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In the last couple of decades of the 19th century, my great-grandmother
(Reet Laarman) worked at Vastse Prangli Manor for Baron von Oettingen.
Mrs von Oettingen taught the peasant women how to prepare one of the
finest dishes of that time: pâté. This recipe
has been handed down the generations
despite the First and Second World Wars and
was passed on to my brother and me by our
grandmother (Linda Viiding) and mother
through hands-on practical training. Our
task was to crank the meat grinder and
later beat the whole pot full of pâté with
a large wooden spoon into a nice creamy
spread. In President Brezhnev’s Soviet
Union you could not simply buy liver every
day, and so we saw this simple dish as a real
treat and delicacy – and we still do!
