Daring Cooks Tricolor Vegetable Pâté and Baguettes

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

My first thought when I saw the challenge was I don’t like pâté. But in all honesty, I haven’t eaten much pâté. The only time I remember eating it was on a cruise ship. I’m sure there probably is pâté that I would enjoy, although I’d have to get past the fact that I think it sort of looks like cat food. But I’m a Daring Cook, so I took a second look at the challenge and luckily, Evelyne and Valerie had posted a recipe for a vegetarian pâté, Tricolor Vegetable Pâté, which sounded flavorful and delicious.

My daughter and son-in-law joined us for dinner and I served the pâté and baguettes as an appetizer. Since the recipe makes way more pâté than we could eat, I also took half of it to my sweet neighbor who was having her kids and grandkids over for dinner. We all really enjoyed it. My neighbor said the top bean layer and the bottom pesto layer were their favorite flavors, but all three layers blended together really well. I don’t like red peppers, so I substituted sun dried tomatoes in the middle layer. This is definitely something I’d consider making again for a party.

For the bread, we could choose any recipe we wanted to use. I decided to make baguettes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, a great cookbook that I have posted about before. The technique helps make making crusty, chewy artisan bread a snap. I made the dough the night before and shaped and baked the loaves the next morning. My daughter hadn’t had this bread before and she said, “Mom, this bread is so good. Where did you buy it.” Awwwww! It really does taste like a wonderful bakery bread.

Here’s a video with the basic dough recipe and directions on how to make the bread. It can be a bit frustrating the first time working with the wet dough, especially if you don’t flour your hands well. But once you get the hang of it, it’s a very easy process. In our dry climate, I use 1/2 cup less flour than they use in the video.

There’s my version of the pâté with the slight changes that I made.

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Yield: one 10x5 inch loaf

Daring Cooks Tricolor Vegetable Pâté

Prep Time 25 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

White Bean Layer:

• 1 x 15-ounce / 900 ml cans cannellini (white kidney beans), rinsed, drained thoroughly
• 1 tbsp / 15 ml fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp / 15 ml olive oil
• 1 tbsp / 15 ml minced fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed

Sun Dried Tomato Layer:

• 7-ounce / 210 ml jar sun dried tomatoes, drained, chopped
• 3/4 cup / 180 ml crumbled feta cheese (about 4 ounces)

Pesto Layer:

• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 cup / 240 ml fresh basil leaves
• 1 cup / 240 ml fresh Italian parsley leaves
• 1/4 cup / 60 ml toasted pine nuts
• 2 tbsp / 45 ml olive oil
• 1/2 cup / 120 ml low-fat ricotta cheese

Instructions

1. Line your pan with plastic wrap, overlapping sides.

White Bean Layer:

1. Mash beans in large bowl. Add lemon juice, olive oil, oregano and garlic and blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Spread bean mixture evenly on bottom of prepared pan.

Sun Dried Tomato Layer:

1. Combine tomatoes and feta in processor and blend until smooth.
2. Spread pepper mixture evenly over bean layer in prepared dish.

Pesto Layer:

1. Mince garlic in processor. Add basil, parsley and pine nuts and mince.
2. With machine running, gradually add oil through feed tube and process until smooth. Mix in ricotta. Spread pesto evenly over red pepper layer.
3. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
4. To unmold, invert pâté onto serving platter. Peel off plastic wrap from pâté. Garnish with herb sprigs and serve with sourdough bread slices.