Choucroute

This is something I have always wanted to do. I must have seen a choucroute recipe in a magazine lately - or rather a few weeks ago, because I was itching to use my recently fired kraut crock, for which I designed a heavy lid with holes than sinks below the liquid and presses down the contents.

So I made the sauerkraut with a nice local organic cabbage (if only I had grown it!) and this is my own pancetta too, a whole fistful worth cut up and thrown in. (If it were only my pigs!) And flavored with juniper I harvested at 8,000 feet in the sierras. (If only they were my personal mountain tops!)

Still, a pretty cool idea all in all. Has a slightly musty bouquet. Not sure why, but the salami shown a few posts below have a gorgeous white bloom on them already. Denser than anything I've ever seen - I hope it's supposed to be there!

Fall Slaughter

Honestly I have been itching to process a whole pig. This morning's exercize was a brief simulacrum. For 10 dollars I bought 5 pounds of meat. All what they call country ribs, but in this case a combination of shoulder cuts and loin, as you can see from the very different colors of the two. It was all cut up into the finest little bits by hand, the meat very cold, the knife very sharp and it took maybe 45 minutes. Either I'm getting much better with a knife or this is a much easier way to process than with a whole shoulder roast. There were no stringy bits and the fat cut cleanly without sliding at all.

Seasoned with fennel, oregano and Vouvray, I think this will be quite light and delicate and less challenging on the jaws. The usual combo of sea salt, raw sugar, instacure #2. The casings are hog, thinner that I would have liked. I think I'm going to try to find a big wide bung for the next experiment. Tied with string then hung in the cave. This should take about a month I'm guessing.

I am already hungry.

A Local Pizza

I am trying to avoid the crutch of images and let words paint this picture. Let me know if I've succeeded.


Last night I was set on making pizza, which I do without thinking. An hour for dough with commercial yeast, a fast sauce with canned tomatoes if out of season, standard mozzarella, and then pepperoni for the kids, maybe walnuts, capers and chevre for the adults. Into a 550 dgree oven on the pizza stone, works just fine.


But last night there was a weird conflence of ingredients at hand. My new sourdough starter is doing well. Still a huge hunk of Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold Cheddar, and some chorizo from Fra Mani in Berkeley. Wait, this is all LOCAL. So too some smoked duck breast from Grimaud Farms here in Stockton, thinly sliced. Note, not my ingredients necessarily, but all come from right here. Tomatoes are still in season too, very tail end. Fresh Swiss chard from the farmer's market, chopped and cooked in olive oil. Local walnuts crumbled on top (a huge bag given to me from a friend's yard). The colors were perfectly balanced: green, red and white. The crust ultra thin and crispy. The pizza must hold up vertically when held without flopping. The topping will be generous but should not overwhelm the crust. Tomato sauce used sparingly in little dollops rather than spread on, so the ingredients don't slide off. Cheese first. Weird, but it works. And then when you bite into it, every mouthful has the chewiness of meat, the crunch of nut, the tang of greens, the fulsomeness of cheese.


Did I say I love pizza?

Braised Lamb Shanks

The torrential rains have hit early this year. It makes me want to work, which is good since the copyedited Lost Art of Real Cooking has arrived for corrections. As you may have noticed I have begun to remove posts here, those which will appear in the book. Alas. Without forethought I somehow find myself exactly where I was a year ago when starting the book with Rosanna, putting up pickles and olives, making a new sourdough starter, craving long braised flesh.

Thus I was led to this simple dish: lamb shanks lightly browned, placed in a casserole with fresh rosemary and bay leaves, tomatoes and a whole bottle of Inkblot Cabernet Franc. What inspired such profligacy I wont venture to guess. Gently baked about 5 hours, without the slightest stir or nudge lest it fly asunder and be smashed to atoms. It took the gentlest cradling merely to move it from casserole to plate. Thereafter it need only be spooned into the mouth. UNCTION.

Salami in Boston

This is an image of the salami we made in Boston with my Culture and Cuisine of Italy class. It was aged about 6 weeks. Everyone in the class had one or more to take home to finish aging, but this is the first I've seen aged. It is undeniably beautiful. The recipe is so simple, and we didn't even have funnels to stuff, it was all hands only. Coarsely chopped with knives. For 5 lbs of meat (pork shoulder, which has enough fat on its own), it is 4 tbs salt (I prefer sea) plus 3 of regular sugar, 2 of herbs, 1 of instacure #2. That's it. No bacterial starter, I think because you handle the meat so much it gets properly coated in bacteria from your hands. Thanks for the image Annie!

Pancetta

What a delightful thing to come home to after three weeks. Have you ever seen such a beautiful pancetta? I just happened to take a peek in the cave to see what was happening. A simply butterflied, rolled and bound pork belly, cured with bay and juniper, smoked for an hour or so, and left undisturbed while I was gone. I fried it up. And it disappeard immediately. Bless the Gods of Nitrate.

Was ist das?

Today I was playing around with sausage. I really wanted to do a Braunschweiger. Who knew pork liver would be impossible to find? I'll have to try an Asian market. In the meantime, I made a lot of coarsely chopped lamb sausages, still curing with garlic, rosemary and such. But for kicks I tried a weisswurst, bockwurst, I don't know what to call it, as usual. It's all veal, finely pounded, with juniper and pepper. It's being steamed over Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA. I may lightly smoke it next. Jane Grigson suggested such weirdness for a saucission de foie, so who knows? The white one is about a half pound. And the little one is lamb, just to see what would happen with the same technique. They smell really great. Maybe dinner, who can wait?