Vegan Paté

Veggie Pate is common in supermarkets in Quebec but surprisingly hard to find in Ontario, even our French little corner of it.

Almost everything in this recipe you can get local versions of, which I love.

Here is my cheap and easy version:

• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 potato
• 2-4 cloves garlic
• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• ½ cup oil
• ½ cup whole wheat flour (could sub chickpea flour to make GF)
• ½ cup nutritional yeast
• ¼ cup braggs, soy sauce or coconut aminos
• 1 tsp italian spice
• 1 tsp wild spice blend (or more Italian, some thyme, you get the picture)
• 1 tsp broth powder (or 1/4 of a bouillon cube)
• Freshly ground Pepper
  

Preheat oven to 350 F

Chop the veggies up coarsely and then smack em up in food processor

(Really! They don’t need to be chopped very finely, that’s literally why the food processor exists.)

Let it blend for a few minutes, then stop and push down the sides with a rubber spatula:

Run again until it’s all quite smooth.

Now, oil a pan.

Make sure you choose a pan that will fit in another pan for the Bain Marie part (below).

This is something I used to worry about a lot: what kind of oil? How much? What do I use to spread it? Guess WHAT?! For most things, it doesn’t friggen matter. Use what you got, what’s cheapest, what’s going to go bad.

I used margarine because it was on the counter, and because my girlfriend doesn’t like the margarine I bought on toast and it needs to be used up. Any high temperature cooking oil (not EVOO or sunflower), such as canola, refined coconut would do. Margarine works fine, and is easiest to apply with your (clean*) hands. (*should be obvious).

But Shauna, my heads will get all greasy!

-you, now probably

Guess what? You probably have a dog to lick them and soap to wash them with. You’ll live. TOUCH THE FOOD! GET IN THERE!

Anyway, grease the pan with something, preferably using your hands.

Then, fill it on up with the food processor mix:

Tightly wrap aluminum foil, I like to do the long sides first, and the shorter sides next.

Next, make your “Bain-Marie” – that’s fancy talk for stick your aluminum foil wrapped pan in a bigger pan that you can put some water in.

You want enough water that it won’t boil dry in the oven, but not so much water that it’ll leak into the pate dish:

Bake 1 hour, I like to set a timer at the 30 minute mark to make sure that I’ve still got lots of water. DO NOT LET YOUR BOTTOM PAN BOIL DRY, THAT WOULD BE BAD.

Remove foil, then cook another 20 more minutes

Let cool, slice it up, and serve with crackers/good bread and pickles.