Pork, Duck, Cranberry and Pistachio Terrine

You know what mt fine food friends, I’ve been wanting to make this pork, duck, cranberry and pistachio terrine for ages. However, with the slight festive theme of the cranberries, I really needed to wait until we hit the December 1st benchmark. Well, we’re here now so there’s nothing stopping me! Look at this beauty…

However, before I show you how to make this bad boy, I wanted to share with you where the idea came from.

Back in the summer Jen and I made a little tour of southern Spain and ended up having a couple of nights in Barcelona. Whilst exploring the capital of Catalonia we happened upon a restaurant called L’Olive, which I would highly recommend by the way. On the menu of this wonderful local eatery was a variation of this dish. I say variation because I made this recipe myself from ingredients that I thought the local chef used, and, I have to say,  it’s not far off from that which we had in L’Olive.

Although we tried this in the summer I see this more as an appetiser through the Christmas period. The strong rustic meats lend themselves to the winter and the cranberries add to the festive feel. You can also make this beforehand and freeze if you like. Just make sure it’s fully defrosted in the fridge before eating.

OK, less of the history lesson and onto the cooking. This is a fantastic strong tasting terrine with lots of flavours. C’mon, I’ll show you how to make it…

1. Get the ingredients together

As always, I highly recommend getting all of the ingredients together before you start to prepare and cook. This is especially important with a recipe like this one with quite a large number of ingredients.

The preparation for this pork, duck, cranberry and pistachio terrine is basically threefold. Firstly, you prepare the duck and collect the duck fat. Secondly, you prepare the meats i.e. the pork, duck, duck livers and bacon. Finally, there is the blending and making of the terrine.

To this end, I pull together the ingredients in 3 separate groups. First, the duck ready for cooking.

Secondly, prepare the meat by roughly chopping the pork shoulder and the streaky bacon. Although keep 5 rashers of the bacon back for covering the terrine before baking.

Finally, measure and lay out all of the other ingredients.

Note here that I have roughly chopped the garlic and shallots. I have also taken the black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cloves and cinnamon and used a pestle and mortar to crush them all to a powder.

With all of this preparation done we are almost ready to make the terrine. But first, a word about the duck.

2. Cooking the duck

You could simply remove the skin from the duck, roughly chop the breast and add them to the meat ready for blending. However, for flavour, and binding, you should really roast the duck and the skin for around 20 minutes at 160C / 140C Fan simply to release the duck fat.

Once the 20 minutes is up, remove the duck from the oven and discard the skin. Poor and fat into a cup and set aside. You will use this in the making of the terrine. Finally, roughly chop the duck breasts.

3. Make the terrine mixture

In simple terms, making a terrine like this one means just mixing all ingredients together and baking slowly over a couple of hours or so. However, you do not want the meat to course such that doesn’t stick together. You also don’t want it too smooth so it ends up like a pate.

Enter the food processor. A wonderful and versatile tool that no keen cook should be without.

For this pork, duck, cranberry and pistachio terrine you should first take the pork, duck breasts (not livers) and bacon and add to the blender. Blend this in batches depending on the size of your blender to a coarse texture. My recommendation is to use the pulse function if you have one and check the texture until coarse.

Once blended to a coarse texture remove from the blender and add to a large bowel or casserole pot.

Next, soak the bread in the milk for 3-4 minutes and squeeze out any excess milk. Add this to the blender along with the duck livers, garlic and shallots. Blend this all together, again, to a coarse texture and add to the meats.

Now, add to the bowl the ground spices, the duck fat, brandy, eggs and 2 good sized pinches of Maldons sea salt.

Finally, either with a wooden spoon or as I like, with my hands, give everything a through and good mix.

4. Form the terrine

Now it’s time to form the terrine. Ideally, you’ll have a 1.5-litre terrine dish. If not, a small casserole dish would do but I do recommend purchasing a terrine dish if you can.

To form the terrine fill have of the terrine dish with the terrine mixture.

Now sprinkle the pistachios and cranberries over the mixture.

Finally, add the remaining mixture to the terrine dish until it fills to the top and then lay the remaining rashers of bacon over the top. Put the lid on, or cover with foil if you do not have a lid.

The terrine is now ready for cooking.

5. Cook the terrine

With the lid on the top of the terrine dish place the dish in a large roasting tray and fill the roasting tray with water until it is halfway up the terrine dish.

Now cook in a pre-heated oven at 180C / 160C for 2 hours and then remove the lid and leave in the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the bacon has gone crispy.

Finally, leave to cool and then remove from the terrine dish and wrap in foil. Refrigerate at least overnight before eating and serve with hot buttered toast and pickled gherkins. Yummy!

And that’s it my friends! Pork, duck, cranberry and pistachio terrine. Enjoy any time but great as a Christmas treat. As always, I would love to hear your comments or questions. Just use the comments section below.

Many thanks for reading and until next time…Steve.

 

 

6. Printable recipe