Baked November 4 and 5, 2018
Recipe Source:
Haiti Uncovered: A Regional Adventure into the Art of Haitian Cuisine (Nadege Fleurimond)
Where do I even begin with pâté? The first time I ever had pâté was on New Years Day a few years ago. While I was staying with my in-laws North of New York City, my father-in-law drove to Queens to pick up pâté for the family. Why would you drive all the way to Queens? Is it really that good?
I will admit that when I heard ‘pâté’ I believed he was bringing back what I had always thought of as pâté: a kind of spreadable loaf of liver I find completely gross. You can imagine my delight when instead he brought back small hand pies consisting of seasoned ground beef encased in puff pastry. So tasty! So was it worth driving to Queens? An emphatic YES! Since then, trying to make pâté has always been on my bucket list.
Let’s get this pâté party started!
The first step was to make the puff pastry. There are likely many ways to make the pastry, but for this first attempt I followed closely the approached recommended by this specific recipe. I first combined salt, water and flour in a bowl and mixed with my hands until the dough came together.
I then dumped the dough onto a floured surface and kneaded the dough until it was firm and slightly sticky. I rounded the dough into a ball, wrapped in plastic wrap and let sit for 15 minutes to relax.
I next sliced the butter into smaller chunks and slices for more even incorporation into the dough to create the puff. After rolling out the dough to a quarter inch thickness, I evenly spread the butter on one half of the dough, folded the top flap of dough over and sealed the seams.
To distribute the butter throughout the dough, this recipe called for an interesting approach. I first rolled the dough out into a rectangle, then bunched it back up into a ball, and then repeated the same steps a second time. I then bunched the dough back into a ball and let rest in the refrigerator overnight.
With the dough complete and resting overnight, I also made the filling the day before so that the spices could marinate overnight. There are many filling recipes for the patties. This recipe called for ground beef, diced onion, minced garlic cloves, diced shallot, diced scotch bonnet pepper, lime juice, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, coriander, ground cloves, thyme, rosemary and tomato paste. I couldn’t find scotch bonnet peppers at the store, so I replaced with a jalapeno. I first sauteed the vegetable and spices mix in a pan with olive oil and then added the ground beef. After it was cooked through, I added the tomato paste to taste. I threw in a few red pepper flakes for good measure (it is a bad habit I have for everything I cook!). I took the picture below of all the veggies and spices before I started to cook. I thought the mixtures of colors was just so pretty!
The next day it was time to fill and bake the patties! I first rolled out the dough one more time into a thin rectangle. I then cut the edges to create even long and narrow rectangles. The rectangles were twice as wide as tall such that when I would later fold over along the short edge, the final pastry would be rectangular.
To fill the patties, I put about a tablespoon of filling on one side of the rectangle of dough, folded over along the short edge, and then crimped the seams closed using a fork. After filling all the patties, I baked them in the oven until golden brown and flaky!
Lessons learned:
I wasn’t very pleased with the flakiness that resulted from this method of incorporating the butter into the dough. Next time I make this recipe, I will likely take a more traditional approach to lamination. I plan to add the butter to the dough, roll it out, fold into threes and repeat twice to create more even distribution of the butter. I will skip the step of bunching the dough back into a ball.
Next time I will try harder to find scotch bonnet peppers or at least use a couple habaneros for the filling. Reading more about the scotch bonnet pepper, I learned it is quite hot (about 2x hotter than a habanero and about 50x hotter than a jalapeno!!) and tends to bring out a fruitier flavor than other peppers.
While the crust ended up flaky, it never really achieved the golden brown look I was looking for. Next time I will plan to coat the patties with a light egg wash before they go in the oven.
I was worried about the crust not baking through, so I definitely over-baked these patties. The bottom of the patties ended up somewhat hard and tough. I’ll note to more closely monitor the base of the patties as they bake next time.
Until next time…