Daring Cooks: Pate and bread

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

The pate I chose to make was the Tricolor Vegetable Pâté: from Bon Appétit Oct 1993 on Epicurious. I made it as directed, but only used half the written recipe for the White bean layer, and it was still plenty. I also made my own ricotta for the pesto layer

though it doesn't photograph that well. Ricotta is actually quite easy to make.

Ricotta
2L milk
4 Tbsp white vinegar

Heat the milk until you see small bubbles at the side of the pan. Turn off
the element and add the vinegar. Strain the curds off the top and then drain
through a very clean Chux type dishcloth. Two litres of milk makes 500g of ricotta cheese. (so if you only want enough for the pate recipe, just use 500ml milk and 1 Tbsp vinegar)

My pate all tucked up, waiting to set

I made Brioche, but in the excitement of Master Two's birthday party, I forgot to get a photo of my bread, but I'll share the recipe with you below anyway.

Brioche (Breads from your breadmaker - Richard Carroll)
150mls tepid water
2 Tbsps sugar
90g unsalted butter, at room temp
2 tsp lemon juice
2 eggs
500g White Bread Mix
2 tsp instant dry yeast

Place ingredients into the bread pan in the order listed, insert into the breadmaker and close the lid.

Cook on 'Sweet' program, 'Large' size, 'Medium' crust.

My top crust was a little pale, but the sides were a lovely golden colour, so I probably wouldn't mess with that.