Rabbit Pate

My mom and I had a dinner party a while ago. She got two rabbits, and we cooked them for the party. The rabbits came with their innards: liver, kidney, heart; I saved them, and froze them...

All in all, it was about 150 grams of offal.

Since Thanksgiving was coming, I decided to make something I've been dying to make for a while - Pate. It's very rich, but thanksgiving is a holiday all about decadence so I figured it might be a great team player with all the other dishes. After reading some online recipes, I discerned that many recipes put equal parts offal and pre-cooked meat into it. Apparently, this is to diminish the metallic taste that offal can give off. Anyway, after combining a bunch of different recipe ideas, I came out with a REALLY good rabbit pate...

Keep in mind though, this is no where near healthy.


Ingredients:

150 grams rabbit innards (liver, heart, kidney, etc.) I wouldn't use brains in this though. Too gummy.
150 grams cooked rabbit or chicken or turkey meat
75 grams room temperature unsalted butter
1 shallot
5-6 cloves garlic
About 3 tablespoons fresh rosemary needles
8-10 fresh sage leaves
1,5 tablespoons gin



Method:
Saute shallot and garlic on medium low heat until caramelised. Cool it down to room temperature(ish)
Boil water, drop in rabbit innards, cook for about 4-7 minutes (if you've just taken your rabbit innards out of the fridge, go for the 7 minutes. If they're at room temperature, go for 4 minutes)
Slice the butter into chunks, and put it at the bottom of a food processor
Add generous pinch salt, some ground pepper, the cooled shallot, cooked rabbit innards, and everything else.
Turn on the food processor.
Blend to a paste.
Taste.
Adjust.

When I tasted mine, it tasted too much like the cooked chicken meat, so I added a little more butter, more rosemary, more salt, and more gin. Who DOESN'T like a boozy pate? :-)

I whirred it again and when I was satisfied, I put it into a bowl lined with plastic wrap, and then into the fridge.
The fridge firms up the butter again, so when you take it out for eating (at least 3 hours, ideally overnight) the pate slices like...meat butter. Which is essentially what pate is.

Mine came out with gorgeous floral notes of rosemary and sage, and a bit of juniper twang from the gin. It was honestly WAY better than I thought it would be.

Some recipes called for a tablespoon of heavy cream. I might try this next time, but I didn't have any in the house when I made my pate, so I just used butter. I would probably cut back on some butter and use some cream instead, if I were trying it this way...