Rustic Mushroom Paté

Back home, September 1 means it is officially sane to insanely countdown the days before Christmas day. Yup! 115 days before December 25, you can hear some radio stations play every now and then Christmas jingles, shops starts to sell Christmas decors and people starts to list down their gift ideas and some even as early as now shop for their gifts. Talk about being in a festive mood!

Not to feel left out since we are miles away from home, I thought of bringing out our own festive sunshine here at home starting out with Christmas food memories. One of my favourite food present was from my Auntie C, my Dad's cousin. One Christmas day, we received a small package from her delivered at home. It was labelled as a liver paté she made and was stored in a nice white ramekin. I knew by looking at it that it was special because it was so simple and yet so elegant and classic. The fact that she it made also was already a gift of love. The paté had a cream grey pink color. It also had a very smooth texture. Very different from the commercial canned liver spread we buy. When we tried it, it was so velvety smooth, luxuriously rich in flavour and best of all the metallic bitter taste of liver was mild. We ate it with toasted bread and slices of queso de bola (eden cheese) and it was a perfect Christmas snack. It was so good that I who abhor liver even liked it!

Today though, unfortunately I am still not a fan of "organ-ic" food (eh organs of the animal body gets? hehehe). So I made my own version of mushroom paté inspired by that liver paté. Though mushroom is bland on its own, the EVOO, butter and spices perked up the flavour of this paté. I also didn't process the paté too much as I wanted it to look rustic that shout out it was home made. I served this 2 days after since the paté's rich flavour really emerges a day or two in the fridge. Together with toasted homemade bread buns for breakfast, what could be more sunshine-y mood than these?

Mushroom Paté
my own recipe

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 50g of butter
• 1 large yellow onion
• 4 garlic
• 500g of mushroom (I used king oyster, brown button and white button mushrooms)
• A dash of paprika
• A dash of nutmeg
• 1 tsp of dried mixed herbs
• 1 tsp of dried basil

Instructions

1. Blitz onion and garlic in food processor. Dump in a bowl. Next blitz all mushrooms.
2. Heat a pan and add EVOO and then the butter
3. Once butter starts to melt, sauté onions and garlic until translucent.
4. Add in all mushroom.
5. After a minute or two, mix in all spices and herbs.
6. Cook until mushroom has released all liquids and pan starts to dry out.
7. Store in an air tight container and chill in fridge for a day or two.
8. Can be served cold or hot.