Pork and Spinach Terrine

January 8, 2002

In the late 1960s pate became trendy on these shores. Prior to then, the delicatessen might have stocked the occasional small tin of pate imported from France, but that was about it.

I suspect increasing commercial chicken production was responsible, in a way. Chicken livers were readily available and so, for out smart dinner parties, we would rustle up a batch of brandied chicken liver pate and serve it with crackers or, if we were truly trendy, with melba toast.

I can remember a lot of mashing, pounding and sieving went into making a nice smooth pate. We all had our little brown pottery bowls to contain the masterpiece. And our wooden pate spreaders.

Having developed an interest in chicken liver pate, I decided to branch out into something a little more rustic and my local butcher obliged with the occasional pork liver so I could experiment. I remember grinding up the liver, lean pork, fatty pork and other goodies and producing some mighty fine terrines for picnic occasions.

At the height of all this I lashed out and bought myself a very classy enamelled cast iron lidded terrine from the Le Creuset line. It was in my single days and money was no object when it came to buying good kitchenware. It was wise spending, as it turns out. My Le Creuset pieces are still serving me faithfully 30 years later. (http://www.lecreuset.com).

All the best books mentioned the need to weight down one's terrine or pate after cooking to ensure a more dense consistency. I was a young newspaper reporter at the time and it was still in the days of hot metal typesetting. The chaps in the composing room had great bars of metal that hung down in their Linotype machines and were melted down to meet production needs. This was also a good source of raw material when they wanted to make sinkers for fishing.

They were a friendly bunch so when I explained my need for a decent weight for my terrine, nothing was too much trouble and they cast me tailor-made weight.

The company's carpenter was also a very obliging chap and he cut and sanded me a piece of wood to hold the meat down during cooking.

That fairly solid weight took quite an effort to carry home, but my colleagues' handiwork did brilliantly.

These days pates and terrine are readily bought. But I had a fit of nostalgia the other day and decided to make a pork terrine for a summer dinner. It's a fairly basic one as I like to keep things reasonably simple in the summer when working in a hot kitchen can be a trial.

I just used ordinary pork mince and dispensed with the pork liver - though you could add some if you wished.

I have mentioned the French four-spice seasoning, quatre-epices before. It usually contains cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. You can make your own using a teaspoon each of the first three ingredients and half a teaspoon of ground cloves. At first glance the recipe may seem to contain quite a lot of seasoning but, as the terrine is served cold, it needs plenty or it will taste bland.

Pork and Spinach Terrine

800g minced pork
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
plenty of freshly ground pepper
12 juniper berries
4 tablespoons cognac
2 teaspoons mild sweet paprika
3 teaspoons quatre-epices
350g spinach
thinly sliced streaky bacon

Place the minced pork in a large bowl. Add one finely chopped onion, the garlic crushed and chopped, the salt and a generous amount of freshly ground pepper.

Bruise the juniper berries and then coarsely chop them with a knife and add to the meat mixture with the other spices and the cognac. Blend together and then set aside for an hour.

Wash the spinach thoroughly and simmer it until tender with just the water clinging to the leaves. Place in a colander and weight it down to squeeze out the moisture - I placed a bowl on the spinach then weighted it with my terrine weight.

Check the spinach, squeezing it with your hands to ensure all the moisture is removed. Coarsely chop and blend through the meat mixture.(1)

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Place two or three bay leaves in your loaf pan or terrine and then line the inside with the streaky bacon.(2) Spoon in the meat mixture, pressing it with a spoon to remove any air pockets.(3) Smooth the top and cover with tinfoil (I use my piece of wood (4), wrapped in foil ) and a lid. Bake in a waterbath (a roasting pan contained an inch or two of water) for about 75 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool a little then weight down the top of the loaf and refrigerate for about 24 hours. (You can use some cans of fruit or similar as weights - spread some foil over the meat first). Remove the weights, turn the terrine out onto a serving dish.(5)

Don't be tempted to pour off the liquid when you first remove the dish from the oven - it will get reabsorbed into the meat during the cooling down period. Any fat will rise to the edges when the weighted terrine is set aside in the refrigerator.

Cut into slices to serve. (6) We had this with a simple salad. It would go well as part of a buffet, or served with some crusty fresh bread and sliced gherkins as part of a picnic hamper.