Makin’ Bacon

Okay, it’s on. I’ve been nattering for weeks about making pancetta and finally I’m doing it. Last night I broke out the slab of pork belly given to me by Trent Hendricks and mixed up a cure from Ruhlmans’ famous Charcuterie book.

Think it was easy? Not. Ruhlman’s recipe was written for 5lbs of pork belly and the piece I have is only 2.5 pounds. So I had to divide everything by 2. So, like 2 tablespoons of juniper berries had to be 1, and four cloves of garlic came down to 2. What a headache, no wonder they this kind of stuff ‘Slow Food.’

Seriously now, the recipe is a no-brainer. The bacon gets cured over 7 days (no it isn’t sick, it’s dead!) with a dry rub of juniper, kosher salt, pink salt (Instacure #1), nutmeg, sugar and a few other things. It’s funny, you can tell the book is written by someone who has spent a lot of time in professional kitchens because it suggests that you crush the juniper berries with the bottom of a saute pan. I’ll bet that as I write this there are thousands of professional cooks all over the United States getting ready for Saturday night dinner service and crushing black pepper or cloves with the bottom of a pot.

The technique works great, of course it does, and it’s good advice since most people are not likely to have something like my trusty old Roman designed mortar and pestle. But I don’t care how brilliantly you use the bottom of a saute pan as a cudgel, some of whatever it is you are trying to crush always skitters out from under and shoots across the room. The mortar and pestle is much neater and you can’t beat it for beauty and simplicity of design.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Makin’ Bacon

Okay, it’s on. I’ve been nattering for weeks about making pancetta and finally I’m doing it. Last night I broke out the slab of pork belly given to me by Trent Hendricks and mixed up a cure from Ruhlmans’ famous Charcuterie book.

Think it was easy? Not. Ruhlman’s recipe was written for 5lbs of pork belly and the piece I have is only 2.5 pounds. So I had to divide everything by 2. So, like 2 tablespoons of juniper berries had to be 1, and four cloves of garlic came down to 2. What a headache, no wonder they this kind of stuff ‘Slow Food.’

Seriously now, the recipe is a no-brainer. The bacon gets cured over 7 days (no it isn’t sick, it’s dead!) with a dry rub of juniper, kosher salt, pink salt (Instacure #1), nutmeg, sugar and a few other things. It’s funny, you can tell the book is written by someone who has spent a lot of time in professional kitchens because it suggests that you crush the juniper berries with the bottom of a saute pan. I’ll bet that as I write this there are thousands of professional cooks all over the United States getting ready for Saturday night dinner service and crushing black pepper or cloves with the bottom of a pot.

The technique works great, of course it does, and it’s good advice since most people are not likely to have something like my trusty old Roman designed mortar and pestle. But I don’t care how brilliantly you use the bottom of a saute pan as a cudgel, some of whatever it is you are trying to crush always skitters out from under and shoots across the room. The mortar and pestle is much neater and you can’t beat it for beauty and simplicity of design.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

News Snack

This pawpaw fruit (l) reminds me of durian
On the Side | Lost foods reclaimed | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/27/2007

I’d almost forgotten that mustard oil is considered not fit for human consumption by the USDA. I bought some years ago to play with and had to scrape the warning label off the bottle so it wouldn’t give me nightmares. i didn’t serve it to anyone, of course. But from the sound of this Village Voice article I could have…
village voice > nyclife > Counter Culture: Our Man Indulges in Forbidden Oil, Bangladesh-Style by Robert Sietsema

Thanks to PETA, you can now have cage free eggs while you abuse yourself with a meal at Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. (What’s a Carl’s Jr? ) If this keeps up we are going to end up with the most humane junk food in the world. I can’t wait to read

Chef Boyardee Raviolios
Now with free range grass fed beef ears!

The Associated Press: Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. and PETA Reach Deal

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

News Snack

This pawpaw fruit (l) reminds me of durian
On the Side | Lost foods reclaimed | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/27/2007

I’d almost forgotten that mustard oil is considered not fit for human consumption by the USDA. I bought some years ago to play with and had to scrape the warning label off the bottle so it wouldn’t give me nightmares. i didn’t serve it to anyone, of course. But from the sound of this Village Voice article I could have…
village voice > nyclife > Counter Culture: Our Man Indulges in Forbidden Oil, Bangladesh-Style by Robert Sietsema

Thanks to PETA, you can now have cage free eggs while you abuse yourself with a meal at Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. (What’s a Carl’s Jr? ) If this keeps up we are going to end up with the most humane junk food in the world. I can’t wait to read

Chef Boyardee Raviolios
Now with free range grass fed beef ears!

The Associated Press: Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. and PETA Reach Deal

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Milk Heaven

Yesterday my quest for raw heavy cream to make butter brought me to Hendricks’ Farms & Dairy in Telford, Pa -and some unexpected surprises. For starters, the farm is an amazing example of what someone who really wants to minimize their energy consumption can do if they put their minds to it. The main building that houses the milking operation and cheese making facility and retail outlet is heated by a wood furnace that is fueled by wood that would be otherwise destined for a landfill. Well water is cycled through three separate closed-loop processes before it ultimately sent back into the farms aquifer via a pond.

The farm is amazingly clean. The main building, which is made from a shiny white composite plastic material, is power-washed regularly to keep it gleaming and safe for food production. The floors are immaculate and even the air in the barn smells clean -which anyone who has ever been to a farm will immediately understand to be the result of superior design and placement of the the buildings and slavish devotion to maintenance.

I spoke at length with Trent Hendricks -who owns and operates the farm with his wife Rachel- and who showed me around while talking about his operating philosophy and the kinds of products and ideas he wants to put out there into the food-os-spehere. He’s already producing over a dozen different types of cheese, Rachel makes beautiful soaps, I saw grass fed beef that was so marbled with fat it could pass for wagyu if you squint. The milk which comes from Ayrshire cows shows all of the subtle nuances of flavor that you expect from milk from grass fed cows that has not been cooked, but it’s texture confused me a bit when I compared it to the raw, nonhomogenized milk that I bought last week from Bethany Farms. There was no cream on the top and no lumps of butterfat clinging to the sides of the container. My first thought was huh, this is homogenized? So, I emailed Trent and this is what he wrote back

No, we have Ayrshire cows. The fat molecules of the Ayrshire milk are the smallest of the Dairy breeds. That is important for two reasons; easier to digest, and they break down more consistently in aged cheese due to the uniformity of the fat molecules. The milk is around 3.8% fat but takes days to separate and will not separate fully.

And check this out, Trent gave me four pounds of pork belly so that I can finally make Ruhlman’s pancetta. (I’m so psyched.)

Hendricks’ Farms & Dairy is Certified Humane but as Trent put it, all he did to get the certification was invite the Humane Farm Animal Care folks in to look at what he was already doing. Frankly, I was not surprised by this. I’ve long believed that if you make it your mission to grow and cook the cleanest, best-tasting food possible, the natural result will be humanely treated animals and minimally polluting methods of agriculture.

And is it ever a pleasure to see this in action!

Hendricks’ Farms and Dairy
202 Green Hill Road
Telford, Pa 18969
267-382-0556

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Milk Heaven

Yesterday my quest for raw heavy cream to make butter brought me to Hendricks’ Farms & Dairy in Telford, Pa -and some unexpected surprises. For starters, the farm is an amazing example of what someone who really wants to minimize their energy consumption can do if they put their minds to it. The main building that houses the milking operation and cheese making facility and retail outlet is heated by a wood furnace that is fueled by wood that would be otherwise destined for a landfill. Well water is cycled through three separate closed-loop processes before it ultimately sent back into the farms aquifer via a pond.

The farm is amazingly clean. The main building, which is made from a shiny white composite plastic material, is power-washed regularly to keep it gleaming and safe for food production. The floors are immaculate and even the air in the barn smells clean -which anyone who has ever been to a farm will immediately understand to be the result of superior design and placement of the the buildings and slavish devotion to maintenance.

I spoke at length with Trent Hendricks -who owns and operates the farm with his wife Rachel- and who showed me around while talking about his operating philosophy and the kinds of products and ideas he wants to put out there into the food-os-spehere. He’s already producing over a dozen different types of cheese, Rachel makes beautiful soaps, I saw grass fed beef that was so marbled with fat it could pass for wagyu if you squint. The milk which comes from Ayrshire cows shows all of the subtle nuances of flavor that you expect from milk from grass fed cows that has not been cooked, but it’s texture confused me a bit when I compared it to the raw, nonhomogenized milk that I bought last week from Bethany Farms. There was no cream on the top and no lumps of butterfat clinging to the sides of the container. My first thought was huh, this is homogenized? So, I emailed Trent and this is what he wrote back

No, we have Ayrshire cows. The fat molecules of the Ayrshire milk are the smallest of the Dairy breeds. That is important for two reasons; easier to digest, and they break down more consistently in aged cheese due to the uniformity of the fat molecules. The milk is around 3.8% fat but takes days to separate and will not separate fully.

And check this out, Trent gave me four pounds of pork belly so that I can finally make Ruhlman’s pancetta. (I’m so psyched.)

Hendricks’ Farms & Dairy is Certified Humane but as Trent put it, all he did to get the certification was invite the Humane Farm Animal Care folks in to look at what he was already doing. Frankly, I was not surprised by this. I’ve long believed that if you make it your mission to grow and cook the cleanest, best-tasting food possible, the natural result will be humanely treated animals and minimally polluting methods of agriculture.

And is it ever a pleasure to see this in action!

Hendricks’ Farms and Dairy
202 Green Hill Road
Telford, Pa 18969
267-382-0556

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Ruhlman Capote?

In case you missed this post at Ruhlman. com, it appears that Mr. Ruhlman is headed to the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. I wonder how he finds the time to write now that he has become a Food Network celebrity. The ratio of the time he spends at his desk to the time he spends on planes and trains and in front of camera lenses must be on the order of 1:10, I should think. Suddenly, the hardest working writer in the food business has become a party animal. You’d better be careful my friend, you know what happened to Truman Capote…

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Ruhlman Capote?

In case you missed this post at Ruhlman. com, it appears that Mr. Ruhlman is headed to the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. I wonder how he finds the time to write now that he has become a Food Network celebrity. The ratio of the time he spends at his desk to the time he spends on planes and trains and in front of camera lenses must be on the order of 1:10, I should think. Suddenly, the hardest working writer in the food business has become a party animal. You’d better be careful my friend, you know what happened to Truman Capote…

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Foie Gras for Five Bucks

My friend at Hudson Valley Farm sent this to me today, and I’m passing it along to you.

Never tried foie gras?
Now you can for only five dollars at restaurants throughout Philly!

Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 24, 2007– Philadelphia Chefs for Choice invites you to Freedom Foie for Five: a special celebration of foie gras. All next week, the week of October 1, both for lunch and dinner, you will be able to sample this deliciously controversial dish for only $5 at the participating restaurants listed below.

ARTISAN FARMERS ALLIANCE

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Foie Gras for Five Bucks

My friend at Hudson Valley Farm sent this to me today, and I’m passing it along to you.

Never tried foie gras?
Now you can for only five dollars at restaurants throughout Philly!

Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 24, 2007– Philadelphia Chefs for Choice invites you to Freedom Foie for Five: a special celebration of foie gras. All next week, the week of October 1, both for lunch and dinner, you will be able to sample this deliciously controversial dish for only $5 at the participating restaurants listed below.

ARTISAN FARMERS ALLIANCE

The best sauce in the world is hunger.