Top 5 Best Pate recipes for every season

Delicately flavoured and beautifully presented – the perfect pâté adds a touch of class to any event. Here are our Top 5 Best pate recipes that every home entertainer should have in their cooking arsenal.

One of the most versatile tools for cooking in the kitchen is perhaps the most overlooked. The humble fridge is often thought about as somewhere for storing food, rather than preparing it. Not so — one of the most celebrated dishes of any chef’s repertoire, the pâté, uses the refrigerator’s chilling power to bring its rich individual elements together.

Pâté was first made by the Romans, whose Empire was as much culinary as geographical. Their preference was for a thick, spiced pork pâté, occasionally seasoned with ingredients that have fallen out fashion, such as birds’ tongues.

The French have made pâté their own. Their traditional version is baked in a pastry casing or moulded into a loaf and served hot or cold. The French pâté you normally buy in the delicatessen is more properly known as a terrine, but we needn’t put too fine a point on it.

Nowadays, pâté is most commonly made from pork, chicken, fish or game, which is minced finely, cooked and bound with eggs, fat or aspic, and cooled until it’s set.

When it’s ready, it’s perfect served before dinner with a little pot of mustard and crisp, slim pieces of toast, or with white, lemony chevre, sour cornichons and a just-cold bottle of Beechworth Gamay.

There’s a common misapprehension that pâté’s best left to the experts. But with a spare afternoon, and a word with your neighbourhood butcher, it’s super-easy to make at home. Plus, it actually gets better in the fridge, so it’s perfect to make days ahead of a dinner party, or just have ready for when friends drop around unannounced.