Warning! Berry Smooth Terrine Ahead

Occasionally one encounters a technique or dish that truly widens the horizon of culinary exploration. For example, the first time you ever cook eggs IN your hash browns, or bring a steak to sizzling perfection on a rocket-hot charcoal grill. These beautiful cooking milestones are exciting because they show that be it by experimentation, careful planning, or even by fortuitous accident, a cook can always discover new and exciting directions to take in the pursuit of cuisine. Tonight was such a night for me. Tonight, I discovered the simple elegance of the Terrine.

Now, I had no idea of what a terrine was 2 days ago, until I went to the Getty museum with a good friend of mine and noticed among the cultural treasures there a serving dish called a "Terrine". It had lobsters carved onto it, and this piqued my interest. Leave it to a food fanatic to be enthralled with the silver antique serving dish instead of the Monet collection. But I digress.

A little research led me to discover that a Terrine was not just a serving vessel, but a type of dish itself that can be savory or sweet. With near infinite choices before me for my first dive into the terrine pool, and considering that it was 105 degrees in my apartment, I decided to go with a sweet summer treat of fresh berries. But a Terrine is more than just a giant bowl of fresh berries (as great as that is!).

For my Terrine, I wanted all the flavors of my farm-fresh-picked strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries to come through, but be tied together with something that would offset the potential sour factor that is inevitable when gorging oneself on fresh summer berry bounty. After serious thought, I decided to go with a Rose wine, simmered with superfino sugar and some lemon juice to ensure the alcohol would cook off a bit, and not be too overwhelming. What secret ingredient did I use to tie everything together, you ask? Gelatin. Plain, unflavored, 70 cents a box Knox gelatin. That's right dear readers, my fancy Terrine was basically fruit cup jello, taken to it's highest peaks.

I'll admit I was a little apprehensive when my assembled and 24 hour chilled Terrine came out of the loaf pan I chilled it in. A little whip cream and strawberry garnish made for a nice accoutrement, and I gingerly took a bite, worrying if using wine for a jelly base was a good idea. Wow. Just Wow. The sugar and lemon in the Rose wine made a distinctly bright jelly, and brought out the natural sweetness in the berries. The whipped cream (homemade from heavy whipping cream, no spray cans this time) brought a smooth and velvety texture that helped hold the beautifully balanced flavors on the palate for just a few more fleeting seconds. It was so invigorating to taste a berry dessert that tasted like berries and not chumba-womba-mega-blue-fructose-berry-blast pancreatic shocking cocktail mix from hell.

I will not comment further on the tasting of this terrine, as this entry is long on the page already. But I will say that for what amounts to little more than berries and the original Jello, this new-found Terrine experiment in both the savory and sweet forms calls for more kitchen exploration on my part. And for me, "There's always room" for that.