Brine Dilution

A couple of weeks ago I told you how I started a batch of pickled onions. At the time I expected the onions to be ready in about 10 to 14 days. Well, I am happy to report that after about 16 days in the aging room they were almost done. On the day [...]

Bresaola

Here are two stages in the life of air dried beef in the style of the bresaola of Lombardy. The piece in the foreground was taken out of the cure today, rinsed and tied, and hung in the aging room where it will dry and mature for 4-6 weeks. The two specimens in [...]

The Pork Fat’s Tale

Okay, so the title is a reference to Canterbury Tales and probably indicative of nothing more or less than I do not know what to call this post about one of the many acts of charcuterie that I committed this early summer week. Time to move on…
The best sauce in the world is hunger.

A Quickie

I am just about to blow out the door to catch a train to NYC to meet up with Mike Pardus, Kris Ray and a bunch of other culinarians for a walking tour through the markets and eateries of China Town, so I am not going to spend too many words on this post.
Here is [...]

The state of the oven

My aging mind is such a blur of past events that I really don’t remember when Jerl Pino took over the completion of the Tuscan style wood fired oven that Trent Hendricks and I began in September of 2008. The date he took charge doesn’t matter anyway. What’s important is that he took over the [...]

Nicholas Kristoff takes up the cause

As the newly released documentary Food Inc. makes its way through the movie theaters of the nation, it seems to be churning up a wake of outrage over the way that food is treated within the black box of the gastro-industrial complex.
Op-Ed Columnist – Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms – NYTimes.com
Here is a [...]

A gift of Globe

Jearl Pino, one of the guys who likes to come around to the farm and help with various projects, bought a Globe slicer from some guy who advertized it on Craigslist. I suppose the machine was too big to keep at Jearl’s house because he asked if he could leave it at [...]

This Morning

When I pulled in to the farm this morning, the air was thick with fog. The fog made everything look fuzzy. It was like I was looking through the lens of a camera that was covered by a shear nylon stocking.
Even though I was sure that I was not observing the world through a [...]

More Bull

Farmer Trent Hendricks, my butchery and charcuterie enabler, has been steadily increasing his stock of cattle over the winter months and now has a pretty healthy herd of grass fed animals whose ultimate fate is to become food. Almost all of the animals have been bought or traded into the farm as heifers, while [...]

FYI

The best sauce in the world is hunger.