The Union Square Farmer’s Market, just a few block away from Chez Belm, opened for the season this past Saturday. I braved the gathering storm clouds and made sure I was one of the first to arrive to check out the fruits of the rainy spring.
I exercised some restraint, which was helped by my not wanting an entire fridge full of leafy greens. I bought French breakfast radishes, garlic scapes, strawberries, rainbow chard, cherries, greenhouse cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fig and mascarpone stuffed burrata, and a slab of brioche rolls from Iggy’s, the new bakery.
The radishes are my next sous vide experiment, the strawberries and burrata are destined to become dessert, and I have to shift into summer cooking mode.
It was the day of the birthday dinner. I had spent most of the previous evening lying awake trying to work out the best timing for all of the dishes and their components. Although the cauliflower panna cotta only required a spoonful of caviar to finish before serving, I had to blanch and shock asparagus just as the guests arrived, and I had to drop the eggs in the water bath half an hour before that. I would be relying heavily on my oeven and its warming drawer to hold components until ready for assembly.
I tried to remember to take photos whenever I could, but things were a bit hectic in the kitchen, so some steps aren’t documented.
To finish the rutabaga mostarda, I drained the vacuum bags with the slices and syrup and strained the liquid into a saucepan. I boiled the syrup to reduce while I cleaned the slices of any stray bits of mustard seed or horseradish. Once the syrup was reduced to a glaze, I added fifteen grams of butter, stirred in the slices, and held the mixture in the covered saucepan.
To finish the potato “mille-feuille”, I unmolded the compressed potato cake from the loaf pan and cut it into rectangles about an inch square and an inch and a half long. I didn’t pay attention to the final orientation of the potato layers, so I wound up with potato rectangles in which the layers progressed from left to right across the plate instead of top to bottom. I crisped the potatoes in clarified butter until they were brown on all sides, then glazed with the butter. I held the potatoes in the warming drawer.
To finish the pork belly, I cut it into inch and a half cubes which I crisped in a saute pan filmed with canola oil. When the belly was browned on all sides, I removed them to a rack to drain, and held them in the warming drawer.
To finish the racks and loins, I covered the bones of the rack with foil to keep them from discoloring, then filmed a (second) saute pan with oil. I added the rolled loins over medium heat and cooked for about six minutes, turning the loins so they cooked evenly. I added the racks meat side down and turned up the heat to brown the meat. I added thirty grams of butter, turned the racks over, and butter basted the meat for about two more minutes. Finally, I removed the racks and loins to a rack to rest.
To finish the leg and shoulder confit, I cooked them skin side down for three minutes before moving them to a 350 °F oven for another six minutes with a flip halfway through.
I removed the pan from the oven, added thirty grams of butter along with a thyme and rosemary sprig, and butter basted the meat for two minutes. (You can see the potatoes cooking in the rearmost pan.)
To prepare the mustard greens, I added them to a saucepan with twenty grams of butter, a pinch each of salt and sugar, and cooked until they wilted.
I added a cup of chicken stock, brought it to a boil, and simmered the greens for ten minutes.
Assembly time: I laid down a spoonful of pork sauce (did I forget to mention the “quick” pork sauce that took me eight hours to prepare while I was sous vide-ing the confit?), set the mustard greens in the center of the plate, and placed a potato baton, a cube of belly, and chunk of confit in three of the corners.
I cut the loins into thick slices and the racks into double chops with two bones each.
I placed the loin slice next to the confit and draped the rack over the greens. I was plating on a table opposite the stove, somehow managing not to drop anything.
(Action shot by She Who Must Be Obeyed, who also makes me wear the chef’s jacket at these dinner parties. And sometimes… oh, never mind.)
The rutabaga slices and glaze were placed in the last remaining corner, and the plate was finished.
I served the dish with a 2004 Ravenswood Dickerson Napa Valley Zinfandel.
How did it taste? Crispy fatty belly, salty confit, tender chops, perfectly cooked loins, bitter greens, sweet and spicy mostarda, and rich meaty sauce: this dish hit every note. The plates I returned to the kitchen were wiped clean.
This was undoubtedly the most technically complex dish I have ever cooked, but it was so clearly worth it. If I ever do it again, however, I will need an assistant at service time to get the plates ready and pull the components together quicker. I don’t think He Who Will Not Be Ignored is ready just yet.
And I will spend a bit more time writing out the final plating steps instead of committing them to memory and using shorthand.
I saved working on the final cuts of pork — the saddles and racks — for last, for two reasons: they didn’t require multi-day preparation, and serious precision butchering was involved.
Saddles:
I started with the two saddles — the cuts between the racks and the legs — which had to be boned and trimmed to leave the loins and tenderloins attached to the skin. The instructions in Under Pressure were not as clear as I would have preferred, in fact, they seemed predicated on working with pre-boned saddles. That explains this photo:
I worked very carefully to remove the bone and silverskin while leaving the loins and outer skin intact. After an hour’s worth of pork surgery, I declared victory with two trimmed saddles. I scored the interior of the small flaps below the loins in a crosshatch pattern in preparation for applying transglutaminase, aka “meat glue.” I had a kilo of the stuff, the smallest commercially available amount.
I spooned some transglue into a fine meshed strainer and sprinkled it over the meat, just as if I was dusting a cake with confectioner’s sugar.
I rolled up the saddles and tied them with twine every three-quarters of an inch,
resulting in the rolls you see in the opening photo. I refrigerated them for six hours, enough time to let the transglutaminase bond to the meat.
Racks:
While the saddles bonded, I worked on the racks, and discovered that not only are piglets asymmetrical, but that the butchering was asymmetrical as well. The recipe calls for the racks to be cut into double chops with a single bone in the center. I would be serving ten guests, so I needed two racks with eleven bones each to make the correct chops. (Work it out: five chops per rack = five bones, each flanked by a bone to be removed, plus one more at the far end: 5 + 5+ 1 = 11) One of my racks had eleven bones, but the other had only ten. In addition, the meat in each rack was not the same size.
I made an executive decision to cut the chops double but between every second bone, which would give me the ten chops I needed. Having worked that out, I made a sincere effort to understand the directions for tying the racks — instructions that desperately require at least one illustration — and chose to adhere to the spirit of the procedure, which was to keep the shape of the chops as round as possible.
Here’s what I wound up with:
By the time I had figured out the rack tying, it was time to season them and prepare them for cooking along with the saddles.
I placed the saddles and racks in separate bags, adding a thyme sprig, garlic clove, and ten grams of olive oil to each.
I cooked the loins and racks in a 60.5 °C water bath for twenty minutes, removed and rested them for five minutes, then left them in the bags at room temperature until final plating preparation.
Potato “Mille-Feuille”:
My last bit of advance preparation was the construction of the potato “mille-feuille.” I peeled five large russet potatoes and sliced them lengthwise on a mandoline.
I brushed the bottom of a loaf pan with clarified butter, then layered potatoes in the pan, brushing each layer with more butter, and seasoning every other layer with salt and pepper.
When the pan was full, I baked it in a 350 °F oven for an hour.
I removed the pan from the oven, covered the top with parchment paper, rested an identical loaf pan on top of the paper, and then weighted everything down with bricks.
With the pork belly and rutabaga mostarda out of the way, I spent the rest of the evening preparing the pork leg and shoulder confit.
I gathered my ingredients: two baby pork legs, two baby pork shoulders, sixty grams of crushed garlic cloves, twenty grams of black peppercorns, four grams of bay leaves, four grams of thyme sprigs, six grams of juniper berries, and eight grams of coriander seeds.
To make the cure for the pork, I mixed the herbs and spices with three kilograms (that’s right, three kilos) of kosher salt.
I added about a third of the cure to the bottom of a plastic container, layered the legs and shoulders on top, then covered the meat with the rest of the cure.
I covered the container and refrigerated it for eight hours overnight.
The next morning I removed the legs and shoulders and rinsed off the cure. You can see that the skin has tightened up and changed color.
I transferred the cure to a strainer and set it under warm running water to dissolve the salt, leaving the herbs and spices behind, which I separated.
Keller has a complicated technique for making herb sachets from plastic wrap, but I just divided everything evenly into four Japanese tea infusion bags.
I placed the legs and shoulders into separate sous vide bags, added a sachet and 250 grams of lard (from the Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility), and vacuum sealed each one.
I cooked the bags for eight hours at 80 °C in a water bath.
After a fifteen minute rest at room temperature, I removed the skin from each shoulder and leg, keeping it in one piece. The pieces were irregularly shaped and had blue USDA stamps on them, so I reserved them for another use.
I cut the meat along the line of the interior bone and deboned each piece, working again to keep each in one piece.
I lined a baking pan with parchment paper and fit the meat into it in a single layer.
I covered the meat with more parchment, then a cutting board that just fit int the pan, and topped the assembly with two bricks. I refrigerated the pan overnight, during which time the meat would compress.
The next day (that’s day three if you’re counting) I cut out a dozen one and one-quarter inch squares of chilled confit. I cut the pork belly skin into inch and a half squares, laid it out next to the confit, and prepared some pork caul fat by soaking it in water and then stretching it out.
I placed a square of confit on a piece of the skin, then wrapped it all in a four inch square piece of the caul fat. The result was twelve little confit packages, which you can see at the beginning of this post. Those were returned to the fridge until final preparation for plating.
Another component down, with even more difficult bits to go.
I‘m back after a brief vacation from cooking, blogging, and blogging about cooking. When She Who Must Be Obeyed suggests that you take a break, you listen. Or else.
There are a total of eight sub-recipes, but I started my week-long prep-and-cooking adventure with two of the simpler components.
Pork Belly
If you have a look at the size of the bellies from my little piggy, you’ll see that they aren’t large enough or thick enough to cut into inch-thick squares.
Bellies, the cut below the ends of the racks. Too small for bacon, but still good eatin'.
Fortunately, I had a thick rectangular slab of belly in the Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility. I assembled the rest of my ingredients, and ran into my first problem. The brined pork belly sub-recipe called for twenty grams of Hobbs’ Curing Salt, from the purveyor that supplies bacon to Keller’s restaurants. A quick call to Hobbs’ confirmed that it would take at least a week to receive the curing salt, but the very friendly gentleman there revealed the crucial piece of information: the cure is nitrite-based.
I modified the brine based on proportions found in Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio. Sixty grams of kosher salt, thirty-five grams of sugar, twenty grams of sodium nitrite, a small bay leaf, two black peppercorns, half each of a small leek, carrot, and onion, and a thyme sprig.
I added the salt, sodium nitrite, and sugar to a cup of warm water, stirring to dissolve. I added the remaining brine ingredients and enough water to make a volume of one liter. I chilled the brine, then combined the brine and belly in a zip-top bag.
After an overnight stay in the fridge, I discarded the brine and sealed the belly in a sous vide bag.
I cooked the belly in a 180 °F water bath for twelve hours, let it rest for ten minutes, then chilled it in an ice bath. I refrigerated the belly until it was completely chilled, then sliced off the skin and any excess fat. I reserved the skin for the next recipe, and stored the belly in the fridge until it was time to assemble the completed dish.
Rutabaga Mostarda
A mostarda, as described by Keller, is “a traditional Italian condiment or preserve, defined by its sweet and spicy flavors.” In this recipe, the mostartda would stand in for the fruit accent usually found in a pork dish.
Once the pork was brining in the fridge, I assembled the next set of ingredients: five hundred grams of sugar, half a liter of water, horseradish root, two rutabagas, some small dried chiles, five grams of dry mustard, eight grams of mustard seeds, and one gram of tumeric.
I made a simple syrup with the sugar and water, bringing the water to a boil and dissolving the sugar in it. I grated sixty grams of horseradish (and had clear sinuses for the rest of the week) and added it to the syrup along with the remaining ingredients.
While the syrup chilled in the fridge, I peeled the rutabagas and cut them into quarter-inch slices on a mandoline.
Using a one and one-eight inch cutter, I punched forty rounds out of the slices.
I divided the rounds and syrup between two sous vide bags and cooked them at 185 °F for two hours. I chilled the bags in an ice bath, then refrigerated them until needed for final assembly.
Not a bad day’s work. Things would only get more complicated from this point on.
The full name of this dish is is Soft-Boiled Egg with Green Asparagus and Crème Fraîche Aux Fines Herbes, but that won’t fit in the title field. This was the second course for the Fifth Annual Birthday Dinner, a recipe from Thomas Keller’s Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide.
I made the sauce first, assembling nine grams each of minced chives, chervil, and flat-leaf parsley, three grams of minced tarragon, twelve grams of water, and 250 grams of crème fraîche.
I added the herbs to the crème, then mixed in the water, and stored the sauce in the fridge.
I trimmed the tough ends of 72 asparagus, but did not peel them since they were very thin. Keller recommends tying the spears into individual bundles, but I chose to forgo that bit of fussiness.
An hour before I planned to serve the dish, I put a dozen eggs in the water bath set at 62.5 °C.
I set a large pot of heavily salted water to boil, then prepared a large bowl full of ice water. Just before I served the first course, I blanched the asparagus for six minutes, then shocked them in the cold water before draining them dry on a towel-lined tray.
For the final assembly, I spooned the sauce onto each plate, topped with six asparagus spears, then cracked open a soft-boiled egg on top of each. I finished the dish with some black pepper and fleur de sel.
I served a 2009 Austrian grüner veltliner, a crisp, mineral-y white that held up well against the strong tastes of asparagus and egg.
The dish presented two classic pairings: the egg and herbs, and asparagus and egg. I had hoped that the egg yolk would have been a bit runnier, I think the longer cooking time left less margin for error (contrast with previously prepared slow-poached eggs which only cooked for 45 minutes). That flaw aside, the tastes were still dead on.
And to any smartypants readers who ask “What about the butter-fried croutons in Keller’s recipe?” I can only say: I burned them. Twice.
The original Bertucci’s pizzeria was in David Square, Somerville, next door to the original Steve’s Ice Cream store (a pizza place next to an ice cream place: stoner marketing at its best). When owner Joey Crugnale turned Bertiucci’s into a national chain, he sold his two local stores. Both buildings were razed to be replaced by Carberry’s Bakery, which was replaced by a Bolocco burrito joint, then a vegetarian sandwich shop, and then nothing. The location was considered to be doomed to failure because it was just far enough outside of David Square proper to be ignored.
When I heard that a new restaurant would be opening at that spot, I hoped that someone finally had figured out the right establishment for that location, which, ironically, is a pizzeria with wood-fired ovens. Posto opened about six weeks ago, and if the meal we had was any indication, they will be in no danger of failing.
After an unsuccessful attempt to eat there on Saturday evening (at 8 PM on Tufts University’s graduation weekend — what were we thinking?), we tried again at 6:30 PM on Sunday and were seated immediately. It didn’t take us long to decide on our dishes, starting with three appetizers and then moving on to two pizzas.
Calamari, marinara sauce
Lightly breaded with a crispy exterior and a tender interior, served on a bed of greens. After He Who Will Not Be Ignored demolished most of the plate, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I shared the remaining “salad” of arugula, lemon juice, and batter shards.
Nonna’s meatballs “al forno”
Someone’s grandmother has a killer meatball recipe. These were moist, a combination of beef and pork served in a meaty sauce with a generous layer of melted fresh mozzarella on top.
Crispy pig ears, lemon aioli, sea salt
These would have been right at home on the St. John menu. The long strips of ear had a crisp crust on the outside, and chewy skin beneath, with the aioli lending acidity to the fatty treats. He Who Will Not Be Ignored declared them “better than the ears you cooked two weeks ago.” I have to agree, I think this dish will always be on my dinner order on future visits.
Margherita pizza (San Marzano, basil, fior di latte)
We had to order this, it’s the standard by which pizzerias are judged. Only four ingredients: dough, sauce, cheese, and basil – there’s no hiding behind a margherita. And this one was one of the best: crispy crust with some blackening on the bottom, the product of a wicked hot oven (and just the way I like my crust), not too much sauce, a decent amount of cheese, and smaller basil leaves instead of the four honkin’ basil doormats you find on some versions.
Asparagus pizza (guanciale, parmesan, fried egg)
Another winning combination: shaved spring asparagus, guanciale, and parmesan, all on that perfect crust, topped with a fried egg — it’s as if the chef knew me before I ever walked through the door. It took a lot of self control on my part to make sure I shared this pizza with the rest of my family.
She Who had an Aviator, a gin concoction from the cocktails list. I went old school with a glass of 2003 Revello Barolo Vigna Giachini, served from their custom dispensing system.
I’ll leave the final impression to He Who Will Not Be Ignored: “I give it five stars for the food, and one star for the atmosphere. It was to loud; I couldn’t hear my video game over all of the talking.” We agree about the food, the atmosphere was lively but not overwhelming, a good sign of Posto’s potential longevity.
I was in Los Angeles for my scheduled meat pickup in April, so I got to double up yesterday. There was a bit of duplication, but who am I to complain? I got two of the Best Chickens, five thick pork chops, sweet Italian sausage, sirloin steak, sirloin tips, a chuck steak, ground beef, and lamb loin chops. The lamb will be a sous vide experiment, the steaks are destined for the grill, and most of the chops won’t be around by next weekend.
And, as usual, some goodies from the freebie box:
Five lovey thick slabs of fatback, soon to become delicious, delicious, lardo.
I started with eight ounces of cauliflower cut into florets, two tablespoons of butter, one and a half cups of water, a sheet of gelatin, and four oysters in their juice. I had my fishmonger shuck the oysters for me, since I was unwilling to learn that new skill on my tight schedule. I added an additional quarter cup of water to the oysters and let them sit overnight to allow the water to infuse.
I added the cauliflower, water, and the butter to a saucepan and simmered until the liquid was almost gone, about thirty minutes.
I then added a cup of heavy cream and cooked the mixture for another ten minutes.
I removed and discarded the oysters (felling less guilty about tossing them than I would have if I had struggled to extract them from their shells), then strained the juice.
I dissolved an addition 1/3 sheet of gelatin in two tablespoons of hot water, then added the juice and a few grinds of black pepper before refrigerating the mixture. I stirred it every few minutes until it became viscous and the pepper remained suspended, then spooned two teaspoons of the gel over the top of the chilled panna cottas, tilting the bowls to make sure the gel evenly coated the entire surface.
I returned the bowls to the fridge until it was serving time, then added a generous spoonful of caviar to the top of each bowl.
Did I use beluga caviar? Hells no, I don’t have that kind of cash lying around. Besides, beluga is now officially banned as the product of an endangered species. Fortunately I live two blocks away from The Little Pearl, a local caviar purveyor, who provided an excellent American sturgeon substitute.
How did it taste? I was concerned that the cauliflower would overpower the other flavors, but instead it just added more depth to the creamy custard, the oyster gel contributed a note of brininess which boosted the flavor and the salty pop of the caviar. The dish was a certified plate-licker, a fine start to the rest of the meal.
We had already dined on caviar and seafood, so the obvious transition to a meat course would be lobster, two different preparations:
Lobster Tartine, Leongrass and Fenugreek Broth, Pea Shoots. Served with Pinot Nior, III Somms Seven Springs Vineyard — Cuvee JG, Eqla-Amity Hills, Oregon 2007.
Two plump butter-poached lobster claws on a crisp crouton in an aromatic broth. Like the “lobster mitts” I had at Per Se, properly cooked claw meat can be a revelation, a totally different texture than the tail.
Steamed Maine Lobster, Artichoke, Citrus-Chili Emulsion. Served with the same wine as above.
Here we got the tail, simply steamed so as not to detract from the chef’s well-known citrus-chili sauce, which was the perfect balance of both, reminiscent of classic Thai flavors.
We were informed that the wine was a special bottling, a joint venture between Vongerichten and an Oregon winery. I had never considered a pinot with lobster, but it worked well with the strong flavors in both dishes.
Broiled Squab, Onion Compote, Corn Pancake with Foie Gras. Served with Barolo, Camerano Cannubi San Lorenzo, Piedmont, Italy 2004.
Another JG classic, the squab had hints of five spice, with the onion compote providing the traditional sweet component to complement the foie gras. I had no shame, I used the pancake to mop up the rich jus.
Lamb, mint, peas – all classic spring flavors, with the extra zing of green chili.
Chocolate Dessert Tasting. Served with Pedro Ximinez Solera 1927, Alvear, Montilla-Moriles, Spain.
Clockwise from top left: chocolate sorbet, a chocolate “straw” with caramel, chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream, and a chocolate “squiggle” with sesame tuille and nitrogen-frozen cream. The surprise here was the chocolate and sesame, a pairing of sweet and smoky that undercut what could have been a cloying dish.
But the star was the 83-year-old sherry. I almost licked the inside of the glass to get every last drop of that sweet nectar.
Seasonal Dessert Tasting. Served with Riesling Auslese, Wittman Westhofener Morstein, Rheinhessen, Germany 2006.
Clockwise from top left: lime sorbet with frozen lemon droplets, rhubarb with frozen yogurt, rhubarb tartlet with strawbery foam, and something I can no longer remember or identify. I don’t normally like rhubarb, but the variations presented made me reconsider my dislike. (My apologies for the shakycam photo. I’ll claim that I was still quivering from my first sip of the sherry.)
Although we had reached the end of the menu, the meal wasn’t quite over. There was the extra birthday dessert, a crème caramel with an edible fondant banner
…the rose petal macarons,
…the hand-cut marshmallows,
…and, finally, the jellies (grapefruit and blackberry) and assorted chocolates (including a miniature bag with more chocolates to take home).
I had experienced a preview of Vongerichten’s cooking at Market, his restaurant in Boston’s W Hotel, but it barely prepared me for the level of inventiveness and technique we experienced during this meal. We want to go back and sample some of the other dishes without the gradual progression of the tasting menu.
After three hours, it was time to bring the evening to a close. We headed back for the final birthday gift: the loan of a friend’s apartment for the weekend, a little time to unwind before returning to He Who Will Not Be Ignored. Who demanded a full accounting of the meal, and now wants “the lobster with the spicy sauce.” I’ll be sure to put a word in with JG.
. This is the dish that required the purchase of 
.
