A watercolour of a bowl of coarse grey-brown mackerel pate speckled with black pepper, beside round oatcakes
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Smoked mackerel pâté

Peppered mackerel pâté

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 8 months, set by Oatcakes.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
0
Pans
0
Water
0.05 L
Active
6 min
Total
6 min

Ingredients

Six minutes, no heat, and it tastes like something that took considerably longer.

  1. Drain the mackerel, keeping the oil. Into a bowl and mashed with a fork, skin and all, it disappears.
  2. Tahini, mustard, lemon juice and a great deal of black pepper: more than feels right, this is a peppered pâté.
  3. Mash until coarse and spreadable. Loosen with the reserved oil, then with a little water if it is still stiff.

Tahini seizes when the lemon hits it and looks ruined for about twenty seconds. Keep working, the liquid brings it back.

Taste for lemon twice. Oily fish takes far more acid than you expect and the first addition is almost never enough.

Serves 3 on oatcakes.

What this was adapted from

Smoked mackerel pâté: the British cold starter

  • cream cheese or crème fraîche → tahini loosened with lemon juice

    The original is bound with soft cheese, which needs refrigeration. Tahini gives a similar richness and body with a sesame bitterness instead of a dairy tang -- a genuinely different flavour that does the same structural job.