 90°F, then set a wrapped plate on top with a 2-pound weight and refrigerate it.
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• Let it mature. Leave the terrine in the refrigerator for several days so the flavor develops, then coat it in aspic, or slice it and dip the slices. Food held in the cooler more than 24 hours is marked with the date it was made and a "serve by" date, and potentially hazardous foods still unused three days after they were made should generally be discarded.
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Terrines bound with aspic. Here the main ingredients are the stars, so season them well. Make the aspic from a well-flavored stock, keep it clear, and use only as much as you need between the layers. Set the mold in an ice bath and let each layer of aspic set firmly before you add the next, or the layers will slide apart. The aspic works like mortar between bricks.

Galantines

A galantine is nearly always chicken: the white meat is wrapped around a forcemeat of the dark meat (often with pork and fat), rolled into a log, and wrapped in the bird's own skin. A second wrap of cheesecloth or plastic goes round it; then it is poached, chilled, sliced, coated with aspic, and served on a platter coated with a decorative layer of aspic. Poaching is taught earlier. see chapter 9: What poaching is

• Get your mise en place ready.
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• Cut along the back and take off the skin in one piece. Square it off and lay it inside up.
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• Bone the bird: take out the tenderloins and the breast, and bone the legs. Keep the bones for stock, and pull the tendons from the tenderloins.
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• Pound the tenderloins to an even ¼ inch, and arrange the breast meat along the long side.
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• Mix the ground chicken with the spices and pork, and chill it. Process it with some ice into a smooth emulsion.
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• Spread forcemeat over the breast, lay the tenderloins on as a garnish, and cover with more forcemeat.
• Move the galantine onto plastic wrap and roll it up tightly, pressing out the air. Twist and tie the ends.
• Poach it. Poultry must reach an internal 74°C (165°F) for 15 seconds. Poach the galantine to that 165°F.