Last Post of 2007

Last week watched me scoot up to Long Island to set butt with the family for Christmas dinner, become infected with a miserable virus from an unknown vector, wing it back down to bucolic PA to roll around in a fever while my family visited friends in Westchester NY.

Meanwhile back at the farm, a five day old calf escaped and was retrieved. The milking robot went on the fritz and ruined Trent’s Christmas day (Don’t go into farming if you like to do things like sleeping and driving your car to the bowling alley.) and probably took a week or so off of his lifespan. But some good stuff happened too.

The bresaola (See slide show) finished curing and appears to be a resounding success. It looks great, with a beautiful looking fungal coat that smells to me like slightly dried field mushrooms (agaricus bispouous). The taste of the meat is sweet, salty, umami (in that order) and the overall aroma is of mushrooms and wine must. I hope our customers like it because I really, really loved making it. Trent and I have talked about making it from older dairy cows which in theory should be more flavorful. But the next batch will more likely be from the same kind of grass fed steers that were used for this one.

The mass of sausages you see in the slide show are large pepperoni (pepperone). These are made from highly seasoned beef top rounds with virtually no fat and stuffed into beef casings (middles). The pepperone have been inoculated with Bactoferm to drop their pH, give them an acidic edge and to promote drying. I left them sitting out in the kitchen on Saturday to kick start the fermentation. I assume Trent will be hanging them in the cheese room about now.

As this is likely to be my last post of 2007 I would like to thank you all for supporting my blogging efforts with your continued patronage and comments. If it were not for these, I certainly would not be bothering to post anything anymore. There’s certainly no money in the kind of blogging I do, so the only currency that I reap is the type that comes from knowing that mostly complete strangers give a flying-fig about what I have to say. So thanks!

Finally, I’d like to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year full of meals that you cooked yourself or by someone that you know well. Go out and splurge on food cooked by strangers who are really, really good at what they do but mostly, make it yourself. If nothing else, if you screw it up or end up consuming some product that pisses off the food police, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Last Post of 2007

Last week watched me scoot up to Long Island to set butt with the family for Christmas dinner, become infected with a miserable virus from an unknown vector, wing it back down to bucolic PA to roll around in a fever while my family visited friends in Westchester NY.

Meanwhile back at the farm, a five day old calf escaped and was retrieved. The milking robot went on the fritz and ruined Trent’s Christmas day (Don’t go into farming if you like to do things like sleeping and driving your car to the bowling alley.) and probably took a week or so off of his lifespan. But some good stuff happened too.

The bresaola (See slide show) finished curing and appears to be a resounding success. It looks great, with a beautiful looking fungal coat that smells to me like slightly dried field mushrooms (agaricus bispouous). The taste of the meat is sweet, salty, umami (in that order) and the overall aroma is of mushrooms and wine must. I hope our customers like it because I really, really loved making it. Trent and I have talked about making it from older dairy cows which in theory should be more flavorful. But the next batch will more likely be from the same kind of grass fed steers that were used for this one.

The mass of sausages you see in the slide show are large pepperoni (pepperone). These are made from highly seasoned beef top rounds with virtually no fat and stuffed into beef casings (middles). The pepperone have been inoculated with Bactoferm to drop their pH, give them an acidic edge and to promote drying. I left them sitting out in the kitchen on Saturday to kick start the fermentation. I assume Trent will be hanging them in the cheese room about now.

As this is likely to be my last post of 2007 I would like to thank you all for supporting my blogging efforts with your continued patronage and comments. If it were not for these, I certainly would not be bothering to post anything anymore. There’s certainly no money in the kind of blogging I do, so the only currency that I reap is the type that comes from knowing that mostly complete strangers give a flying-fig about what I have to say. So thanks!

Finally, I’d like to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year full of meals that you cooked yourself or by someone that you know well. Go out and splurge on food cooked by strangers who are really, really good at what they do but mostly, make it yourself. If nothing else, if you screw it up or end up consuming some product that pisses off the food police, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Don’t Let Donald Duck See This

No matter how much I may resent their agenda, I cannot not admire the moxy of the animal rights people who are trying to stop the production and consumption foie gras in f-ing FRANCE of all places. I wonder how you spell Sisyphean task in French? (God, and now you, knows it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to spell in in English.) Of course, in the present example of anti-foie rhetoric aimed at Disneyland, the target is not especially French. But I’ll give them brownie points for even bringing up the topic on the soil of the country that produces and consumes more foie gras than any other nation in the world.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Don’t Let Donald Duck See This

No matter how much I may resent their agenda, I cannot not admire the moxy of the animal rights people who are trying to stop the production and consumption foie gras in f-ing FRANCE of all places. I wonder how you spell Sisyphean task in French? (God, and now you, knows it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to spell in in English.) Of course, in the present example of anti-foie rhetoric aimed at Disneyland, the target is not especially French. But I’ll give them brownie points for even bringing up the topic on the soil of the country that produces and consumes more foie gras than any other nation in the world.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Work in Progress

I took a break from cooking for our party this evening to upload a few photos of the stuff I’m making. All but one of the dishes in the slideshow are finished (hence the title of the post) and there’s a lot more that I did not take pictures of.

The last dish in the show is of the creme caramel that was the subject of an earlier post. I was a bit disappointed to find that when I unmolded it the edges showed signs that the custard had heated too rapidly, probably at the beginning of the cooking cycle. The evidence that suggested this was in the form of pockets or pores at the edge near the bottom of the custard (the top of the custard in the photo). When the custard gets too hot, it causes the rapid expansion of air and nearly simultaneous coagulation of the egg proteins.

I suspected that something like this would happen soon after I put the custard into the oven, and I had backed down on the heat. Not soon enough, apparently. Fprtuantley the custard did no get too hot and the eggs did not develop that funky sulfide smell that happens anytime you over heat eggs. That would have really pissed me off.

Oh, and the reason the custard got too hot. It was the pot I used for the water bath. It was copper which transfers heat very efficiently. I should have taken this more seriously and dropped the initial oven temp even more than I did (the recipe called for 350, I dropped it to 300).

Some of the other things I’m making that are not pictured in the slide show are

Lamb rib chops with herbes de Provence

Really small potatoes filled with creme Fraiche, some topped with Paddelfish caviar and others with smoked salmon all bedded in sea salt

Cheese fondue made with Hendricks Farms raw milk Gruyere and Bavarian style Swiss Cheese

My wife made a cool looking Bundt cake

There’s more, I just can’t recall what it is. Peace out!

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Good Morning

I’ve been too busy at the farm (two hogs, two lambs, 250 pounds of several types of sausage, bacon and chicken confit, pea soup, a gigantic cassoulet and more busy) and prepping for a holiday party at home to blog much this week. Maybe I’ll find some time tomorrow or later tonight to write something more engaging than this. Until then, I’ll let these few words and this photo of my platonic mushrooms becoming Greek (as in champignons a la Greque) serve a place keeper in the to-be-continued saga of A Hunger Artist.

OMG, does that sound self-aggrandizing or what “saga of A Hunger Artist?” Saga my b-tt. LOL. Later folks!

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Good Morning

I’ve been too busy at the farm (two hogs, two lambs, 250 pounds of several types of sausage, bacon and chicken confit, pea soup, a gigantic cassoulet and more busy) and prepping for a holiday party at home to blog much this week. Maybe I’ll find some time tomorrow or later tonight to write something more engaging than this. Until then, I’ll let these few words and this photo of my platonic mushrooms becoming Greek (as in champignons a la Greque) serve a place keeper in the to-be-continued saga of A Hunger Artist.

OMG, does that sound self-aggrandizing or what “saga of A Hunger Artist?” Saga my b-tt. LOL. Later folks!

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Worst Country Club Food in Hawaii

Yep, you guessed it. starbulletin.com | News | /2007/12/19/

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Worst Country Club Food in Hawaii

Yep, you guessed it. starbulletin.com | News | /2007/12/19/

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Xmas Food 2007

So I let my wife talk me into having a party on Sunday for some local friends. “Just do some hors d oeuvres,” she said “don’t make dinner. That’s too much work.” Oy, sure dinner is more work. But don’t think I won’t be cooking every spare minute between now and the first doorbell ring on Sunday.

I don’t mind at all really. I mean, cooking is my reason-to-be. (So what’s to complain about? Nothing, unless I want to give up my reason-to-be I suppose. And what if I did, would I disappear?) Besides, a holiday party gives me an excuse to make things that I do not make on a regular basis but really wish I could. Take creme caramel. I mean WTF? Is there anything easier to make and more grand than a gigantic slope sided cylinder of eggs and milk and sugar? I don’t think so.

This might surprise people who regard me as self-realized, totally conscious, unsentimental and coolly rational guy. But I’m not so sure I know my mind very well.

Witness the book that I used for the creme caramel you see in progress in the slide show below. This book (which actually belongs to my wife) has the only recipe for creme caramel that I will make at home. I’m not sure why I do this, but I think it has something to do with sentimentality because it sure as hell isn’t rational. Sigh.

I’ll take pictures of the finished product and post them later in the week. I can’t really unmold the thing and let it sit because it’ll collapse after a day or so.

Vanilla Extract courtesy of Exclusively Yours Catering -great stuff!

The best sauce in the world is hunger.