Somethin' fishy's been goin' on: salmon rillette

People, terrine-lovers, I apologise. After an interminably long terrine hiatus (life, university exams, my first student prac in a real life high school - all getting in the way), I am back on board. And already well behind achieving my target of producing 52 terrines this year.
A little thing called Masterchef has been avidly promoting the heck out of terrines in the last while, and I'm pretty sure the SMH Good Living section took one look at my blog and ripped off the idea totally. So I think terrines are officially in the Australian consciousness now, with a little help from Maggie Beer and her masterpieces, and some well-placed journalism. Oh well,  I'm with Wilde - it's better to be talked about, I guess, than not at all.
May was a blur of taking on my first prac as a high school English teacher, June was all about exams and July was Le Tour month where my life officially Goes To Hell in a Handbasket. Also, my sister and her partner arrived home from London to rejoin family life on Bailey Ave. Home life IS an episode of Packed to the Rafters. Welcome home, sis and especially to our new South African family member (bring on the World Cup, I say!).

Hank the wonder-dog has been in the wars, probably was touched by an angel or two along the way, but now has four feet firmly planted on the earth and is still a terrific little helper in the kitchen, as demonstrated here:

But, I digress. Friends have been hounding me for a new terrine, and here 'tis: salmon rillette.
You'll need some good skinned salmon steaks (I used 3), tarragon, creme fraiche (I used sour cream), shallots and good butter.

One of the blessings of living back at home is Mum's kitchen. It's better than any Delicious magazine or Gourmet Traveller, and she's better than any guest chef on Masterchef. There's nothing she can't do and doesn't have. Note the gorgeous new cream-coloured Kitchen Aid.
Lightly fry the salmon so that the fish remains translucent and a little pink in the centre. Whizz it in the food processor with small chunks of butter until it becomes a chunky, fleshy paste.

Transfer to a bowl and then add a dollop of sour cream, some finely chopped shallot (1 tsp), finely chopped tarragon (2 tsp), salt and pepper and mix.

Mix it together gently without overworking it, then spoon into small pots, making sure there is no air between the layers of mixture. Melt a little butter and pour over the top and garnish with a lemon slice (note the special cameo guest spot from the clean washing hanging over the chair).

3 fillets will make around 3 small pots. But the stuff is lethal and very rich, so I imagine if you are taking this to a gorgeous dinner party (as opposed to a teaser before Mum's rockin' roast chicken), you could lob up with just the one pot. It will be enough.

Et voila! See you soon and I promise not to leave it too long between terrines. I'm thinking about how I'm going to recreate Maggie's incredible chicken-skin coated terrine. Mmmmm. x

Carrot terrine. Be patient, we're getting to the meat and potatoes soon....

As we head towards winter (huge chill in the Sydney air today), my thoughts are invariably beginning to turn to warm, winter fare, and meat terrines. However, I've had a last hurrah with the veggie terrine - the last attempted being carrot and cumin. This is a very fresh, creamy terrine with a subtle cumin-infused flavour. It doesn't take a lot of prep, and the main ingredients are carrots and cream. 

Slice the carrots lengthwise, horizontally. Simply blanch the carrots so that they are par-cooked, then stack them in a cling-wrapped terrine base. In between, whip up a sauce of double cream, 2 eggs, saffron threads and a dash of cumin. Then bake it for about 40 minutes in a water bath. The result is nothing short of spectacular.

Serve with lightly toasted sesame seeds sprinkled over the terrine. Your dinner hosts won't be disappointed (I know mine weren't)! 

I do humbly apologise for the length of time that has transpired between terrines. It's shameful. But the past four weeks have been among the busiest of my life, with a chaotic number of assignments before I head on my teaching prac, and working on large number of zany writing projects! Please forgive me...I shall post again very soon! 

Sacre bleu! Nutella-and-crepe stack

Today's terrine is a slight departure from the cheese-and-grain-terrines of late. In fact, it's a more-ish departure, a stackable terrine of crepe and nutella. Mr Reynaud is very fast and loose with the term terrine and I love him for this. If you can stack a food, apparently you can call it a terrine.


Anyone who has ever had one of these fine creations in Europe will remember their first time. Like possibly thousands before me, I had my first nutella crepe at a stand just outside the Basilique du Sacre-Couer, atop Montmartre in Paris. It was a cold, wet, afternoon and I was recreating my own Amelie fantasy. But the carousel was empty, people were few and far between and there were absolutely no gnomes on holiday.

I'm pretty sure I had one in every European stop, perhaps with variations on a theme. In particular, I'll never forget the first nutella waffle I had in Brussels, with my new-found Belgian family, the Govaerts. I think I had several in Bruges, too. And on it goes.


This morning, we had a visiting coterie of cousins, aunties and uncles on their way to the airport to drop my cousin who's off to work at the Melbourne Flower show. The plan to create a nutella-crepe stack was well-received, if not with a little trepidation and the sheer volume of nutella used. You will need a large stack of crepes for this recipe, and a large jar of nutella. I'm not sure how I managed to get to this age without ever having made a crepe in my life, but I suppose there's a first time for everything.  My first crepe was a pancake, and the mixture definitely needed to be thinned out. I made a stack of around 12 crepes, then it was time to assemble the beast:

Layer the nutella between the crepes, and when you cut the first slice, you should have something like this:

And once everyone has demolished it, it looks a little like this:

People were bursting at the gills after this terrine, and I feel it would make a fantastic dessert on its own - or elegant snack post-slumber-party. You'll need a ton of people to finish this off. I have just delivered a fair whack of this terrine over to the neighbours' (both of them eminent psychologists), and in return I'll be getting help with my next psychology assignment. Bon appetit!


PS a special thanks to Helen over at grabyourfork, who writes one of my fave Sydney food blogs, recommending a feast of food (often) off the beaten review track. She's linked cinquante-deux terrines to her blogroll. Cheers, Helen! 

Paradise found - the tropical terrine

I have long been fascinated by the tropics, a cross I bear from my mother's side of the family, despite her side descending from good Northern Hemisphere, cold-clime, hardy Ukrainan-Finnish-Scottish-Welsh stock. Perhaps somewhere crossed with my Middle-Eastern paternal side and my own Australian lifestyle, my mind has been snagged somewhere on the equator. More likely, it was all those episodes of Magnum PI.


Fulfilling this tropical dream led to a stint living in Honolulu and chasing the life aquatic last year, an idyllic  time filled with daily swims on Waikiki, living two blocks from the beach, regular mai tais, and runs around a volcanic headland instead of on a treadmill. It was a slice of heavenly life in the Hawaiian Isles, and has probably tainted me for life.


And so I have been promising to make a tropical terrine for some time now, probably something far too sophisticated to ever appear on a Hawaiian plate itself. French cooking really hasn't penetrated the Hawaiian Islands. Not much sophistication has.


Utilising the last of the tropical fruits for the summer season led to a quest for the last mango, last pineapple and a rather paltry-looking kiwifruit. Choose your own selection of summer fruits:

The binding gelatine concoction needs to have at least three leaves of gelatine (I used four and it still didn't set), and a flavoured schnapps. Luckily we had some apple schnapps on hand from last year's Tour de France watch-a-thon in which we attempted to match food and wine to the regions of each tour stage (yes, it was a little ambitious). It's quite possible that I put too much schnapps in, but a multitude of reasons could have explained why the final terrine didn't set:
1) the recipe called for four hours set aside to set - I had it in the fridge for exactly four and it probably needed more;
2) we had incredibly humid and wet weather - perhaps there is some scientific reason as to why it didn't set? Scientific friends, feel free to post reasons why...;
3) I possibly used too much schnapps.


I went to a lovely dinner with food prepared by friends who are excellent cooks and I was a little destroyed that I didn't have the terrine to whip out (and it had been especially requested! What a blow.). What I served was thus:

It was fancy fruit salad and ice cream, sadly. Still, there is time to re-try this terrine later in the year when I have probably mastered the art of terrine-making.

And yes, my friends' kitchen in their Surry Hills terrace is this gorgeous. And they live right near Bourke St Bakery, too. I have had the pleasure of house-sitting this lovely pad, and their precious little bundle, Zoe:

Zoe is a delight, and far and away better-behaved than Hank.

Good roughage - quinoa, tomato and green olive terrine

Growing up, my mother always had a saying for those foods we never really liked, but she insisted we eat. For instance, I could never brook argument with her over untoasted muesli, bulgur wheat (I'm Armenian - and this equates to sacrilege), chewable vitamins, and bran of any description. 


Mum called it good roughage.


Not that we ate roughage on a regular basis, but I was never allowed to leave these things on my plate. So who knew that at age 32, my palate has morphed so dramatically to be so sophisticated as to crave roughage? My new favourite form of the good stuff is quinoa. I've bored friends senseless about it, argued over its pronunciation (my Chilean friend confirms it's pronounced just as it's spelled...the foodie magazines say otherwise - I say, get a Spanish-speaking friend). All you need to know: it's crunchy, it's a superfood, and best of all - great in terrines. My mate Stephane has a lovely recipe which contains quinoa, which is quite easy to make and a lovely accompaniment to a simple summer meal. I used black quinoa and you lightly fry this up for a few minutes with some softened chopped shallots, until the grains are coated in olive oil.

Then cover this with water, bring to the boil and gently simmer for about fifteen minutes, or until the quinoa is cooked. When ready, it should be slightly crunchy. In another pan, simmer some veggie stock and a dash of white wine. Then add three gelatin sheets, which should be pre-softened in water. I think I've finally got the hang of these things:

Whisk the wine/stock/gelatin mixture briskly, bringing to the boil before removing from heat. In your terrine dish, layer some peeled tomatoes (tinned are fine), sliced green olives and the quinoa at regular intervals. Then pour the mixture over the top, set aside to cool and refrigerate.

You don't need large amounts of any of these ingredients, and I believe that you can add just about any layer of vegetable that you like. The original recipe calls for preserved lemon, but I'm not a fan, so I omitted it. The recipe recommends a setting period of 24 hours in the fridge, but a small version I made of this terrine was ready in a couple of hours. 

Here is the finished product! It has a lovely tang, and is quite refreshing with snags and salad. 

What was your version of good roughage?

The in-between terrine: brousse de bresis

My boxing partner demanded this morning at 7am: so where exactly is the next terrine? I am just as terrified at failing the blog as my partner's heavy sparring punches, so I have decided to take myself to task and get back on board the terrine train. I haven't exactly been down for the count, but mainly have been a little preoccupied with getting back in the full-time uni groove. Last week we went back pre-semester and to be honest I'm still a little shell-shocked - and not just by the queue for course books at the co-op. Today was the first day of school, and with the typical humanities-type timetable I had a class at midday and my next one is at five. In between I have come up with the goods and my next terrine is: brousse de bresis, or terrine of sheep's curd. Before I hear you groan: oh dear god, can this woman PLEASE make a non-cheese-related-terrine, I have to remind you that the Sydney weather at the moment is simply not conducive to meaty, rich terrines. You may also have realised that I am a cheese-over-chocolate person. Given the choice of eating either at any time of day, the answer is always: cheese please.

I have substituted sheep's curd (didn't have time to dash over valleys to the local shepherds' farmers' market) for a nice quality goat's cheese with a little dill thrown into the mix. I've been craving chilli lately, so I tossed a nice hot one in there. The other major ingredient with this terrine is one of my other favourite foods: zucchini. This is a dead easy recipe and when you see the finished result you will be impressed! Warning: arty shots ahead.

Simply slice the zucchini horizontally (for want of a better word) - thinly. The bottom slice can be thrown away so that the base can stabilise. Then spread the goat's cheese mixture over each slice and re-assemble the zucchini the way nature intended:

It's starting to take shape. And you've only spent approximately seven minutes on this dish so far! It's win-win. Once all slices are stacked and accounted for, scrape the edges with a spatula to spruce up the overall effect:

In fact it was so appealing, someone came running...

This is a more free-form terrine, and does not require any refrigeration or gelatin to prepare. This is a nice, fresh terrine that can be made in minutes, with maximum visual impact. If you like zucchinis, so much the better! Now, friends, I must dash - have to get to my lecture this afternoon on 'Evidence-Based Practice in the Secondary School'. Then I can come home and crash on the couch with this terrine, my mum and the Oscars! Bon appetit....

A cameo guest appearance by...YOU!

I had a lovely email from a concerned friend today - someone who knows all too well my Gemini tendency to juggle ten projects at once (and also my Gemini propensity to drop things and never return to them). As my friend and I are moving from the simple realm of great friendship and former-flatmates to the very grey area of Jedi/Young Apprentice, Potential Employer/Potential Employee, and, oh-okay- Editor/Writer, I am wont to take their advice as kind regard for my mental health and wellbeing. My great friend/former-flatmate/partner-in-crime/Vince-Noir-loving/Editor/Potential Employee/Jedi suggested I do something slightly fabulous. 

Ladies and gents, I am offering you the chance-in-a-life-time, once-only option of guest-blogging a terrine on cinquante-deux terrines. Actually, no. Please feel free throughout the year to suggest a terrine, create a terrine, do it, photograph it, document it and blog it. 


If you would like to volunteer to make a terrine in your suburb, state, or side of the world and contribute to the blog, please feel free to let me know and I can send you some recipes. Or you can search for recipes on the good-old-fashioned-Google-machine. Then we can work out the technicalities of publishing the post etc. Just drop me a line if you want to commit to terrine-making! I'm happy to momentarily pass the mantle...as long as yours doesn't look better than mine! I jest, of course. And just for old-times' sake, here's a pic of Vince Noir:

And because I am the master of this domain, a pic of Howard Moon too....Bonsoir until the next terrine...

The-easiest-damn-terrine-in-the-world

Sometimes things can weigh on your mind. The last thoughts as you drift from drooling wakefulness into sleep (too much information?) can plague you: overdue BAS statements, orientation day for your third university degree (are they letting children into university now??), a dog with snoring issues, neglected facebook friends....and the terrines you haven't made for three weeks running.


My fellow terrine-lovers -  apologies for the length between drinks (err...terrines). The last few weeks have been incredibly busy and always at the back of my mind is the fact that I am falling behind on my terrine mission. Never fear, because I'm back!


When I started this crazy venture, I always had the spare, go-to terrine in the back of my mind. I thought I would pull it out mid-July when things were really hectic, but it seems I've had to call on the big back-up guns in February.


The following terrine is the one of the easiest damn things you'll ever make. I've made it tonnes of times before and the recipe comes from Mr Reynaud's first book Ripailles. To be honest, this recipe and the orange tuille biscuits are the only other things I've managed to conquer from that book (okay, the tuilles were kind of burnt).


All that is required are two of the good things in life: a decent, creamy blue cheese and some celery. Mr Reynaud's original recipe calls for butter...so make that three if you want to add it to the celery mixture.  Given that we're from Gen X/Gen Y, that means we are a generation that don't really use or eat butter anymore so I have eliminated it altogether from this terrine. Frankly, you won't need it!


First, find yourself some good quality blue cheese: I like blue castello for this dish.

Line your terrine with cling wrap and smoosh the first block of cheese into base of the terrine (I checked - smoosh is a technical term used for the re-shaping of cheeses. Truly.). Smooth it out so that cracks can't occur. Then add a very fine layer of chopped celery stalks - this will be the middle layer of the terrine.

Then grab your second block of cheese then smoosh and layer over the layer of celery. Wrap the whole thing in clingwrap and then pop into the fridge until you need to eat/deliver it to a barbeque.


The beauty of this terrine is that it can be made in under ten minutes (if you don't count the quick drive to the shops, avoiding the old-timers trying to back their Honda Sonatas into small car spaces, fighting the mothers with toddlers at the checkout, jumping back into said car and into the cool confines of your own kitchen).


This is what I call the easiest-damn-terrine-in-the-world. And the best part is: the wow-factor when you rock up at the barbeque you're taking it to.

Et voila! This lovely looking thing survived another thirty-degree day in Sydney and was chowed down by a wonderful coterie of very learned and well-travelled types who had congregated in Paddington. What they secretly didn't know was: I barely did a thing.

Apart from being able to impart my growing terrine-wisdom, I learned some very interesting facts at this unique gathering:


- Micronesia is in fact a country, and its capital is Pohnpei (not Pompei, as I repeated for the entire gathering)
- Guam has the largest Kmart in the entire world;
- apparently Honiara, Solomon Islands, has an awesome book club.


You guessed it, the barbie was an interesting gathering of types that had lived and worked all over the Pacific (a reunion of sorts for Australian Youth Ambassadors, of which I am not; I was a hanger on). I was more than happy that I could contribute my little knowledge of Hawaiian culture, I'm pretty sure that qualified me. Three months and apparently I'm an expert.


Next up: I'm working on a terrine with a tropical theme.

Picnics and terrines don't necessarily mix

I have come to the conclusion of late that there are certain things in this life I don't like and probably never will...one of them being picnics. This list includes, but is not limited to, camping, incense sticks, black licorice and those denim shorts girls are wearing at the moment with the pocket sticking out of the leg.


But I digress. Picnics are great in theory, particularly when the picnic site in question is a glorious perch on Sydney Harbour with the best free views in the city. It doesn't matter if you have great people and great food - the result is always the same. A battle with the ants, ground that doesn't give, and food that all ends up blending together as one big taste in the mouth. Also, if no one brings a hurricane lamp, you get to eat the food in the dark.


I shouldn't be too harsh. The picnic was for my mum's birthday and I decided to prepare an easy terrine to take, and a moderately difficult one. The first is the cheat's terrine - a layered affair of camembert, diced apple and home-made croutons.

Yes, it is as simple as cutting a cheese in half and sticking some apple between it. My response to Mr Reynaud is this: I'm sure this is great sitting midway between French villages with a fresh baguette, breathing deeply in the French air. On a nearly forty degree in Sydney, this dish is most surely to be overlooked (and the croutons, even though fried in the morning will have gone soft), and at the end of the night, the dish is really just a dressed-up piece of cheese. Most guests thought that it was quite underwhelming and instead went for just about everything else, but mostly while enjoying this view:

The second terrine I had higher hopes for: the coffee terrine. Incredibly rich and flavourful, which takes quite a bit of work to put together. Part of the mixture is real coffee, but you also must add some chicory essence which smells divine and is sweet in itself and I'm sure will be used later in iced coffees and other goodies concocted in the kitchen.

Let me just say this: if a French recipe says that the preparation time is just thirty minutes and feeds six, it probably means that it will take you at least sixty minutes and it may feed an army. Maybe the French eat more terrine per serving. But the recipe made two terrines and served about twenty. It's a laboured process, this terrine. You must heat the egg yolk, milk, chicory and sugar mixture at a very low heat until the mixture coats the spoon. Obviously I'm not as experienced a cook as I think I am because I was ready to take the mixture off the heat in the first minute. But the mixture really does have to cover the spoon with some kind of viscosity. It will thicken. You just need to spend some quality time at the stove top.

When the mixture cools completely, you add coffee-soaked sponge fingers, so the texture is almost like a thin tiramisu, the difference being that it takes a good 24 hours to set. I want you to prepare yourselves, because in spite of having two stylists at the picnic, the only resulting photo of the coffee terrines are thus:

It didn't have the chance to be tipped upside down, or the dignity to be eaten in the daylight (thanks to the emergency photographer for taking this photo in the midst of the moment!). The picnic party got stuck into the terrine and a slice of Betty Crocker's devil's food cake in the dark - and it's possible that they were better for it. I know you will expect better things in updates to come.


Many of you have been asking for a Hank update. Hank (or Henk as they called him at the vet's - to which I indignantly replied that he most definitely is not Dutch), has a paralysed larynx but seems to be fine at the moment apart from a slight drooling tendency that he has developed. I didn't show you this photo before...but I did catch him eyeing the strawberry terrine last week.

I dream of terrine-y

I am starting to slightly obsess about terrines. It's not healthy. And I'm starting to wonder how the terrines are going to fit in between all my other gigs right now - working with my family's business, officially looking after Hank (when did you last hear of a golden retriever with an under-active thyroid?), getting my writing projects finished and not panicking at the prospect of going back to uni full-time this year.


In part, I would like to dedicate this post to my sister in London, whose brilliant idea this was (kudos, kid!) and is my other major source of inspiration. She's a much better cook than I am but I'm chuffed she wants me to do this! I am also hoping she can add some recipes of her own to this site - how 'bout it mate?


Did I mention the heat and fuggy weather we've been living with in Sydney? I just simply cannot bring myself to do anything with chicken livers or other innards right now. One of Stephane's recipes is a mint and strawberry terrine, which I attempted this week with mixed success. Don't let the groovy cooking shots fool you - the terrine was great in theory...but a little schlumpy in the end.

The ingredients are sliced strawberries, fresh mint, and a concoction of orange juice, brown sugar, gelatin and some grapefruit juice (for which I subsituted a bit of lime juice). I'm still getting used to this blogging caper, so I apologise for the blurry shot that follows:

Turns out juggling scalding dishes while taking photos ain't easy. This terrine needs 12 hours to set, and I did pop it into the fridge overnight to make it a more solid structure. This was my initial run with gelatin sheets which I can only get more familiar with. Gelatin sheets are a little tricky, and as my mum was away, she wasn't on hand with her wisdom.

Here's the terrine straight out of the terrine. It bound together quite well, but was soon demolished once the spoon went in. We had it with vanilla ice cream - and I'm not an ice cream freak but the result was tangy and delicious with the strawberry/brown sugar and citrus flavours working well. The mint was the icing on the cake!

Later, I found Hank outside with a lone strawberry. I promise you this wasn't a staged shot!