Homemade pâté was an obligatory Christmas dish. My mum used to add carrots and parsley roots. My husband had his own recipe for a very meaty pâté which his grandma and mum used to prepare. Both of them are excellent, but recently I haven't prepared them. We try not to prepare too much food, so that afterwards we can eat with pleasure rather than duty. A few times I prepared also fish pâté and celery pâté.

This time I used my favourite red lentils. Lentil pâté is easy and it has the same texture as meat pâté, so with clean conscience I can also recommend it to vegetarians. Feel free to alter the recipe as required. Add nuts or cranberries and make your own yummy version.

The basic recipe comes from www.zjadam.pl.

Ingredients (25cm cake tin)
250g of red lentils
2 carrots
1 parsley root
half a small celery
1 onion
a piece of fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of tomato concentrate
5 dried tomatoes in olive oil
a fistful of minced parsley
1 tablespoon of powdered sweet pepper
half a teaspoon of powdered spicy pepper
1 teaspoon of curry powder
2 eggs
3 bay leaves
3 allspices
salt and pepper

Heat the oven up to 180C. Cover the 25cm cake tin with some baking paper.
Rinse the lentils well. Put them into a pot, add two cups of cold water, and add the bay leaves and allspices. Boil for 20 minutes. Stir from time to time. Dice the garlic, onion and ginger. Peel the celery, carrots and parsley root and grate them. One by one fry in oil the onion, garlic, ginger and grated vegetables. Add both powdered peppers, the curry powder and spice it up with salt and pepper. Stew until the vegetable are soft. Add the vegetables to the lentils, add the tomato concentrate and the diced dried tomatoes. Spice it up with salt and pepper if necessary. Stir. Add the eggs, minced parsley and stir again. Put the mixture into a cake tin and even it out. Bake for 50 minutes. Take it out when the pâté has cooled down completely. It is best to leave it a few hours in the fridge before eating.

Enjoy your meal!

Try also
Fish pâté
A new take on scrambled eggs
Herby muffins with ham and courgette