Recipe: turkey pate

Last weekend I slow roasted a turkey leg and got loadsa meat from it.  Here's one way of using up leftover turkey - useful for the post Christmas meals, I should think.  Amounts are somewhat variable and to taste really.  It was scrummy on hot buttered toast with some home made salsa on the top and it was dead easy to make!  What's not to like?

Turkey pate:
Ingredients:
butter (for frying and to add to the pate)
1/2 small onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 red chilli (or to taste), deseeded and chopped
1/3 red or yellow pepper, deseeded and chopped
cooked turkey*
100g soft cheese**
Garlic puree
salt/pepper/squeeze lemon juice

Method.
Melt some butter in a frying pan and gently fry the onion and pepper until it is all soft.  Add the chilli for the last five minutes.
Turn the heat up a little bit and add the turkey to warm it up.  This is because it's likel;y been in the fridge and warming it softens it and makes it zizz better.
Spoon the contents of the pan into a blender (I used a mini chopper and did it in two halves because that was to hand and I was too lazy to wash the Hermione bowl!).  Add a dollop of butter, the soft cheese, a squeeze of garlic puree, a little salt (you can add more later if needed) some pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice (or lime juice might be nice).
Zizz the whole lot until it is the texture you want.  I like mine quite smooth.
Taste and add any extra seasonings, butter, etc, as you want.  I found it just about right first go.

I then just spooned the lot into a container, smoothed it down and put it in the fridge, covered.  It sets nice and firm and slices easily so if you wanted, you could line a container with easy leave, cling film or similar and then turn it out afterwards.  For posh, it could then be decorated with a bay leaf, some cranberries, and so on.


*The brown meat is best, it has more flavour.  As for how much, how long is a piece of string?  Imagine one of those take away chinese plastic tubs - about as much as would fit in there is the best I can do.
** I used philly because that's what I had, but any kind would do.  Probably the 'light' versions wouldn;t work so well because they are more watery.