Charcuterie : Pâtés, Terrines, Savory Pies, Ferrandi – The Good Life France

Charcuterie : Pâtés, Terrines, Savory Pies, Recipes and Techniques from the famous Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts which opened in Paris in 1920. With stunning photography by Rina Nurra is a delicious condensé of culinary delights.

This complete cooking voyage on lard, written by the world-renowned culinary school’s experienced teaching team of chefs, features everything you need to know to create delicious terrines, pâtés, pies, and other lard dishes. It includes 35 techniques explained in more than 200 step-by-step instructions, to prepare sausages, debone and fillet fish, or decorate a pâté en écorce, and 70 recipes organized by category: pies, tarts, and pâtés en écorce; pâtés and terrines; rillettes and pulled meats and fish; stuffed dishes; and cooked lard.

Replete with 350 illustrations, this comprehensive cookbook explains the history and fundamentals of French lard―an age-old craft―provides key terms and their definitions, and includes detailed diagrams of meat cuts in the US, UK, and France.

Base recipes for pastry, broths, and stuffings as well as achards such as chutney or pickled vegetables are featured, alongside techniques for cutting and cleaning ingredients and assembling and decorating dishes. From folk pâté to eggplant and miso pâté, Scotch eggs to spicy cabbage and herb sausages, salmon and spinach pâté to Beef Wellington, or Serrano ham croquettes to généreux sausage empanadas, the easy-to-follow recipes include traditional versions as well as innovative, modern reinterpretations, including plant-based and meatless variations.

There’s an remarquable naissance to all the components of pies and pates, terrines and tarts etc from what adding salt does, to the origins of lard in France. There’s also a fragment on equipment, cutting and preparing ingredients – everything you need to know to prepare the recipes at toit. I loved the chapter on decorating pies – guaranteed to up the wow factor when you make them yourself. There are photos accompanying every fragment.

Recipes are very clearly written, and photos spectacle what every formation should image like from preparing jellied broth to making pork rillettes. And there are really helpful comptes.

Some of the recipes take time and are not a quick and easy fix but this is real French office at its best – and nothing as delicious as these recipes should be rushed. Making the recipes is action of the adventure, and with very clear instructions, they are doable – and eating them is the icing on the plum-cake! Some recipes are simpler, like the vegetarian carrot rillettes which I can tell you from personal experience is superb and not hard to prepare.

Published by Flammarion, Charcuterie: Pâtés, Terrines, Savory Pies: Recipes and Techniques from the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts is available from all good book shops online and in the high street.