Things may be quiet here, but I assure you I have been cooking. The soups and stews that have kept us warm and fed during the Month of Endless Winter may not be blogworthy, but they have provided me with an opportunity to explore the depths of the Deep Storage Facility.
I could pretend that the first day of spring and The Complete Nose to Tail arrived simultaneously, but the book is two months old. Still, a recipe for rabbit seems appropriate for a spring/Easter post. And I had a rabbit in the freezer.
I braised the sections in a quart of what began as trotter gear, but has mutated though various pheasant and guinea fowl preparations into a general game stock that I keep straining, reducing, and returning to the freezer.
After the pieces cooled I dredged them in flour and breadcrumbs, with a bit of Dijon mustard in the egg wash. Chef Henderson likes the combination of rabbit and mustard.
After a short trip in the deep fryer the rabbit was ready to eat, accompanied by roasted sprouts with bacon (of course, bacon).
He Who Will Not Be Ignored declared it to be “almost as good as [my] fried chicken,” which qualifies as high praise. It was moist and crispy, slightly sweet from the braise, with a faint bite from the mustard. It reminded me that I should be cooking more rabbit; it’s not just fancy Easter fare, it’s a homey dish that can be made in any season.
I had successfully prepared lonza and pancetta, the salami was underway, what else could I try to cure? A quick check of the Deep Storage Facility inventory list revealed a pair of forelegs from a half pig I ordered a few year ago. They were little more than trotters with the hocks still attached, definitely not as meaty as whole shoulders, but otherwise perfect scale versions. I would attempt to cure prosciutto.
After a few days of sitting in a bag of salt (the salting time is proportional to the weight), I hung the legs in my curing chamber, where you can see the mold beginning to develop on the outside of the salami.
That was two months ago. Yesterday I checked one of the legs by trimming some of the meat from around the bone.
Deep color? Check. Creamy fat? Check. Intense porky taste with a bit of salt? Check. I think I’m ready to step up to a full shoulder once I run out of this batch.
Coda
The salami was ready for consumption about a month ago, so I brought some to a dinner party hosted by friends.
It looked right when cut open.
And it, along with the lonza, was right at home on this charcuterie plate that featured a duck terrine with duck heart center garnish.
I also sent some to Ryan Adams of Nose to Tail at Home. It met with his approval.
I think I’ve got this curing thing down. It’s time to step up the difficulty, but not before I make another batch of the salami. It’s almost gone, and now there’s a waiting list for it.
*I will eventually run out of monster movie titles for this series of posts.
There’s nothing like a bracing meat pie to get you through the winter cold. My search for a traditional steak and kidney version led me to this Heston Blumenthal recipe, which struck the proper balance between fussy and overly simple. He substitutes oxtail for steak, which results in a more deeply flavored final product. Since I live near a market that doesn’t criminally mark up the price of oxtail, I decided to give it a try.
I began with typical braising ingredients (mirepoix, herbs) augmented by Blumenthal’s go-to umami enhancers (mushrooms, tomatoes, star anise).
All of the vegetables got a good sweat
followed by a pretty pan deglazing.
After a few hours in a pressure cooker, I wound up with a thick sauce and tender oxtail. Separating the meat from the bones was very sticky work due to the amount of gelatin rendered out – that’s a good thing
The most time-consuming part of the entire process was shredding a half pound of frozen beef suet on a box grater to make it fine enough to incorporate into a dough.
While I let the brain-like dough lump rest,
I turned my attention to the veal kidney, also available on the cheap from the neighborhood market.
I chopped the kidney, mixed it with the oxtail and some of the reserved sauce, then added it to my dough-lined pudding basins. I learned that plastic pudding basins are a thing in the UK not available here, so I used pyrex pudding bowls instead.
I covered the tops with more dough and sealed the edges. Each dish was then covered with a square of parchment paper secured with a silicone band.
The only pan I had that would hold six bowls wasn’t deep enough to let me cover with a lid while the puddings steamed. My cooked puddings were still almost raw on top, but a quick trip into the 500 °F oven in which I was roasting sprouts solved that problem.
Once the puddings were unmolded and plated, I injected each with a therapeutic dose of sauce (roughly calculated to be about 100 ml/pudding).
I served the puddings with roasted sprouts and mashed potatoes.
Those little pudding packed a whole lot of flavor, so intensely meaty that I couldn’t imagine eating a larger portion. The mash, by comparison, seemed like a light accompaniment, but absolutely necessary to absorb every stray bit of the perfect sauce. He Who Will Not Be Ignored declared the pudding to be “better than those pies we had at the Tower of London.” High praise, coming from a connoisseur of tourist fare.
I plan on making these again soon, but will use a foil-covered roasting pan for the steaming step to ensure that the tops (which wind up as the bottoms) are properly cooked. And if anyone can point me to a source of plastic 1/4 pint pudding basins, I’ll happily return the favor with some charcuterie.
I had to move this blog to a new web host. While the migration was as painless as could be expected, there were still a few hiccups, some of which are still being manifested in these pages:
There are stray characters showing up where none were present before.
The behavior of the links for previous posts has been erratic. Sometimes they work, sometimes they default to the main page.
The photos that immediately follow the titles and appear as thumbnails for older posts have temporarily disappeared.
My progress on clearing up these bugs will be slowed due to the holidays and my general lack of knowledge of the underpinnings of WordPress, but I’m on it. I appreciate your patience while I work on fixes.
Update 1/28/13:
Post photos restored, links repaired, stray characters banished. Bug free!
I joined last year’s Charcutepalooza competition a month late, which meant that I never officially prepared duck prosciutto or guanciale, even though I had made them both previously. I also skipped over a basic panceta, choosing instead to make my own bacon, which had earned me watch list status from the local fire department.
I figured I’d ease my way into Salumi by making pancetta arrotolata, rolled pancetta. I bought a lovely slab of meaty pork belly the same day I acquired my pork loin.
I rubbed it with a cure of pink salt, black pepper, brown sugar, crushed juniper, garlic, bay leaves, and thyme.
I let it sit in a plastic bag in the fridge, where it served double duty as a weight for the lonza I was also curing. Once it was ready, I washed the belly clean and removed just enough skin to allow me to roll the pancetta with a layer of skin on just the outside.
Once tightly rolled and tied (no elastic netting for this one) there was a narrow strip of exposed meat, which I figured would improve the dying process.
I hung the pancetta to cure, checking the weight every week. After a while I noticed that while the skin had firmed up, the interior was definitely still squidgy. Thinking I might have a problem similar to the case hardening that can occur with cured sausages, I went right to the source, emailing Michael Ruhlman and describing my problem. In less than 24 hours I had this informative response from Jay Denham:
Unroll it, there is to much moisture in the middle and the skin is preventing it from escaping. The skin should be trimmed enough that it is not rolled into the pancetta. It should be salted and then rinsed just like a ham then hung to dry. Let it start to dry and when the weight has started to drop and equalization has started then roll it with the skin trimmed enough that a ribbon size bit of fat extends from top to bottom. It will take longer to cure with the skin on but the result in unmatched to skinned pancetta.
I realized he was telling me I should have started with an unrolled slab, but I untied and unrolled my three-week-old pancetta, which was decidedly not dry in the interior.
I let the untied slab hang for ten days,
then re-tied it and let it hang for another two weeks. Today I cut a slice off of and end that was clearly cured (see top photo). It was sweet, spicy, and had a slightly bitter finish, tasting like a very intensely flavored guanciale.
I may serve some of it thinly sliced wit the skin removed, but I plan to chop off pieces as needed for carbonara and other bacony treats.
The new batch of salami wasn’t the first addition to the curing cabinet this fall. I thought I’d ease back into charcuterie mode with something simpler from Salumi, but something that was also an improvement on one of my previous attempts. The lonza cured with orange and fennel met both of those requirements, in particular the “improvement:” I had cured a lonzino last year, but it never dried sufficiently due to it being encased in a thick casing.
A good lonzino begns with good pork, so I ordered an entire pork sirloin from my new meat purveyor, M.F. Dulock Pasture-Raised Meats. They removed the loin from the rack while I waited, and gave me the skin and bones without my having to ask. (There’s ramen stock in them bits.)
I dredged the loin in salt, them packed it in a bag along with sliced oranges, sliced garlic, orange juice, and toasted fennel seeds.
I pressed the loin between two sheet pans, using a curing pancetta as part of the weight. (Yes, that’s beer in the back.)
After a few days I removed the pork, rinsed it in water and then white wine, dusted it with ground fennel, and tied it with elastic netting. Again, I improvised a stuffing tube from a plastic container.
I weighed the tied lonza, then gave it pride of first placement in the curing cabinet.
As of today the entire loin has lost 28% of its weight, but that’s distributed unevenly across the muscle, which is thicker at the top. Relying on feel, I removed a small piece from the bottom that I was sure had dried sufficiently.
Good deep pink color, nice yellow fat, firm texture. How did it taste? It was sweet, porky, a bit funky, but I could detect a citrus note in addition to the fennel. I re-hung the rest, and expect it to be fully dried in another week or so. But in the meantime I have some tasty pork which I might be willing to share.
Last year at this time I was furiously scrambling to complete my final entry in the Charcutepalooza competition. My lonzino and bresaola had just crossed the time/weight threshold for safe consumption, and quickly disappeared in a flurry of holiday gifts and dinner party appetizers. The salami I had made the month before took longer to run out, mostly because I was rationing it. I had put so much effort into making it that I couldn’t bear to see it disappear.
But that salami and I had unfinished business. I tasted good, but could have been better. It was too thin, and the meat/fat ratio had skewed during drying. I had resolved to try again, but kept putting it off until my copy of Salumi by Ruhlman and Polcyn arrived, which got me thinking about making another batch. When Punk Domestics announced their Festa di Salumi, I knew it was time to get on with it. I would make more finocchiona, and this time i would get it right.
The Salumi recipe is the same as the recipe in Charcuterie: coarse ground pork and pork fat mixed with seasonings and wine. The difference for me is that grinding five pounds of meat is no longer a major undertaking.
Instead of dicing the fat by hand, which resulted in oversized chunks in my final salami, I ran it through the grinder.
After adding curing salt, dextrose, black pepper, wine, and a healthy dose of fennel pollen I gave everything a good mix.
I switched from hog casings to beef middles in order to produce a thicker final product. (It’s also much easier to stuff a few middles than it is to fill twelve feet of thin casings.) I had one casing split, but was able to recover. Rather then tie each one off with string, I used elastic netting, which I figured would maintain a more even pressure on the casing as it hung. I improvised a stuffing tube by cutting the top and bottom off of a plastic bottle.
When we (I was assisted as always by She Who Must Be Obeyed) were done we had three large and one small salami, and a few ounces of unused filling which I wrapped in plastic to use as a fermentation check.
I let the salami ferment in a plastic box, which I left in my oven with the light on. It created a constant 80 °F for 36 hours, at the end of which the pH had dropped to 5.1 and the filling had changed to a bright pink.
After giving each salami a dunk in mold culture, I weighed them and hung them in my curing cabinet, which you can see at the top of this post.
As of today they are completely covered with new mold. They won’t be ready until after the new year, but I’m willing to wait. In the meantime I’ll try the lonza and pancetta I hung weeks earlier. But that’s the subject of the next two posts.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that He Who Will Not Be Ignored is named after Miles Davis. What you may not know is that I’m named after Dave Brubeck. As friends sent me condolence emails after his passing last week, I was reminded that my family has its own Brubeck story.
When my parents met my father was a working jazz pianist in Waterbury, CT. He, like many of his fellow musicians, had latched onto Brubeck after he released Jazz Goes to College. He had established a new style: cool, but not in the west coast Stan Getz mode, instead emphasizing more cerebral compositions and soloing. Look at Brubeck’s famous quartet, they could easily pass for a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters today:
My Dad, a fan of George Shearing’s block chord style, correctly heard that same influence in Brubeck’s playing. He studied his compositions, particularly the solo piano featured in Brubeck Plays Brubeck. I discovered the sheet music for that set years later, and quickly learned the meaning of “deceptively simple” – I could play the notes, but I couldn’t swing them.
In the fall of 1959 Brubeck toured in support of his groundbreaking Time Out record. Dad managed to score a pair of front row seats for the performance at Yale University. Due to various complications, he and my very pregnant mother managed to arrive just minutes before starting time, only to discover that their seats had been resold as no-shows.
While dad argued with the theatre staff, Brubeck walked on stage to do a final check on the piano’s tuning. He noticed the distressed couple and asked what the problem was. The staffer sheepishly informed him that the seats had been resold, which didn’t sit well with Mr. Brubeck.
“You sold a pregnant woman’s seat? How are you gong to fix that?”
“We don’t know, there are no other seats available. The show’s sold out.”
“Then they can sit here,” Brubeck said, pointing to a spot on the stage behind his piano.
And so it came to pass that my parents wound up with the best seats in the house, sitting in the wings just behind Dave Brubeck. Mom claims that not-quite-born me was the most active she had ever felt, kicking up a storm for the entire show.
As for my name, that had actually been decided months before. If I was a girl, I would be named Alice, but if I was a boy I would be David. Dad had lobbied hard for Stanley, after his other jazz idol Stan Kenton, but offered David as an alternative. He won’t admit to it, but I suspect Dad employed a magician’s force, wanting David all along. (I should be grateful he wasn’t a fan of sax player Zoot Sims.)
So that’s the story. I try to imagine my unborn self kicking out a 9/8 to “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and smile. When my sister had to choose music for her senior choreography final she picked “Take Five.” The piece is still talked about at the school (and by a troupe of thoroughly confused dancers).
Make the time to give that record another listen, it’s probably next to your copy of Kind of Blue and Giant Steps. I’m currently rediscovering the melody of “Strange Meadow Lark.”
Here at Chez Belm we celebrate Aftersgiving: the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend. Since we travel to visit family most years, we were routinely denied the joys of turkey leftovers until I hit on the idea of ordering a farm-raised turkey to cook upon our return.
Roasting a whole turkey requires a lot of time and oven management, especially if you have a lot of sides to serve as well. I had decided to cut down on the cooking time by spatchcocking the bird, but a friend suggested a different method: smoke the breast and confit the legs. Smoking and confiting for the same meal? That’s right up my fun alley.
I began three days before mealtime by separating the legs from the breast. I prepared a cure with salt, brown sugar, thyme, bay leaves, and sage, and rubbed it all over the legs.
I also heavily salted the breast instead of brining it, which intensified the flavor without making the meat soggy.
After 24 hours, I rinsed the cure off the legs and vacuum sealed them with some duck fat and butter. They cooked sous vide for 18 hours at 73 °C.
While the legs cooked, I smoked the breast with cherry wood for about eight hours, until not quite fully cooked. You can see the result at the top of the post. Once the breast had cooled, I carefully removed the skin.
I sandwiched the skin between two sheet pans and added some weight to flatten it out.
I removed each breast half and vacuum sealed them with more butter. They sat in the fridge until about two hours before serving time, when they were dunked into the same water bath as the legs.
I broke down the rest of the carcass.
After an overnight simmer in the stockpot I wound up with five quarts of smoked turkey stock. (I just used a quart as the base for red beans and rice.)
Before serving I crisped the legs in a hot pan, removed the bones, sliced the breast, and crisped the skin in a still-hot oven. I don’t have any final plate photos – there’s not much subtlety in a heaping plate of Aftersgiving goodness – but here’s the meat ready to be served:
I made gravy using a roux made from the rendered leg confit fat and some plain turkey stock from the Deep Storage Facility.
The other sides were buttermilk mashed potatoes,
roasted brussels sprouts with shallots and balsamic vinegar,
and cornbread sausage stuffing made with home made cornbread (a recipe I was testing for America’s Test Kitchen).
This was the best-cooked turkey I’ve made to date. The breast was moist and subtly smoky, but the leg confit was the big hit of the meal. I’m considering buying more leg and thigh sections to confit along with my annual winter duck prep.We also wiped out the skin, which turned out like turkey chicharrones.
Of course, no Aftersgiving feast would be complete without pie, so I served brownie pie with cereal milk ice cream, hot fudge, graham and chocolate crumbs, and a shot of cereal milk.
Next year we get to stay home for Thanksgiving, but I think we’ll still celebrate Aftersgiving. You can never have too much turkey.
I had developed an online friendship with Ryan Adams after I discovered his blog Nose to Tail at Home, where, in the absence of god, he’s doing Fergus’s holy work and cooking every recipe. When I read his review of Takashi in New York my first thought was “I have to eat there,” but my second thought was “He was in NYC and didn’t tell me?” My threats of bodily harm should such a thing ever happen again (wisely kept out of the comment thread in the event of future litigation) must have made an impression, because he informed me he would be returning in early November, and would I like to join him at Takashi?
She Who Must Be Obeyed and I formulated a plan for a hit-and-run visit, left He Who Will Not Be Ignored with mother-in-law, and drove into the city for a great meal with exceptional company. Since there were only four of us, we couldn’t sample the menu as extensively as Ryan had previously, but we relied on his judgement to guide us to the good stuff.
We began with niku-uni, fatty chuck flap topped with fresh sea urchin roe and served on top of crispy nori and shiso leaf. It was a perfect two-bite appetizer that I plan on shamelessly stealing for a future dinner party.
Next up was the testicargot, “cow balls escargot style with garlic shiso butter.” They tasted exactly like escargot, and actually improved upon the usual rubbery snail texture.
If those starters weren’t creative enough, we concluded the first round with calf brain cream with blinis and caviar, accompanied by the traditional vodka shots.
Squeeze the brain cream out of the tube onto a blini, top with caviar, and inhale. Even though Mimi, our wonderful server, provided extra blinis, there was still cream left in the tube. Having already established that the leftover garlic shiso butter was fair game for eating, Ryan and I finished off the brains right out of the tube. You didn’t think we’d let it go to waste, did you?
Takashi is a yakiniku restaurant, which means that you cook the meat courses over a grill set into your table. The blackboard-covered walls explain the menu and cooking technique, but it’s pretty simple. Place meat on grill, turn once, dip in sauce, eat. We began with “the tongue experience,” cuts from three different sections of beef tongue (tan-saki, tan-suji & tan-moto).
Once grilled, you can either add some lemon juice or dip in a garlic-sesame oil sauce. The simple preparation emphasizes the differences between the tongue sections.
The chef’s selection (horumon-moriawase) was “first stomach,” “second stomach,” heart, liver, and sweetbreads, all marinated in “Takashi’s sauce.”
I had never tried grilled stomach, which was surprisingly tender.
Just when we thought we were finished, I noticed the Asian-Cajun andouillette, large intestine stuffed with kobe beef sausage. Mimi grilled it at the table and sliced it for us. Look at all that lovely fat!
We were presented with a complimentary dessert of homemade soft-seve vanilla ice cream with “the works”: shiratama (rice-flour dumplings), kurogoma kinako (black sesame and soybean flour), azuki (sweet beans), goji berry syrup, and gold leaf. It was very refreshing after all that meat, but we didn’t finish it – I had other dessert plans. After having a photo taken to commemorate the occasion (a photo greatly improved by the presence of our better halves), we headed out to our next destination.
After a walk and more conversation we arrived at the dessert location, where a picture is all you need:
There was no way I’d visit downtown NYC and not hit the Momofuku Milk Bar. I had a cookie, chugged down a bottle of cereal milk, and bought more stuff to take home.
It seems that visits to Takashi are frequently followed by murderous threats. When we informed He Who Will Not Be Ignored where we had eaten, he made it very clear to us that our continued survival was contingent on our including him in our next visit.
