April in review

Early in April, one of the chickens produced a very tiny egg. It turned out to have no yolk. A late April Fools joke, perhaps?

Tiny egg among the usual sized ones

For our cooking project this month, I chose a country pâté for two reasons. First, I had a package of beef liver languishing in the freezer from last year's beef (I wonder why). Second, I have a memory of a country pâté we had in France at Le Faisan in 1980. It had a meatloaf-like texture with a distinct liver taste and was excellent when served with cornichon. 

The obvious source for a recipe was Julia Child. Sure enough, my copy of From Julia Child’s Kitchen had a recipe for pâté de champagne. So did Hilda’s The Way to Cook. We picked the latter without comparing the two recipes or even reading the recipe very closely. When we got down to it, The Way To Cook’s version used 1 ¼ lb of pork sausage (which was something else that was getting old in my freezer), ¾ lb chicken breast, and only ½ lb of liver, all ground together with seasonings. When we had it all assembled, there we were with a whole lot of liver left.

We looked up the recipe in From Julia Child’s Kitchen. That one took 12 oz. of liver, 8 oz. each of pork, pork fat, and veal or chicken. The chicken wasn’t a problem since I’d defrosted a whole bird for the first recipe. We found some raw pork. We didn’t have pork fat, so we substituted bacon, both in the recipe and for the lining of the baking pan. What’s not to like? For this terrine, the liver was cubed and folded into the other ground meats before cooking.

The bacon-wrapped terrine before baking

The terrines had to bake in a bain-marie (water bath) for hours and then rest under weights for two days before unmolding.

Weighted down for cooling

In the end, the one with the sausage tasted like sausage. Terry loved it. The one with the bacon tasted like bacon, although the liver taste was detectable. I sliced both thinly and put them in the freezer, separated by wax paper.

The final product

I posted a picture of the flood we had on April 18 shortly after it happened. On April 20, we had snow.

A dusting of snow on April 20

The chickens eating their beloved carrot peelings in the snow

Spring finally came in the last week of the month. On April 27, a flock of turkeys showed up. The toms were amorous. As far as I could tell, the hens were less than impressed. As I watched the toms displaying together, I wondered if this is where the term “wing man” comes from.

Turkey flock

Wing man

Hey, baby!