CRAVEN College’s Jamie Fletcher provides another of his favourite recipes – which is ideal for Christmas visitors. He has over 10 years’ experience working in bars and restaurants, including a 15-month stint as a sous-chef in the south of France.

THIS Country Terrine is a great way of taking the stress out of preparing Christmas lunches. This one will easily feed several people over a couple of days.

This particular version is based on the recipe given in Anthony Demetre’s excellent book “Today's Special”.

This is best made a couple of days in advance to let the flavours develop.

You’ll need a good-sized terrine dish for this recipe – about 1.5 litres capacity.

Ingredients:

450g smoked streaky bacon (or enough to line your terrine dish)

Small knob of butter

2 tbsp olive oil

2 large onions finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic minced

½ tsp ground allspice

90ml port

600g pork shoulder - minced

120g smoked back bacon – minced

220g pork liver – minced

200g pork back fat – minced

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp chopped rosemary

10g whole green peppercorns

1 tsp salt

Method:

Preheat the oven to Gas 3, 160°C, 325°F. You’ll need to make a bain-marie to cook the terrine in – use a roasting tin filled halfway up with hot water.

Line a large terrine dish with foil, leaving plenty overhanging, and then with the smoked streaky bacon leaving enough to fold back over the top.

Sweat the onions, garlic and spice in the butter and oil until soft and leave to cool.

Boil the port until reduced the port by two-thirds and leave to cool.

Mix all the minced meats with the eggs, then mix in the cooled onion mixture, the reduced port, the rosemary, peppercorns and salt and make sure everything is well mixed.

Fill the lined terrine with the meat mixture, pushing down tight to pack everything in. Give the terrine dish a good tap on a chopping board to avoid leaving any air pockets in the mixture. Finally fold the overhanging bacon over the top of the terrine and cover with the overlapping foil.

Bake in the bain-marie for about 90 minutes or until the centre of the terrine reaches 75 degrees Celsius. If possible leave in the fridge for a couple of days to allow the flavours to develop.

Serve with crusty bread and something sharp like celeriac remoulade.

For the remoulade, you will need:

1 head of celeriac

Juice of half a lemon

2 tbsp Mayonnaise

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

Peel the celeriac, removing the tough base. Shred the celeriac into matchsticks using a food processor or by hand if you prefer. Mix the celeriac matchsticks with the lemon juice to prevent them from going brown. Add in the mayonnaise and mustard to taste – you want to end up with a sharp lemony-mustard flavoured salad.