How To Make Potted Cheese Pate In The Microwave

Hi. I'm Jennipher Marshall-Jenkinson, chairman of the UK Microwave Technology Association, and author of the prizewinning cookbook, Microwave Magic: The Art of 21st Century Cooking. And the pate I'm going to make this afternoon is a potted cheese pate.

Now, I've got here in my bowl here 250 grams of grated cheese, and I've put a mixture here of cheddar cheese, a little bit of emmental, and a little bit of red leicester cheese. And I'm going to add to that 250 grams of cheese 50 grams of butter, a few caraway seeds. There we are, just a few to go in, a teaspoon or so.

And a pinch or so from some dried herbs. And the herbs I'm using today, I've actually dried myself. I had some leftover fresh herbs, and so I dried them in the microwave.

The perfect way to use up leftover herbs. So, dried herbs, and 3 tablespoons, 2 to 3 tablespoons of juice. Now I'm using some pear cider here, which is lovely.

If you're non-alcoholic, you can use some apple juice, or if you're a beer drinker you can use some beer. So, I'm just going to put that together, cook that for 5 minutes in the microwave in total, giving it a good stir after 2 minutes. So we'll leave that in the oven there, and see how that cooks.

Now, all pates cook really well in the microwave simply because, again, there's no direct heat source. Usually, if you make a cheese pate or chicken liver pate, for example, you have to cook it in a double saucepan on the stove. You have to continuously stir it, and it burns and sticks very easily.

Here, we've got a heat-proof bowl in the microwave, 5 or 6 minutes, and it's cooked perfectly. So let's see what this comes out like, when it's finished cooking. The pate's now had 5 minutes in the microwave, at 700 watts, and I actually gave it a good stir halfway through cooking time.

So you can see here my cheese is all thoroughly melted, the herbs are all mixed in. Just give it a good stir. And I'm going to spoon it, then, well, pour it, into my pate dishes.

Now, I'm going to leave that to cool down, and then when that's cooled, I'm going to top it with some melted butter. So we can leave those to one side for the moment. Here's one that I actually made earlier on.

And you can see, then, that I've topped it with some melted butter, and the butter set on the top, and we've still got our mixed herbs there. And this is just lovely to take out and serve with some melted crackers. Delicious.

So, there we are with a potted cheese pate, made in just 5 minutes, using up leftover cheese, leftover, lots of different varieties of cheese that can go into making a pate really quickly and easily.