Hénaff Pork Pâté

This morning, I posted a picture of a French pork product, Pâté Hénaff, freshly tipped from its tin onto a festive and colorful paper plate.  It looked pretty awful plopped down like that. Perhaps some of you wondered what it tasted like.  Never having been one to let a can of good pigmeat go to waste, I invited the somewhat fatty puck of pâté to lunch.

Other than the thick and drooling crust of pork fat on the surface of the pâté when freshly freed from it's steel-clad prison, the Serving Suggestion on the lid of the can is remarkably faithful to the real thing, right down its depiction of what the typical slice looks like in cross section. There seems to be little (if any) photoshopping involved.

Pâté Hénaff is a reasonably decent chopped ham product. It is both less heavily-seasoned and less fatty than Hormel's SPAM, but don't let that fool you; there is still plenty of fat to go around here.  The can says "ready to eat, cold or hot," but Pâté Hénaff is less than optimal when cold - the fat is unpleasant and the texture slightly grainy. It's much better sliced and fried, when it becomes rather pleasant, with a crispy browned crust over a tender hammy inner core.  It was okay for what it was, but if I feel the overwhelming need to buy highly processed canned pork loaf product again, I'll probably get SPAM instead because it's less expensive and the square can makes it easier to get uniform slices.