Bill's famous all-terrine dinner (our ninth!) is slated for next weekend, and as usual I've been immersing myself in the subject in order to choose the most challenging and educational terrine possible. By 'educational', I mean only that which I will learn from the most, so it has to be a type of terrine that I've not done before and one unlike any that I remember anyone else doing. I search for something with a unique point of view, a distinct sense of time and place and Jenise-ness, whatever that is.
So on Wednesday I made a gratin terrine. Gratin, in terrine world, means a terrine in which the dominant meat comes from already cooked meat, like ground meat pan-browned or larger chunks braised or boiled. I'd been reading about such terrines in some really old books I have, and frankly wondered why anyone would do that. So I browned some turkey and ground beef together, seasoned them, added bread crumbs and eggs and baked the result in a terrine form. The result? I still don't know why anyone would do that. It was vaguely like a meatloaf, only not as good. Perfectly fine chilled, cut into squares and served on a cold lunch plate, but otherwise just eh. As suspected.
On Thursday, I made a Balantine. It's a variation on a deboned, stuffed chicken of a type I've done many times before, but in this case I wanted to stuff it with two forcemeats and see what a layer of sliced veal scallopinis would look/feel like cooked like this, as I'd seen such layering in some antique recipes and wanted to test it. In the picture below, you see that layer between the two forcemeats. One of the forcemeats was made from chicken and herbs and deliberately finely textured, the other all pork (sausage/ham/fatback, hand ground) and more rustic. The chicken force was spread over the chicken skin on which I'd left a layer of meat attached, and the other was formed into a ball shape . The edges of the skin were then pulled up into a perfect round, pinned and the whole refrigerated again to gain some shape memory before roasting. The result was tasty and I learned from it, but I came away convinced that it's not something I want to do for Terrine 9.
Then yesterday just for yucks I made heirloom tomato terrines which we then had as our dinner first course. For the tomatoes, I just used some campari tomatoes plus one yellow one that I had lying around. The tomatoes were peeled, deseeded, and set with a seasoned aspic. Pretty and delicious, but I might have to rob a bank to pay for enough pretty colored tomatoes to make it work for T9.
Today, no terrine. But I'll be back in the saddle come Monday. Stay tuned!
I *have* thought about that, though. Even thought about layers of vegetables where each would be a typical stew component (carrots, celery, peas etc) so that the whole was like a chicken pot pie, say, in pureed, solid form. 
