Suburban Detroit French Terrine $ Hack by Ruth Paget
My Polish babysitter epitomized the Detroit credo of “If I can make a car, I can cook.”
I learned about Polish admiration for French food from my Polish babysitter in Troy, Michigan as a child. She made homemade French pork and liver terrines and duck terrines and had me eat them with her for lunches and dinners.
The French eat terrine slices with either bakery-baked, long baguette bread or round, crusty loaves of country bread they make at home. The Polish babysitter, who knew how to bake, mostly made country bread.
She also made her own sweet gherkin pickles to go with the terrine, which the French always eat with terrine.
Finally, she filled half the plate with torn and chilled Boston bibb lettuce and homemade blue cheese dressing made with Maytag blue cheese from Iowa, which is the equivalent of the great blue cheeses of Europe:
-Roquefort (France)
-Cabrales (Spain)
-Gorgonzola (Italy)
(I think we need tasting competitions to decide who has the best blue cheese.)
The French consider terrine a waste-not dish, because it is made from the odds and ends of butchering meat. A 1.5-quart terrine mold yields 15 slices or 2 slices for 2 people over 7 days with 1 slice leftover to share. My Polish babysitter viewed terrine as delicious, nutritious, and economical and so did I.
My babysitter drank a sweet white wine with the pork and liver terrine from Michigan’s Warner Winery. She made sure to tell me that the great Hungarian sweet white wine Tokaj was the best match with terrine, but Warner worked for everyday, because Tokaj was expensive.
The Polish babysitter gave me apple cider to go with my terrine lunch. (Apples grow in abundance in Michigan. Johnny Appleseed is a children’s book everyone in the state reads.)
I thought of these lovely childhood lunches when I purchased Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman. This 250-page recipe book has recipes that cover meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables.
I prefer terrines to confit and rillettes, because it is easier to measure slices for portion control. However, spreadable rillettes are easier to make. You can measure out preserved pieces of delicious duck confit, but pieces tend to be irregular, which makes it hard to count calories.
Several dishes I thought would be make use of rural resources include:
-chicken and wild mushroom terrine
-cauliflower, pea, and red pepper mousse en terrine
-portobello and red pepper terrine
-two-potato terrine
-cauliflower mousse
-onion confit
-fennel confit
-chanterelle and garlic confit rillettes
These terrines might sell well at a place like Costco, if they are not too expensive as they can be made into a week’s worth of food.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
