Baked Mushroom Pâté
This recipe is one I have “tweaked” over the years. It started out, many years ago, as a list of ingredients I took from a packet of mushroom pâté bought in a well-known store; I treated the ingredients as though I was making a baked pâté de compagne.
With the advent of the internet, I found various recipes on-line, none of them being quite what I was looking for, and eventually settled on this one, a combination of my original recipe with some tasty additions to create a bit more oomph.
You will need:
- 500g fresh mushrooms – flat field mushrooms are best for flavour, I use whatever’s available
- 2 tablespoonfuls of dried mushrooms
- 300g cream cheese, such as Philadelphia, or a comparable supermarket variant
- 50g crême fraiche or soured cream
- 2 – 3 cloves of garlic (adjust quantity to suit your taste)
- 1 medium onion, chopped or sliced and sautéed in oil till transparent
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tsp herbes de Provence, or a mix of dried thyme and sage
- 1 tsp whole mustard seed
- One large, or two small eggs
- Salt and ground black pepper to taste
What to do:
Before you do anything else, quickly rinse the dried mushrooms in a sieve, under the cold tap. Place them in a bowl and add a good spoonful of red wine, pour about 300ml of boiling water on them and set aside for at least an hour, longer if possible. Next, put them in a pan, warm them slowly, then cook over a very low heat for at least 15 minutes till they have absorbed most of the cooking fluid. Now give them the texture test – i.e. pull out a couple of pieces and bite them. If they’re rubbery, they could do with cooking for longer. You may need to add a little extra cooking fluid if most of it has been absorbed.
I’m always surprised that something that smells quite as unappetising as dried mushrooms when they’re rehydrating, can be so tasty at the end of the process, but trust me, they’ll give a delicious flavour to the pâté.
Next wash or wipe the mushrooms with damp kitchen paper then tear or cut them ready to cook.
Peel and slice the onions and sweat them slowly, in half a tablespoon of either rapeseed or olive oil, together with the crushed garlic, and when they are transparent, add the mushrooms and the bay leaf. Stir thoroughly and add the herbs, then cook gently, stirring from time to time, until all the fluid has evaporated – this helps increase the intensity of the flavour. Now add the dried mushroom mix with any remaining juice, and the mustard seed; continue to cook slowly until all the juice has been absorbed or evaporated. Remove and discard the bay leaf and set the mixture to one side to cool.
Once cool, using a stick blender, briefly chop them, taking care not to over-blend, or the texture of the finished mix may be a bit too smooth.
Decant the cream cheese, soured cream and eggs into a largish bowl and mix thoroughly, using the blender. Next, take a wooden spoon and add the mushroom mix, stirring thoroughly.
Grease and line an oven-proof bowl, soufflé dish or similar, pour the mixture into this and cover the top of the dish with a double layer of tin foil.
The next step is to stand the dish in a roasting tin with about two inches of water. Place the roasting tin with the dish in the oven, preheated to 140o - 150o on the middle shelf. (Remember, all oven temperatures vary quite a bit; unlike if you were baking a sponge cake the temperature of the oven is not critical in this case). Cook for about 90 minutes, topping up the water in the baking tin if it gets too low. Take the foil lid off the dish after this time and leave the dish in the oven for a further 10 mins to allow the top to brown slightly.
Remove the roasting tin and dish from the oven and give the pâté the finger-tip test. The top should give slightly under light pressure. Once cooled, chill the dish for several hours in the fridge before decanting. The paper should peel away easily, et voilà!