It’s almost the whole process. I didn’t show how to cook the spaghetti. The sauce is minimally cooked. Really it’s only the pulp that cooks (10-12 minutes) while the filetti (made from the skinless outer flesh) and the basil are merely warmed through.
Filed under: great food, how to, slow food | 8 Comments »
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 that these pictures were taken the onions had softened to the texture of a peeled Macintosh or Macoun apple and were almost sour enough to be considered a proper pickle ( I’m guessing pH 4.0; my pH meter is dead.).
They were, however, too salty so I diluted the brine from 5 to 3.5% salinity.
Filed under: Confiture, cooking techniques, farm stuff, how to, slow food | 3 Comments »
Last Sunday I wrote about how I acted on an urge to make a batch of Tuscan style salami. The post outlined the process up to the beginning of the fermentation of the meat. Today’s post picks up the process on Wednesday when I retrieved the meat from the refrigerator in my garage and ground it.
It was my intention to stuff it at home too. But I decided against it when I realized that the stuffing attachment for my Kitchenaid stand mixer would ruin the texture by pulverizing the fat -which I wanted to remain in ~1/4″ chunks- as it worked along the worm gear. So I took the forcemeat to the farm and expressed it into hog casing with the piston stuffer then brought it home to age.
At the farm I always age the meat in the cheese aging room which is well controlled for humidity, temperature and air flow. But whenever I’ve aged meat at home in the past, I’ve winged it by hanging it in the basement and crossing my fingers. Well, I’ve decided not to do that anymore and build an aging room. But before I start shooting nails into the foundation and putting up studs I’m going to tinker around with different prototypes by way of determining how big the room needs to be, how often the air needs to turn over etc.
Here is my first prototype aging room. I put it up on Saturday in about an hour. Humidity is controlled by a vaopirizer hooked up to a timer. The air is turn over twice a day by a small fan (also on a timer). I expect that future versions of this will include a larger humidifer with a humdistat and a larger much slower turning fan.
Filed under: charcuterie, cooking techniques, how to | 4 Comments »
by Mike Pardus
Summer is for traveling and doing things at the farm, but when winter sets in I become a ski-dad. My daughter races on the junior circuit in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, so almost every weekend is a road trip for practice or to a race. We’re lucky enough to have friends whose daughter skis with mine and who own a weekend place near the mountain – a big, rambling ex B+B with a commercial kitchen and plenty of prep space.
Apres ski lends itself to braising – I can make something unctuous on Wednesday in New Paltz, and have it ready to re-heat on Friday or Saturday at the mountain. Usually it’s something pretty basic – see past posts on the subject – but this weekend Vietnam met New England. Vietnamese Style BBQ Berkshire Pork Belly Braised in Fish Sauce and Caramel. Served with plain jasmine rice, stir fried cabbage, and plenty of beer, it was a big hit.
Here’s how:
Tuesday:
5# Fresh Pork Belly (butt or shoulder would work also)
4 Tablespoons Chinese 5 spice powder
1 cup Vietnamese Chili Garlic Sauce
1 cup Hoisin sauce
1/2 cup Fish sauce
Combine Sauces
Rub Pork with 5 Spice Powder
Slather sauce combo onto pork
Let marinate over night
Wednesday:
Set oven at 300F
Place marinated pork on rack over drip pan
Slowly roast pork until meltingly tender (about 2-3 hours)
Cool Pork
Thursday:
Make caramel from 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water – combine, bring to a boil, simmer until deeply amber, add 1 tablespoon of cool water to arrest browning, remove from heat but keep warm and fluid
Cut cooked Pork into lardons about 1″x 1/2″
6 Shallots, sliced thin
8 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 quart Chicken (or pork) stock
4 oz caramel
4 oz fish sauce
1 Tablespoon cracked black pepper
Sweat shallots and garlic in a bit of vegetable oil until pale golden
Add black pepper
Add all of the other ingredients
Bring to a simmer and cook slowly for about 1/2 hour.
Cool in the pot
Friday:
Pack the kid in the car with the dog and the skis remember to keep dog away from Pork pot
Drive to ski house
Open Beer #1
Reheat contents of pork pot while consuming beer #1
While pork reheats, make steamed rice and cabbage stir-fry
Plate Rice, and cabbage, spoon generous amounts of pork and sauce over both
Sit with friends in front of fire place
Open more beer
Eat
It turns out that the Ski house is just down the road from Dan Barber’s Blue Hill farm…haven’t been there yet, but race season is almost over……I’ll be looking for new things to explore.
Hey BdG – See ya tomorrow at CIA!
Filed under: how to, Mike Pardus | Leave a comment »
It is almost impossible to fit sausage casing onto a stuffing tube unless you flush it with water first. If you don’t, it will bind to the stuffing tube and gum up when you try to pump the forcemeat. The most commonly accepted way to flush casing (the membrane that lines the intestinal muscle of any one of three domesticated animals typically, pigs. sheep and cattle.) requires that you run water through it to lubricate the interior so that it slides off of the stuffing tube as you express the filling from the stuffer.
Over the years that I’ve been making sausage and salami, I’ve used several methods to flush casings. But it was only yesterday that I hit upon this method. The method, which requires that the casing be suspended in water as the flushing water pushes through, assures that the casing will not bind and explode when the inevitable kinks constrict the flow. Moreover, because the casing is suspended in water -and so less resistant to pressure from the water from the spigot- the slight pressure of the flushing water is usually sufficient to force apart any kinks in the casing.
Previously, the best method I used required that the full length of the casing be pushed up onto the spigot arm. Next the water is turned on and the casing flushed as it is pulled off of the arm. But this earlier method is pretty time consuming and there is no guarantee that the casing will not kink and tear as it is sinched up over the spigot arm.
I’m sure you don’t need to use a bucket as you see me doing in the video. I used the bucket because I’ve got a big sink and did not think it was prudent to fill the thing when something smaller would suffice. If you are doing this in a home you can simply plug the drain in your kitchen sink and get the same result.
And by the way. You will notice in the video and in the still photos that I have water running continuously during flushing. This is not strictly necessary as you can simply pulse a quantity of water into the casing and squeeze it through. Be advised however, that this latter more parsimonious method is not as mesmerizingly funny as watching the casing grow into a great swirling diaphanous coil of guts as the water seeks its egress.
Filed under: charcuterie, how to, video | 11 Comments »
It is almost impossible to fit sausage casing onto a stuffing tube unless you flush it with water first. If you don’t, it will bind to the stuffing tube and gum up when you try to pump the forcemeat. The most commonly accepted way to flush casing (the membrane that lines the intestinal muscle of any one of three domesticated animals typically, pigs. sheep and cattle.) requires that you run water through it to lubricate the interior so that it slides off of the stuffing tube as you express the filling from the stuffer.
Over the years that I’ve been making sausage and salami, I’ve used several methods to flush casings. But it was only yesterday that I hit upon this method. The method, which requires that the casing be suspended in water as the flushing water pushes through, assures that the casing will not bind and explode when the inevitable kinks constrict the flow. Moreover, because the casing is suspended in water -and so less resistant to pressure from the water from the spigot- the slight pressure of the flushing water is usually sufficient to force apart any kinks in the casing.
Previously, the best method I used required that the full length of the casing be pushed up onto the spigot arm. Next the water is turned on and the casing flushed as it is pulled off of the arm. But this earlier method is pretty time consuming and there is no guarantee that the casing will not kink and tear as it is sinched up over the spigot arm.
I’m sure you don’t need to use a bucket as you see me doing in the video. I used the bucket because I’ve got a big sink and did not think it was prudent to fill the thing when something smaller would suffice. If you are doing this in a home you can simply plug the drain in your kitchen sink and get the same result.
And by the way. You will notice in the video and in the still photos that I have water running continuously during flushing. This is not strictly necessary as you can simply pulse a quantity of water into the casing and squeeze it through. Be advised however, that this latter more parsimonious method is not as mesmerizingly funny as watching the casing grow into a great swirling diaphanous coil of guts as the water seeks its egress.
Filed under: charcuterie, how to, video | 10 Comments »
by Mike Pardus
Hard drive melted down before I got the chance to upload photos and video from the WellFleet Oyster fest and an Artisanal Whiskey tasting (Both jammed into the same debauched weekend – narrowly averted gout).
Anyway, I think I can do another whiskey tasting – maybe next week – but the oyster fest, just take my word for it – you want to go next year….you really do, and if you’re comfortable foraging for wild mushrooms, the forest surrounding Wellfleet is flush with fungi in early October! A great accompaniment to the bounty of the bay.
Trying desperately to regain my momentum, I bought a grocery store rabbit and present here it’s dissection and my subsequent use. The video came out well. I have some still photos of the finished products, but they’re not uploaded yet, I’ll post them later if there’s enough interest. The rabbit, prepared as described in the video, was really good.
Rabbit Fab Part 1:
Rabbit Fab Part 2:
Filed under: how to, video | 15 Comments »
Last week we sent two more of our Berkshire hogs out the slaughterhouse, and between Friday and Saturday I cut up one into chops, hams, bellies for pancetta and about 90 pounds of meat for salami and breakfast sausage. As you will see in the slideshow the quality of the pork is superb. The fat is thick and white and, most importantly, the meat is well-marbled with fat.
Unless you shop at one of those yuppie-marts that sell heritage pork , you won’t see pork like this in the supermarket where pale, insipid low-cal pork reigns pathetic. And you certainly won’t have the experience of having known the animal that died so that you might eat him -or in the present case, her.
To have had a personal relationship with the animal that you cook for dinner is galvanizing, and not recommended for the squeamish or those who like the truth about what their food REALLY IS buried under layers of denial. Me, I drink my coffee black, my Scotch neat and I’m not eating meat unless I know I can bear raising an animal, killing it, cutting it up and cooking it. Suffice it to say, I am there. The killing part of the process is pretty damned unpleasant and nowadays the smell of death is always in the air when I cook. But that is as it should be: it is reality.
We only get one chance to confront what we are and to consider the consequences of our appetites. And if you believe, as I do, that every Homo sapien is born with the responsibility of thinking about itself and its realtionship to the universe, then failure to know the animals and plants we eat and the circumstances of their lives and deaths, is a failure of the most basic kind. Because dudes, failure to live up to something that is so basic to to human nature that it is encoded in our species name (sapien= knowing or wise) , is very, very lame.
If you have not figured this out from the title and the tenor of my writing, my thinking about how I should relate to the world around me has been seasoned pretty heavily by stoicism. And, as a big fan of the stoic philosopher, Caesar Marcus Aurelius (I actually named one of my kids after him.) I’m pulling out chunks of his Meditations to help explain, or at least, reiterate what I believe
Observe what thy nature requires, so far as thou art governed by nature only: then do it and accept it [Emphasis mine; Meditations, Book 10]
Our nature demands that we know what we are, what we do, and the consequences that result from our actions. If we refuse to accept this, we cannot be fully human. Again I cite Aurelius
It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man… to form a just judgment of plausible appearances, and to take a survey of the nature of the universe and of the things which happen in it. [Book 8]
If we ignore the likelihood that Aurelius was referring to males and substitute the word “human” for man, then it follows that we cannot be fully human (satisfied) if we do not make every effort understand the context of our existence. Of course, eating is only one of the behaviors that we engage in as we progress through life. And to keep track of everything we do and its consequences is probably an impossible task. But since eating is something we do nearly all the time and because it has such a profound impact on the things that we eat, I think that it deserves special attention.
So if you cook and eat meat, but have never killed anything directly and watched it while its life bleeds out onto the soil. If you have never smelled the aroma of entrails as they spill from a hoisted carcass, you might consider learning about this part of the cooking cycle. I doubt you will find it especially pleasant, but I am certain you will learn something about the universe and yourself that will help you to realize who you are.
Just in case you have trouble relating what you see in the slideshow to a living thing. Here is a republish of a video of me feeding the hogs at the farm. The carcass on the cutting table comes from one of these fine looking animals.
Filed under: Ethics, Hendricks Farms, how to, musing, video | 17 Comments »
Last week we sent two more of our Berkshire hogs out the slaughterhouse, and between Friday and Saturday I cut up one into chops, hams, bellies for pancetta and about 90 pounds of meat for salami and breakfast sausage. As you will see in the slideshow the quality of the pork is superb. The fat is thick and white and, most importantly, the meat is well-marbled with fat.
Unless you shop at one of those yuppie-marts that sell heritage pork , you won’t see pork like this in the supermarket where pale, insipid low-cal pork reigns pathetic. And you certainly won’t have the experience of having known the animal that died so that you might eat him -or in the present case, her.
To have had a personal relationship with the animal that you cook for dinner is galvanizing, and not recommended for the squeamish or those who like the truth about what their food REALLY IS buried under layers of denial. Me, I drink my coffee black, my Scotch neat and I’m not eating meat unless I know I can bear raising an animal, killing it, cutting it up and cooking it. Suffice it to say, I am there. The killing part of the process is pretty damned unpleasant and nowadays the smell of death is always in the air when I cook. But that is as it should be: it is reality.
We only get one chance to confront what we are and to consider the consequences of our appetites. And if you believe, as I do, that every Homo sapien is born with the responsibility of thinking about itself and its realtionship to the universe, then failure to know the animals and plants we eat and the circumstances of their lives and deaths, is a failure of the most basic kind. Because dudes, failure to live up to something that is so basic to to human nature that it is encoded in our species name (sapien= knowing or wise) , is very, very lame.
If you have not figured this out from the title and the tenor of my writing, my thinking about how I should relate to the world around me has been seasoned pretty heavily by stoicism. And, as a big fan of the stoic philosopher, Caesar Marcus Aurelius (I actually named one of my kids after him.) I’m pulling out chunks of his Meditations to help explain, or at least, reiterate what I believe
Observe what thy nature requires, so far as thou art governed by nature only: then do it and accept it [Emphasis mine; Meditations, Book 10]
Our nature demands that we know what we are, what we do, and the consequences that result from our actions. If we refuse to accept this, we cannot be fully human. Again I cite Aurelius
It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man… to form a just judgment of plausible appearances, and to take a survey of the nature of the universe and of the things which happen in it. [Book 8]
If we ignore the likelihood that Aurelius was referring to males and substitute the word “human” for man, then it follows that we cannot be fully human (satisfied) if we do not make every effort understand the context of our existence. Of course, eating is only one of the behaviors that we engage in as we progress through life. And to keep track of everything we do and its consequences is probably an impossible task. But since eating is something we do nearly all the time and because it has such a profound impact on the things that we eat, I think that it deserves special attention.
So if you cook and eat meat, but have never killed anything directly and watched it while its life bleeds out onto the soil. If you have never smelled the aroma of entrails as they spill from a hoisted carcass, you might consider learning about this part of the cooking cycle. I doubt you will find it especially pleasant, but I am certain you will learn something about the universe and yourself that will help you to realize who you are.
Just in case you have trouble relating what you see in the slideshow to a living thing. Here is a republish of a video of me feeding the hogs at the farm. The carcass on the cutting table comes from one of these fine looking animals.
Filed under: Ethics, farm stuff, how to, musing, video | 17 Comments »
e After I put up that short video describing how to crimp fresh sausage into links, it occurred to me that you might like to see how I tie up sausage that is destined to ferment and air dry. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, and I make no claims that mine is the quickest and safest method. But it does do a good job of keeping the links from unwinding, providing a tether for hanging and most importantly a “safety line” that keep the links from falling on the floor if the ligature (twisted casing) between the links breaks. There are few things that look more pathetic than a sausage that has broken free of it’s siblings only to fall on the floor to lay in mute ignominy.
The video shows my lower torso and hands tying off previously crimped links of salametti (small salami) into a chain link which will hang from hooks in the drying room and longer “U” shaped versions of the same force meat that will hang from PVC tubing that I place across the rafters in the ceiling of the same room.
By the way.
Mike Pardus assures me that he will be back to blog as soon as he recovers from having fried his hard drive. It seems he pushed some keys in just the right sequence to send the thing into a death spiral. Who knew that such a thing was possible? Not me. That’s for sure.
Filed under: charcuterie, how to | 3 Comments »
A Hunger Aritist (Redux) 
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