Who doesn't like pate? And homemade pate can be a real crowd pleaser. That was my attitude as I shopped for the ingredients for this recipe--my first challenge. Although I've never purchased "slab bacon", I didn't anticipate a problem finding it as I live in the South. After trips to Harris Teeter, Whole Foods, Fresh Market, Lowes Food and Food Lion, I ended up with "chunk pork side meat". It looked just like chunks of unsliced bacon when it was in the package, but when I put it in the food processor to grind I noted it was far fattier than bacon. Later I looked for substitutes on the web and found that Canadian bacon would have been a better alternative. Also, I found that the higher end supermarkets did not stock chicken livers but the blue collar markets had them in abundance.
Groceries in hand, I turned my energy to the preparation. The assembly is straightforward. The baking is the difficult part. Not trusting my judgement about "juices running clear", I relied on the trusty meat thermometer. After the minimum bake time of 1 1/4 hours, the thermometer didn't even measure 120 degrees F. I lost track of how long it took to get the center of the pate to 140--a long time. Much to my dismay when I removed the pate from the mold and sliced, I found that the middle was still very raw.
The flavor of the cooked pate was great and it did slice nicely, but the end result was disappointing as most of the pate was uncooked and ended up in the garbage.
The bottom line: Great flavor but not worth the effort.
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