I was a bit of a philistine when it came to pate.  Smooth or rustic; it really didn’t matter and was largely ignored on my list of food priorities.  In my younger years I thought it was a little girly.  Why dabble with a perfectly good hunk of liver which went very well with a pile of onions, was my general attitude.  Creating a paste to spread on a dry cardboard cracker was an unnecessary and cumbersome exercise.  I also have a sneaking suspicion that I have an early poor association with pate, but I can’t seem to locate the memory.  Maybe I tried it as a child and found the taste too rich for my unrefined, junior taste buds and subsequently steered clear of it for years.  Or maybe as a shy teenager I was forced to stuff a pate covered ritz cracker under the sofa, into a plant or into a pocket to avoid eating such a dodgy canapé thrust upon me by an overzealous aunt or cousin at a family gathering.   Suspicious looking canapés were a signature of Irish gatherings in the late seventies and early eighties and pate seemed to be very much favoured by the new and emerging sophisticates who had discovered French cuisine.  Those mavens leading the vanguard of this French food revolution misguidedly suggested that this was all about stretching us and learning to be as refined as the Europeans.  For the Europeans in question pate and terrines were a way of creating and preserving nutritious and inexpensive food.  Offal would have been the bits that were discarded or sold at low cost or as animal feed.   Making a nutritious and delicious pate was an inexpensive way of making this meat stretch.

Now I love pate, what a difference a decade or two makes.  When hunting for a quick late night snack it can be very satisfying to take a packet of crackers, a hunk of pate and a glass of wine or port, if possible, and indulge.  If I feel like cooking I might even go to the bother of making toast. 

My mind was changed as a student when I encountered a French girl who was in Ireland to improve her English.  When she suggested that pate was one of her favourite foods I found myself nodding in agreement and suggesting that I would be willing to share some.  Given her honeyed tones, olive skin and the heavily accented English, had she suggested that fried cats’ testicles were her pleasure I would probably have agreed to try those too and offered to harvest some for her!  Yes, men really are such simple, fickle creatures.  Fortunately her obsession was with meat pate.  Being the son of a butcher I had an endless supply of the main ingredients.  Looking back I wonder if I should feel used in that maybe she only wanted me for my meat.  Whatever the case, my taste buds truly benefited in the exchange and I developed a taste for pate.  I often look back fondly on those days of cheap port consumed with exquisite pate on Jacobs cream crackers while sitting on the floor listening to some awful French pop singer on a tinny cassette player.  I wish I could tell you they were beautiful moments of youthful trysts with legendary French singers providing the score to these epicurean pleasures but it was the complete opposite.  However, the lessons in pate making may as well have been from Raymond Blanc himself.  What this girl could do with a two ring burner, an old frying pan and a tiny fridge were quite remarkable.

As with many such encounters of youth I have long lost touch with the person but her pate making lessons never left me.  It is a skill I have always enjoyed having and particularly as it was learned and acquired in such pleasant circumstances.  I regularly buy artisan pates but every now and then I indulge in making one of my own.  Molded up in pretty dishes, pate makes a great food gift. If you perfect the art of pate making and create a good recipe you might even find the odd person requesting it.

So what makes a fine pate?  Well I have long since dispensed with the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect pate.  Cake baking is an absolute science, mess with the basics and your cake will either turn out brick like and hard or too soft and will sink and crumble.  Pate making on the other hand is of a much more robust nature.  It allows and accommodates creative freestyle ingredient choosing.  Pate can be as fancy or as plain as you like and most are much easier to prepare than you might expect.  You can also use different alcohols from brandy and champagne to port and sherry.  Just free your imagination and your taste buds will truly appreciate the effort.  And don’t be afraid to experiment with the crackers either. The inspiration for this article came while working last Saturday one of my customers was telling me how hard it was to get chicken livers and this is true.  I was delighted to be able to tell her that available all the time at James Whelan Butchers we have 1lb tubs of frozen chicken liver if you ask any of the butchers.

 Try something new this week. I always welcome you comments and feedback.

Chicken Liver Pate

•500 g Chicken livers

•1 clove garlic chopped

•2 rashers bacon chopped

•50 g butter

•1 onion finely chopped

•2 tbsp chopped parsley

•3 tbsp sherry

•3 bay leaves

•150 g clarified butter

•salt and pepper

Using your large knife, remove the heart from the chicken livers and cut off the white sinews.

Heat a large frying pan. Add the chopped bacon and fry for about a minute.  Add in the  onions and garlic and fry for about another 2 minutes. Add the 50 grams of butter and toss the contents in it.

Add the chopped chicken livers. Stir and fry for 7-10 minutes, tossing occasionally.

Add in the parsley, sherry and season with salt and pepper. Then remove immediately from the heat.  (This is where you can be quite creative and use spices or other seasonings)

Spoon the mixture into a blender and blend until smooth.

Spoon into a bowl and smooth it on the top. Lay decorative bay leaves on the top and then carefully pour over the clarified butter. Set aside to cool for 1 hour if you need to serve it soon. Or you can cover it with cling film and place in the fridge.   Once opened, it will last 2 days.