Posts tagged as:

pig

Chicken and Pig’s Trotter

March 12, 2010
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Even though I cooked this dish last weekend, my writing about it today makes it the perfect conclusion to the bacon trilogy (trilogies aren’t just for fantasy novels). So we’ll pretend that I used my newly-smoked bacon instead of a slab of locally produced commercial product.
I had been casting about for a recipe that would [...]

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The Mostly-Homemade BLT

March 11, 2010
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What to do with my newly-smoked bacon? Put it to the test in the vehicle designed explicitly to highlight its flavor: the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, the humble – potentially mighty – BLT. Inspired by Michael Ruhlman’s BLT From Scratch Summertime Challenege, I decided to create the ingredients myself.
Sadly, it’s March in New England, [...]

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Bacon

March 10, 2010
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Last week I indicated that the two pork bellies from my meat CSA were destined to become bacon. He Who Will Not Be Ignored expressed an interest in helping me, so it was time for a lesson about Where Food Comes From. We began with the Maple-Cured Smoked Bacon recipe from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The [...]

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Trotter Gear

February 12, 2010
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At the other end of the meat case at H Mart where I found the oxtails was a lovely display of pig’s feet. If I’m going on a braising jag, I thought, I might as well go all the way. I had a recipe in mind, so I left with a bagful of animal extremities.
In [...]

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Momofuku Pork Buns

February 4, 2010
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My recent trip to H Mart was for more than informational and educational purposes. I was in search of a key ingredient: frozen Chinese mantou buns, which I had been unable to find at any of my local markets. I wanted to make the famous Momofuku pork buns, and the bread was the missing piece.
Of [...]

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Lardo

December 30, 2009
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It’s not a pre-New Year’s motivational insult, it’s Italian cured pork fat. I had three pounds of pork fatback that was a gift from my CSA, so I looked for something to do with it. My choices came down to using it to make sausage (a project for the new year) or lardo, and the [...]

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Meat Crazy

December 20, 2009
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The threat of bad weather will always separate the hardcore cooks from the dilettantes. There we were, lined up next to a freezer van, waiting to score this month’s CSA delivery before the storm arrived. As always, it was worth the wait. This month’s haul included a whole chicken breast, ground beef, ground lamb, both [...]

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Porchetta with Roasted Fingerlings

December 19, 2009
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I had forgotten about this pork dish, a Tuscan classic that She Who Must Be Obeyed and I ate on our honeymoon in Italy, back when Sylvio Berlusiconi was first running for office and not being punched in the face.When I saw Anne Burrell make it (the same episode as the Passato di Ceci, video [...]

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Guanciale

November 24, 2009
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At the end of the post about my first attempt at curing meat, I wrote:
I found two hog jowls in the Belm Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility. Guess what’s next?
What was next was making guanciale, which is done by salt-curing and drying the meat from a hog’s jowls. It’s a simple process that requires little [...]

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The Perfect Snack, or a Bag of Crack?

October 14, 2009
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About eight years ago I tried the Atkins Diet. I lasted for almost a year, but I knew early on that I was doomed to fail (the result of all diets that can’t be be described as “eat less, exercise more”) when I failed to embrace the snack consumed by all hardcore Atkins-ites: the pork [...]

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