Welcome back Pâté en Croûte.

 

 

Making a move back into the limelight.

 

Pâté en Croûte

Soon on a menu near you!

As a young cook we sought out inspiration from cookbooks popular in our era for example, Pelleprats and Larousse Gastronomique.

I remember I once told a young chef to read Larousse Gastronomique three times to get a good background in cooking, now days these bibles only represent an epoch we passed through or time capsule from our past, my copies still stand proud in my bookcase slowly gathering dust. These dated works represent today only a slice of the information that today’s young chefs are drawing knowledge from, the internet in all it's splendour: At the end of every shift the lucky old cookbooks are finding their way into antique stores the rest into local dumpsters. Even the essential bookcases are disappearing.

We gathered ideas and inspiration from these mastodon works and devoured and pawed over the photos. One underlining common factor in all these encyclopedias were the photos of the Pâtés and pâté en croûte, these dishes represented the pinnacle of technical skills in the traditional garde mange “cold larder” section in the old kitchen brigade. Sadly, these skills are disappearing faster than the cookbooks and bookcases they were kept in.

Before the camera or telephone hand written recipes were the norm in the kitchen. Now the telephone is the cooks main piece of equipment, we can cook anything as long as we can find it on the internet.

The two following recipes are over 40 years old, written back when I was working in a classic 5 star hotel kitchen in London.

At the time we had a garde mange brigade with 10-12 cooks there we had the time and a budget to create and make Pâté en Croûte and of course it was served from the silver hors d´oeuvres trolley, with a gueridon waiter to carve it.  We didn't have cameras in the kitchen and of course there were no telephones to snap pictures, it was back to the basics, colouring in pencils.

 

 

Partridge pâté en croüte
Hare Pâté en Croûte

Pâté-Croûte

The Swedish championship

Pâté-Croûte

I was extremely interested when I heard last year that initiative was taken to bring to and introduce the competition Championnat du monde de Pâté-Croûte to Sweden.

The international Pâté-Croûte world championship competition is coming up to its fifteenth consecutive year, obviously the competition is at home in France, Lyon to be exact. So, a French home turf advantage is at play. I suppose they deserve that honour as Pâté en Croûte is about as French as you can get, the finished terrine is still held in high esteem there, a la mode for its tradition and degree of dificulty, in many other countries it has all but  disappeared due to both the technical challenges with its production and the rest of the worlds culinary direction which is maybe moving away from the traditional Francophile cradle of love. But aside from that its fantastic that it’s making a serious reappearance.

 

 

 

 

Pâté-croûte contender whole pate Technically complicated with a variety of skills needed to produce such a Pâté on Croûte, and a heart stopping moment every time you cut the first slice, the adrenalin increases if you do this in a competition, it's all in there's no turning back.

Swedish Pâté-Croûte contentender

 

The Competition

Why Pâté-Croûte and not Pâté en Croûte, no idea, maybe someone can let me know.

Back In Sweden the competition is just starting to gain momentum having just held its second year of competition.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the competition presentation and prize-winning ceremony at Restaurangakademien a well renowned free-standing kitchen and restaurant training establishment here in Stockholm. Together with the passionate initiative takers they put together a great little afternoon with a very competent jury comprising of some well esteemed locals and some French technical experts. Eight competitors anonymously presented their whole terrine as well as a plated version for the judges and us onlookers, the judges received their tasting plate, we invited also received a taste, seldom at a cooking competition do you get to taste the competitors’ efforts.

It was one of those competitions that was close with only points splitting the decision, "as per normal". Our Swedish winner will be representing the nation at the above-mentioned world championships on the 2nd of December in Lyon later this year. Best of luck and a worthy winner.

Upon looking at competitors’ efforts, one thing came straight to my mind…. Thank God I didn’t enter. Congrats to all you for your fine efforts.

A few things popped to mind.

Sweden has a varied and abundant selection of game meat but apart from a little wild boar there was an absence of game meat?

The plated garnish was very French, a few frisée or endive leaves, some chopped jelly. The rumour went through us onlookers that this is how the French like it. In autumn now we have lots of seasonal mushrooms that we would traditionally serve with chark, but nobody used them?

The forcemeat was all a rough mince consistency? Reminiscent of the traditional country style pâté.

Slicing a pâté en croûte can also be a challenge, choose your knife carefully.

The Buzz was that the pastry was the most important factor, all us onlookers quickly became experts in judging. Was the pastry baked through? All the while while quaffing down Mumm Champagne and Chapoutier sponsor wines, we all became experts.

We the guests and onlookers were also an interesting group, prominently the retired and older brigade, great to catch up with many old colleagues, and reminisce a little, I suppose our cookbooks stand in line for the next dumster.

Thanks for the invite a better afternoon is hard to find. Already looking forward to next year.

SM pâté-croûte competitor 2024 Here with frisée.
SM pâte en croûte 2024 Here with endive
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