A few weeks ago on Instagram, I was singing the praises of a delicious porcini mushroom pâté that I’d discovered in Lidl.
We had a punnet of mushrooms that needed to be used up, so I thought I might try my hand at making my own pâté.
I flipped through a few of our cookbooks for a recipe and soon found one in a little booklet supplement that came with the Guardian weekend newspaper, many moons ago.
It was a taster from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook No.1.
I altered the recipe slightly, substituting the butter and garlic for 50 grams of wild garlic butter that I whipped up the previous week.
Mushroom pâté is a very simple and easy to make recipe.
You can use foraged wild mushrooms (so long as you’re absolutely sure they’re not a poisonous variety). Dried mushrooms such as porcini, chanterelle, morel or a mixture; chestnut or just plain ol’ closed cup white mushrooms.
Mushroom pâté
Ingredients
- 250 g/9oz mushrooms
- 30 g/1oz butter
- 3-4 garlic cloves peeled & crushed
- 250 g/9oz cream cheese
- sea salt & cracked black pepper to season
Instructions
- Clean and trim the mushrooms before slicing thinly
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat
- Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook until softened stirring to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan
- Cook until the liquid released by the mushrooms all but evaporates (10-15 minutes)
- Allow to cool before spooning into a mini-food processor and blitzing for 20-30 seconds
- Add the cream cheese to the food processor and blitz again until well combined
- Season with sea salt & cracked black pepper to taste
- Decant into sterilised jars and refrigerate. Once opened, consume within 7 days
Delicious slathered over freshly-baked ciabatta!