A Busy Winter and Spring

Wow, I cannot believe that summer is just around the corner.  I haven't written in a long while and in looking over my past posts, I see that I completely forgot to post at least two of my blog writings.  My bad!  From teaching to research to applying for a full time position, I just let go of blogging times.  But it did not mean that I haven't been focused on food.

From smoking various cuts of meat to trying out new recipes to ordering "something different" kinds of meats to cleaning out the freezer, I have been busy.  Unfortunately, I never took the time to take some photos and I think the lack of photos led to a lack of blogs.  Not good. 

I followed acookblog, grand winner of A Year of Charcutepalooza, on his grand prize winning journey to France and have followed his blog ever since.  I still follow a number of the Charcutepalooza bloggers in a year of making charcuterie that I will certainly never forget.  Because I also can the produce from my garden every year, I have become a faithful follower of Mrs. Wheelbarrow as well as others in the canning trade.  I have become a walking/talking advertisement for two Charcutepalooza sponsor/blog supporters, Food52 and PunkDomestics, and I just placed another order to D'Artagnan, another Charcutepalooza sponsor.  D'Artagnan offers some great cuts of wild boar, an animal, if it lived in my neck of the woods, would turn me into a hunter in seconds flat.  I love the flavor of wild boar!

For my birthday, in April, my dear bff and talented chef, Mark, helped me make my birthday dinner.  Yes, I usually make my own because that is my birthday gift to myself.  But I miss cooking with Mark so for a birthday present, I asked him to help me.  We made an absolutely delicious tropical fruit stuffed pork loin that was a big hit with everyone.  We added a corn, tomato, and arugula salad which was sooooo good.  We served it all family style and also added fresh, roasted vegetables to the menu.  Finally, we topped it off with my homemade yellow plum ice cream, served in tuile cups, and topped with a blackberry/cabarnet sauce.  It was so delicious!  Everyone was blissfully satiated.

The Charcutepalooza smoking challenge made me realize that I really needed something better in a smoker and I went with the Bradley Smoker.  One of my favorite smoked food items is fish, especially trout.  Because trout are popular with fly-fishing fanatics in our local rivers, I decided to become a fly-fishing woman.  My husband taught me to fly fish years ago, but it became forgotten knowledge until recently.  My cousin, Mike, in Maine, a certified fly fishing instructor and Maine guide, sent me a fly-fishing rod and reel for my milestone 60th birthday.  Now I have to do it, especially since my Bradley Smoker beckons me daily to smoke some fish!  Luckily, I have my local friend, Red, who is an expert and I can't wait to wade into the Moyie River to fly fish with her.  Our mutual friend, Steve Jamsa, took this great photo of Red fly fishing in the Moyie, and I think it should be the poster for fly fishing in the West.  What do you think?



What with fly-fishing, an early, wet spring, and a garden that, at the moment, looks like a rain forest, I expect food to focus large on the horizon.  Given that I'm still just a part time instructor at the local community college, I'll have lots of time to give to cooking, food, and all the beauty present in my neck of the woods.

Wishing For Tomatoes

Tomatoes for roasting

These tomatoes are what I'm longing for.  It is now February and we've endured weeks on end of either 20F or 30F weather.  It has also been a rather "brown" winter without much snow- only enough to not melt on our few sunny days.  The remaining snow, and any melted snow, now freezes everyday which requires ski poles, skill, guts, or those little chain ice-walkers.  I'm beginning to feel like a cow yearning for the fresh grass of springtime.  I keep looking for signs of chives, usually the first green to grow in my garden, and so far my search has not been fulfilled.  I think I'll order seeds and let the growing begin.

Yes, I've been absent for the past month or so.  Fall semester barely ended before Christmas and when that happens my favorite holiday seems to whoosh by.  I spent most of my vacation time updating classes and preparing for the spring semester.  I also worked voraciously on my book business.  Then my computer caught a virus so I spent several days performing a system recovery.  Actually, the recovery part was easy but all the updating was tedious.  My next computer will definitely be an Apple.

I have not stopped cooking.  For Christmas eve dinner I made sugo d'anatra, a duck ragu.  I'm still missing the skin that I assumed would be on my locally raised ducks and I thought the ragu would at least keep the duck moist.  It did and it was delicious!  For Christmas, since there were only four of us for dinner, I cooked my locally raised chicken, from the same source as the chicken I used for that time-consuming but fully-worth-it Chicken Galantine.  That is something I never would have made without Charcutepalooza.  And it was so good, that I will definitely make it again!


Spicy Noix de Jambon

Right after Christmas I also bought another pork leg and proceeded to make some new noix de jambon.  I made three "real" noix de jambon, then I experimented with roasted, ground fennel with garlic as well as a spicy jambon.  I made two each of both ideas on some smaller cut noix.  The fennel became too gritty so next time I would do it with whole, fresh fennel seed and garlic, although I'd be worried about bacteria forming because of the raw garlic.  For the spicy noix de jambon I coated it with Spanish smoked paprika and cayenne.  Needless to say it was hot and delicious.  The three regular noix also turned out yummy.
I've been rummaging through the freezer, cleaning out those products with expiring dates.  Needless to say, I'm just about out of sausage so that is on the calendar.  I've added leftover pork pieces (from the not-so-capable butchery of two pork legs) to risottos and pasta dishes.  I even added some pork, instead of beef, to a wintry batch of borscht.  The borscht did much more than double duty because I used up last summer's beets, carrots, and cabbage as well.  With some duck breast prosciutto scraps I made a carbonara and the list just goes on and on. 

My birthday is coming up in April and I'm already thinking about a Chicken Galantine....  We'll see.  Usually for my birthday I give myself the gift of making a very difficult dessert that I haven't made before.  One year I even made Sherry Yard's six layer Dobos Torte that she made for one of  Wolfgang Puck's famous Oscar parties.  Wow!  That was not only delicious but also great fun!  I don't know what will happen this year but the ideas are simmering on my brain's back burner....galantine, pork pie, head cheese....

Noix de Jambon, Oops, Salt and Air-Cured Pork Belly

Noix de jambon

This may look like Jambon de Camont, and it may even taste like the re-named noix de jambon, but I confess, I cut all three of my noix de jambon too small, so by the time they had gone through the salt stage and the cold smoke stage, they had already lost 30% of their weight.  It made for a very easy challenge, but somehow I felt like I didn't really meet the challenge.  If I had hung them, they would have just become smaller and drier.  They certainly tasted good and, although the small and medium ones were a bit salty, they were still edible.  I saved the large one, the most edible, for my last and final December challenge.

I didn't have time (end of semester deadlines) to order another fresh "ham."  Actually, my local USDA butcher, Woods Meats, informed me that they were selling me pork leg because it wasn't ham until it was cured.  I smiled.  I've become well acquainted with them during the course of the year.  I wasn't even sure I could order more pork leg because this is the time of year when they're preparing for holidays, brining and curing their own hams, and stocking up for the winter.  I can't even buy pork back fat from them this time of year!  Luckily I have extra in the deep freeze.  Also, they only slaughter pigs on Wednesdays, so it would be another week before I could order another pork leg.  I wasn't sure what to do....  I thought about lonzino, but again, what if that went wrong as well?  And, I had never tasted lonzino.  Wonder if I didn't like it.  Oh, what to do? what to do?

Dry sausage like chorizo or saucisson sec all required too much time because of the grinding, cooling, mixing, cooling, stuffing, cooling, hanging.  I do love dry sausage and intend to make Spanish chorizo, Hungarian salami, and Saucisson Sec, but not in the midst of grading final papers, essays, and exams.

So, I turned to one of my favorite parts of the pig: the belly.  Since I couldn't get the pork back fat for lardo, why not some pork belly?  I love pork belly!  If I bought just the right size, I could make flat pancetta to use as large chunks of pork belly in the December challenge and use the rest for a small, cured pork belly - lardo with striation!  I had just enough time for twelve days of salt cure and eighteen more days hanging until November 30th.


Salt & Air Cured Pork Belly, aka Lardo

I took the pork belly out of its box in the heat controlled room with humidifier.  It looked and tasted salty and porky and lucious, but I was pretty sure that it needed more time.  It hadn't lost enough in weight (does that matter with lardo), plus I wanted that full 24 day hanging.  It's beautifully white with small striations of meat.  I believe that it becomes saltier over time, also drier, yet the fat will still dissolve almost instantly into the homemade bread I'll serve it on.


Cured pork belly on homemade rye bread

I tried it on some homemade, sourdough rye.  It's really good, but I think it will just become more and more delicious for each additional day I allow it to hang.  And after eleven months of charcuterie, I know that I need to go for the flavor.  Hurray, Charcutepalooza!

Whole Hog: Appreciation Of The Animal Who Provides Our Food

I wanted to call this particular blog "From Nose To Tail" but I wasn't sure of the copyright laws regarding someone else's title, i.e., Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating.  It's a wonderful book, as well as a feast.  Fergus Henderson is just one of a number of recent chefs who have brought people back to the age-old appreciation and tradition of using the entire animal that sacrificed its life for our consumption.  Other chefs include Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Chris Cosentino, and others, as well as many of the people interested in sustainable food like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, authors of the 100 Mile Diet (the original link to their 100 Mile Diet website appears to have disappeared so I give you the Wikipedia synopsis - I did follow the original website and their year eating such a diet).  The list grows ever longer and now includes film as well.

But, back to "appreciation of the animal who provides the food."  I saw that "illuminating moment" while watching The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs on Sunday, 10/30.  Maybe it was just my own personal Tipping Point, when I finally saw, with my own eyes, how a chef truly appreciated and knew, within his own ken, how to treat every part of an animal.

In the first part of this competition for the next Iron Chef, the chefs were teamed up in pairs.  Outside in the California countryside, they then had to make a fire with grill, butcher a small pig, and create two dishes that would win the competition.  The chefs came up with many very creative and delicious dishes.  I drooled over all of them.  But the genius, illuminating moment appeared for me while watching Chef Michael Chiarello.

Chef Chiarello was paired up with Chuck Hughes.  They made, for the first dish, a Crispy Pig's Ear Salad with Beets and Pork Cheeks. Their second dish consisted of Chili Maple Glazed Pork Chops with Pig Brain's Duxelles served on Grilled and Poached Potato with Grilled Pork Belly.  That illuminating moment came as I watched Michael Chiarello, using his hand, scoop the brains out of the pig's head and add them to the celery/duxelles mix, explaining that brains are "...creamy, voluptuous, and buttery."  He continued by adding that brains have "...great flavor and texture."  After seeing what he did and hearing his beautiful description I think something inside me changed and suddenly brains no longer held fear of kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or some other animal infestation of what, to my mind, however rational or irrational, is connected to mad-cow disease.  Suddenly, I understood that the brains, which are mostly fat, are very useful and contain that luscious porkiness flavor, and thick, buttery texture.

To think that only a few months ago I wondered what happened to the pig's brain while simmering the head in an aromatic broth.   Later, after an email to my internet friend, blogger, inadvertent food science mentor, and Charcutepalooza judge, I did learn that brains are mostly fat. Throughout this year, my participation in the Charcutepalooza community has taught me much about charcuterie and food in general.  I doubt that I would have appreciated Michael Chiarello's usefulness with the brains, had I not learned so much this year.

If I really want to appreciate the pig I raised, the pig whose every part I need to use in appreciation for the life that pig gave to me, I need to appreciate all the body parts offered by the pig, with the same understanding that a chef like Michael Chiarello has for the animal and the food produced by its parts. And it's not just the raising, the butchering, the use of the parts, and the ability to create great dishes from the parts, it's looking at what's at hand and using it in the most efficacious and delicious way possible.  I mean, why would I throw extra butter into a duxelles when the brains are right in front of me?   Frankly,  I think that Chef Chiarello's use of the brains were pure genius.  The other chefs used many parts, but that use of the brain, for me, was the highlight. 

And you know, I think I'd love to use the brains in a celery, wild mushroom duxelles.  Wow!  I even think that the pig would smile with me.

Finally, Duck Breast Prosciutto

Duck Breast Prosciutto with Melon

Yes, I finally made the Duck Breast Prosciutto.  It was the first challenge for all the Charcutepaloozas which began in January, 2011.  I became a member of this distinguished group of bloggers towards the middle of January, if memory serves well, and so was excused from meeting the first deadline.  Instead, I had the rest of the year to make the duck breast prosciutto.  I waited until I could order it fresh, with another item I really needed from D'Artagnan.  D'Artagnan isn't anywhere near my neck of the woods, and because I try to be sustainable and local, I ended up waiting months to place that order. The rest of the time I just drooled while examining their website.  But finally an appropriate need occurred with the appearance of the September Packing Challenge, sparking my overwhelming desire to make the Duck Roulade.  So I received my fresh Moulard Duck Magret, Half Breast when I ordered a Whole Pekin Duck in September. 

I used the recipe from Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie.  It was very easy and fun to make, although I used too many wraps of cheesecloth and had to remove some halfway through.  It tastes divine, with a bit of chew, good salty, peppery flavor, and an end of pure duck flavor on my tongue!  However, I think that when I do it again, I'll take off some of the fat.  It was just too much in my mouth.  But that same fat also brings in much more flavor when fried or broiled.  Decisions, decisions....

I tried it first plain.   While picking all the veggies before the first frost hit, my husband found the mini cantaloupe in the garden.  We're not even sure how it came to be there, and, with our long, rainy, cold spring and rather cool summer, it just didn't grow much.  Because it's so small, it didn't have a burst of flavor, but it looked so cute that I had to serve it with the prosciutto.  On another occasion, I used the prosciutto with pasta.  But now I'm saving it for the last Charcutepalooza challenge.  If there's any left, I'm sure I'll use it up pretty quickly in a pasta dish, on a pizza, fried with some vegetable, or just scrambled with eggs.  However I use it, I know the taste will be all I want it to be.

Gala Chicken and Rock 'n Roll Duck

Steve Jamsa, Photographer

I couldn't wait to make the Chicken Galantine!  I had a chicken in the freezer raised and butchered by my friends, Seth and Talina.  How local and sustainable was that!  This was to be a meal that did more than meet the Charcutepalooza challenge, it also became one in which I satisfied my desires to stay local and eat sustainably.  I had accessible to me all the ingredients except the salt, peppers, Madeira, Pâté spices, pistachios, and cheesecloth.   It felt good to be able to use so many local ingredients making a dish that is so elegant and classic!

I not only made the Chicken Galantine, but, having some leftover filling, I also made a pâté.  I always have local morel mushrooms which I receive fresh and then dry myself so I reconstituted some for the galantine.  I also added pistachios to the forcemeat.  Other than those two ingredients, I followed the recipe from Charcuterie.

Removing the skin from the rest of the chicken was pretty easy, except, heeding the advise of my hubby, I cut the skin around the top rather than the base of the drumsticks.  Dumb move.  It left me with a slightly smaller piece of skin than I would have had but it all worked out okay.  I used the extra forcemeat to make a  pâté which I baked in a ramekin.  I lined the ramekin with some rendered duck fat that I had made after making rillettes and covered the pâté with foil before baking it.

Chicken Stock

I grow my own bay leaves and thyme so I added them fresh to the chicken stock.  Because I'm in north Idaho, I do have to bring the bay tree inside during the winter.  But it still thrives!  The stock was delicious and after a good straining, I poached the galantine in the stock.



Steve Jamsa, Photographer

Some friends, Steve, Diana, and Alice stopped by after work for a sample of the galantine and a glass of wine.  Steve, a professional photographer, honored my request to shoot some photos.  I offered some other goodies as well, including lingonberry preserves (like the cranberry jelly with turkey), pickled ginger, olives, crackers, cherry tomatoes from the garden, and other "small bits" as well.  Everyone loved both the galantine and the pâté.

After the work on the galantine, I had to wait a week before starting in on the Duck Roulade. Because I also work, both dishes took two days. However, at least I knew how to take off the skin properly and to cut the thighs and legs at the base!



Duck Roulade

Unlike the chicken, I had to buy a duck raised elsewhere.  Usually, I pick one up across the border in Creston, B.C.  But I decided to take advantage of the wonderful discount offered by D'artagnan to the Charcutepalooza bloggers and I ordered a Pekin duck.  It arrived quickly but, since I had ordered a frozen duck, I had the opportunity to put it in the deep freeze while I honed my skills on the chicken.


Duck skin ready for freezer



Duck skinned

I invited two friends for Duck Roulade dinner, my neighbor, Gary, and my best friend and chef, Mark.  Mark arrived with several bottles of Elsa Bianchi Malbec from Argentina.  He always knows how to put a meal over the top!  I really enjoyed the wine and thought it went perfectly with the duck.  For dinner, I also served mashed potatoes and parsnips along with buttered pole beans, all from my garden.  It was delicious!  Everyone loved the duck roulade and it was a lovely closing to this time-consuming challenge.  And I was very, very happy that it all turned out so yummy!

Pâté en Croute: Success and Failure

English Pork Pie

This is my success: the English Pork Pie from Charcuterie.  My husband and I had it for dinner and found ourselves acting rather piggy when we reached for seconds.  The pie was delicious!  I loved the saltiness of the meat, accentuated by the bountiful addition of smoked ham.  I used my own chicken broth in the meat mixture.  I did use the fine dice of the meat grinder but it still appeared a bit "rustic," although the texture was not like burger meat. The crust was pure butter, one of my favorites, and besides, store-bought lard contains the addition of "fake" fat.  Yuck!  What happened to pure lard?!  Actually, I do have a huge bag of pork fat in my freezer but it isn't rendered yet.  I guess I'm waiting for the "Confit" challenge....

Freezing equipment

I wanted this to be a success so my grinding equipment spent the night in the deep freeze.  I had already put together my mise en place: cooled onions and garlic in one bowl, diced ham in another bowl, pork shoulder in large dice mixed with the spices, chicken broth measured in a cup, and the ice bowl ready to go.  I ground the pork with the small dicer, added the chicken broth, and mixed in the ham.  Then, the pork mix went back into the refrigerator to stay cool.  Later, I made the dough, put it in the fridge to cool, and in the afternoon assembled my English pork pie.


In the oven

About an hour or so before dinner, I popped it in the oven.  I thought it looked kind of pretty in a very English Pork Pie kind of way.  I had a bit much crust, but after a problem with my original Pâté en Croute (see below), I didn't want to lose all the luscious fat again.

My dinner slice

The meat does not look as ground as it actually is because it's still warm, no aspic holds the ground meat together, and I used more than the required amount of ham (one of my weaknesses).  It was so good!


Notice how the meat hasn't shrunk hardly a bit from the pastry dough.  That made me very happy.  I did bake the pie on parchment, just to be sure it didn't stick to the pan.  Julia Child recommends lightly greasing the baking sheet underneath the pastry, so I thought I'd be safe with the parchment paper.  The paper did slide right out from underneath the pie later on when it had cooled.  Notice how I lost a bit of the fat, but not much.

The English Pork Pie is my success.  Unfortunately, I rather failed at the Pâté en Croute, which was too bad because I had been so very excited about it!

As soon as the announcement for the September Packing Challenge appeared, I immediately knew I would do the Pâté en Croute, because I had a wild boar tenderloin to substitute for the pork tenderloin.  I couldn't wait to begin.

I didn't have a proper terrine, so I substituted with a terra cotta loaf pan.  Everything seemed to go well - I even felt comfortable making my own chimney.  And into the oven it went.  I could smell the cloves in the spice mixture first and the aromas were heady.  But by the end of the cooking process, when the fat had broken through the pastry dough in I don't know how many places, panic mode set in.

My first thought was "get rid of the excess fat so it doesn't end up hardening around the outside of the pastry dough."  Wrong.  Do not throw out the delicious fat, even if it does spread a bit onto the crust because by pouring some of the fat out, I also poured out flavor and binder.  This a major mistake and, it turns out, I made several.

I sautéed my wild board tenderloin about a minute or so too long and it became dry in the oven.  The forcemeat was not packed tightly enough around the tenderloin.  My dough did not cover the pâté correctly and I didn't use enough egg wash.  Plus, it broke around the chimney funnel.  I also think I may have used a bit too much ground clove.  The entire pâté had shrunk too much from the crust.  The pâté was a bit dry because I decided not to use the aspic since I didn't know where the crust was leaking.

Pâté en Croute

It may look good, or, at least acceptable, but this was the next morning after the pouring-off-the-fat error.  After several tries, I managed to release it from the pan - of course, upside down.

Notice the fat on the bottom of the pastry...which is why I poured out some of the fat...to the detriment of the meat.  Luckily, I also managed to turn the whole thing right side up.


Now, that looks better, even without the chimney.

Then I cut my beautiful pastry encrusted forcemeat and my heart sank in direct relation to the space between the meat and the pastry.  I felt like crying.  But first I had to taste it.

It had a pronounced clove flavor that was too much over the top. I liked it, but it should have been more in the background.  The pork, minus that lovely aspic I made, tasted almost dry.  The boar tenderloin was definitely dry.   Woe was me!  What to do, what to do. 

I'm the kind of person who, given lemons, makes lemonade, so, first, I cut the tenderloin out of the pâté, for other uses (in risotto, in a ground pork mix, and shaved for a sandwich).  I saved some of the crust and the meat for occasional snacking.  The rest of the meat I cut into manageable pieces, pressed into a mini loaf pan, poked it about a thousand times with my cake tester, and then poured some of the aspic over the pâté.  It became much more moist and the flavor was lush, filling the mouth with flavors from a fairly recent but also remote rural past.

In the end, the pâté tasted rather good.  The aspic lent flavor and fat.  It didn't look particularly beautiful after such abuse, but it still tasted fine.

I have made pâtés and terrines in the past, but never one covered in pastry.  I'm not a big pie eater and for many years I always thought of crusts as just extra calories.  But I've learned much from actually doing the Charcutepalooza challenges and in the future, I'll be using these techniques and making this charcuterie much more often.  It isn't just a means of preserving food; rather, it has its own elegance and flavors that take me, at least, to other realms of possibilities.

Dutch Yellow Split Pea Soup With Head Cheese



Dutch yellow split pea soup with head cheese

With one pig's head and four ham hocks, I ended up with a large loaf of head cheese for just two people.  I tried to give some away, but I've had no takers.  Most of them are disgusted by the thought.  Some of them even looked at me in disgust.  But some thought what I made was great - but that didn't mean they wanted to try it.  So, I had to figure out something to do with the head cheese.
Since the head cheese has a flavor that was somewhat like ham, or at least the ham that's left over from making stock, I thought I'd begin with my favorite Dutch soup - yellow split pea.  I have a recipe for it from a book titled Dutch Cooking by Heleen A.M. Halverhout.  It's a very simple recipe, demonstrating that with fresh ingredients, simple can be delicious.  Although the recipe calls for green split peas, I have a love for both yellow and green split peas and since yellows were in the house, they became the split pea of choice.  Naturally it calls for water as well as a pig's trotter and a pig's ear.  I figured that head cheese was an acceptable replacement for both those ingredients.  It also calls for frankfurters, and although I was tempted to use my hot dogs, I had so much head cheese to use that I just made it do double duty.  But the following ingredients are what I think makes it so good.  It includes potatoes, salt, celeriac, bunch celery, leeks, onions, and more salt.  I think it's the double celeries and the double onion family that gives it the most flavor.

I make large batches of soup so that we can freeze some for winter.  I have found that 1 pint glass canning jars with a good inch or more of head room (allowing for expansion), make just enough for one person.  And in the winter, we love soup.  Whether having lunch at home, traveling over to Seattle for a few days, or bringing a lunch with me to school, soup is divine on cold, snowy, wintry days.


Navy bean soup with head cheese

Thinking even more about stocking up for winter, I decided to use more head cheese in a Navy Bean soup.  I love the small, white navy beans and the soup is basically made up from the beans, a mirepoix mix, and this time, head cheese.  It tastes delicious and I even added some of the head cheese gelatin.  Between these two soups and some tomato based and/or veggie soups, I should have soup in the freezer until spring arrives!

Of course, I'm still left with more head cheese, so more ideas for all this head cheese will arrive before August 15th!

Head Cheese: An Initiation Rite

Head cheese made in loaf pan

I feel like I've been through an initiation rite, and at first, I wasn't even sure into what I had been initiated.  Charcutepalooza's Sensible Worlds, aka Brad Weiss, writes about The Fetishism of Charcuterie and the Meatiness Thereof and I think he pretty much tagged this fascination correctly.  But having spent the last six months salting, brining, smoking, grinding, stuffing, and emulsifying, in other words, indulging this fetishism, why now did I feel "initiated"?  After looking over the "binding" challenge Charcutepalooza Facebook photos available, and at my own photos, and thinking about it for several days, I now know it was the pig's head.  I can't believe that I actually cooked the animal part that even Mrs. Wheelbarrow avoided.

And as I thought more about it, I realized it wasn't the head, per se, because, after all, I couldn't even see the nasty bits like the brains.  No, it was the eyeballs.  And they probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if I hadn't watched  the video of Chef Chris Cosentino removing the meat from the pig's head in order to make porchetta di testa.  During the video he says "...to be really careful not to puncture [the eye]," so the whole time my pig's head was cooking, I kept worrying about accidentally puncturing an eye.  I had no idea what would happen and why I shouldn't do it.  So when my stock began to reduce and I needed to turn the head a bit to keep it submerged, my stomach turned with it.  And suddenly I felt very liminal, between one state and another, just as occurs in an initiation ritual.

Nothing about charcuterie had really bothered me so far, so buying and cooking a pig's head really made me feel like a member of this charcuterie community.  Being a Charcutepaloozer was one thing, but working with a part of an animal in which you have to overcome hesitant thoughts, like dissolving brains and delicate eyes, really made me feel like I had entered a new stage of charcuterie.  For me, it was the biggest challenge so far, but I did it.  Wow!  Does that feel good!  What an initiation....


Simmering the meat

So, in my giant stockpot are simmering six hocks and one head.  Following the Charcuterie directions, I added the proper herbs and spices, including the nutmeg and allspice, and the aroma was, well, "heady."  After draining the stock back into the pot to reduce more, it was pretty easy picking out all of the meat, although it was also really, really greasy.  The leeks had absorbed all that fat and just clung to my fingers.  But when I finally finished my hands felt so soft.  Because I chose to use the pink salt, my meat remained pink, something I don't think I would do next time.  I don't own a terrine (yet), so I stuffed the meat into a loaf pan.  I think I packed it in a bit too tightly because the gelatin/stock didn't really spread as much as I would have liked.

Head cheese

I also saved the leftover stock/gelatin in 1/2 pint canning jars so I could freeze it and then use it in soups and braises.

Head cheese stock/gelatin

And after finishing the whole process, having taken up something that was a real, personal challenge, I sat down and had lunch.

Head cheese sandwich

A head cheese sandwich with homemade roll, my own canned dill pickle, and some Dijon mustard.  How much better can it get?  I love Charcutepalooza!

Pig's Head

Pig's Head

Yup.  I picked up my pig's head today.  As is obvious, it's cleaned, and quite well cleaned at that.  It certainly does not even compare to Chris Cosentino's beautiful pig's head.  Good job, Chris!  No ears, no tongue, no skin.  But I did get the eyeballs, ugh.  I'm not sure I understand the USDA set up for being able to sell ears and tongues, and the butcher was far too busy today for asking questions.  I know I can get the tongue and ears when it's my pig, but I guess they can't sell them.  C'est la vie...

I also picked up 6 lbs. of ham hocks to be added to the recipe.  Given that I barely had a container large enough for the brine, I think that is more than enough meat for two people and one (I hope) head cheese.  I have a pig's heart that I thought about adding to the mix, but again, all that meat and just two people, I don't think so.  I did find a few stray whiskers and some hair that I had to get rid of, so the head is even cleaner now.  I put it and the hock into the Charcuterie brine, so it's soaking in a bit of heaven.  Of course it was so heavy and so big that I actually had to set it outside where it may possibly do well in the cold spell we're having.  Just in case, I keep adding ice.

I would be more nervous at this point in time in making the head cheese, but I found a marvelous video that provides just the imagery and descriptive words I needed in order to proceed with ease and confidence.  Thank you Carl Tashian, Winnie Yang, Marisa Huff, and Johanna Kolodny.  I think I'm ready for the next step....

Auf Wiedersehen, Hot Dogs!

Long Hot Dogs

I almost forgot to photograph my hot dogs before putting them in the freezer.  That's the kind of month it has been (I totaled my car but luckily wasn't injured).  With all the meat I had, I couldn't imagine using a pastry bag to stuff them, so I took the lazy path and used my Kitchen Aid. It wasn't bad but they did turn out a bit uneven at times.  I made some regular sized hot dogs, but I have fond memories of the 15" chili dogs sold at Cupid's across the street from the San Fernando Valley State College campus (now Cal State Univ., Northridge), so I made some long ones as well.  They weren't thin enough, but that's because I used local hog casings instead of sheep casings.

My biggest problem came with the smoking.  My first edition, fourth printing copy of Charcuterie called for hot smoking, but with my old Brinkman smoker, sans attached thermometer, I think I should have cold smoked them.  I thought I saw a comment somewhere by Bob del Grosso saying that hot dogs should be cold smoked, but I couldn't find it so I dutifully followed the directions as printed.  So, the hot dogs were a bit too smoked, plus I put them on the grill so they had those grill marks, but I must say, the flavor is very good.

Hot Dogs and Kraut

I like my dogs with kraut and Dijon mustard.  When I lived in Stuttgart one year, I ate the local Rote Wurst all the time.  It tasted like a good hot dog should taste.  I wanted to duplicate that recipe, but couldn't find it.  In southern Germany (and maybe all over the country) and in Austria, small "sausage" kiosks are often found in front of department stores and on the streets late at night.  They usually offer two kinds of sausage or "wurst" and they come with a roll (Semmel) and Scharfe (sharp, but think quite hot) or Süsse (sweet) mustard on a rectangular plate.  The sausage are not put in the roll, after all the rolls are round, one just holds it in the hand, dunks the end into the mustard, and alternates bites with the roll.  It is the best!  And I loved when they had Rotwurst in the kiosk. 

Hot Dogs with Baked Beans

My husband likes his hot dogs with baked beans, even canned beans.  It works for him so although we sit at the same table, we part ways with the hot dog accompaniment.

I had great ambitions for this month.  I wanted to make the Weisswurst.  And I really wanted to make Thüringer Bratwurst like I remember it.  Actually, I like the Freybe's Thüringer Bratwurst that I buy up in Canada.  I know that in Thuringia two necessary ingredients are caraway and marjoram, and often garlic as well.  It gives the bratwurst such a pronounced flavor.  I didn't get the task done in this month's challenge but I will in the future.  I also wanted to use my pig's liver in liver sausage this month, but that wasn't made either.  Oh well, something to look forward to!  Along with next month's challenge: headcheese!

Hot Dog Preparation

De-boning beef short ribs

I bought my short ribs from my favorite, local USDA butcher.  They use their own farm-raised cattle so no hormones or antibiotics.  Indeed, their place is very pastoral in the summer with the cattle grazing and lazing through the summer days in the meadow in front of their business.  I'm very proud that I saved myself $3/pound by buying the bone-in short ribs instead of the de-boned ribs.  Also, I needed the butchery practice.  I love practicing butchery which I have learned only from books and youtube.com.  It does intrigue me and although I'm not professional, I think I do an okay job.  I'd love to be an apprentice to a professional but between teaching and everything else, I don't think that will be happening any time soon....  Unfortunately, my knife sharpening skills are really atrocious, so much so that I need to use a knife sharpener.   But I do know what sharp is and I cannot work without sharp.  Maybe if I butchered more often....  Anyway, it was really easy taking the bone out.

So, I put the meat through the small grind and added my water and salts just like Ruhlman and Polcyn told me to do.  Now it's in the refrigerator, busy "...develop[ing] the myosin protein that helps give the hot dog a good bind and a good bite."  Go myosin, go!  Tomorrow or Saturday, I'll add the rest of the ingredients and make hot dogs!  It should be interesting....

I hadn't intended to make Ruhlman and Polcyn's hot dogs, but given the scant directions for making a good Swäbische Rote Wurst, I decided to learn from the Charcutepalooza heroes before embarking on more ambitious endeavors.  I cannot wait!

Chicken Sausage

I resisted this challenge because I really don't like chicken sausage.  It's not that it doesn't taste good; rather, when it comes to sausage I want anything but chicken and fish.  If I had found someone reasonable duck, I would have made duck sausage.  If I had wild turkey, or grouse, or pheasant, I would have made that.  Actually, my favorite is pork sausage (except for my newest addiction, Merguez).  But chicken, to me, is just not something to be made into sausage.  I don't really like it ground into meatballs or patties either.  Maybe it's the delicacy of the meat and when it comes to sausage, I like it heavier in fat and flavor in the mouth.  I do, however, like chicken as forcemeat because there it retains its more delicate flavor.  However, I fulfilled my responsibility and I discovered that chicken sausage is not so bad when it's homemade.

I began small, with only two pounds of chicken thighs.  I had fun with the de-boning.  Yeah, thighs are easy-peasy, but I watched this video on youtube by some guy who looked like he was half asleep but then de-boned that thigh perfectly in just seconds.  I figured after about another 500 thighs I might be half good.

Then, I ground the chicken.  The most negative aspect about making chicken sausage is that every time I touched the bloody chicken I had to wash my hands again for another step in the process.  I think I spent more time washing my hands and anything else that had contact with the chicken than with the sausage process itself.  Anyway, grinding was a breeze.  It yielded a uniform small and sticky grind that absorbed the spices well.

Then came the flavorings.  I didn't have fresh basil (like the Charcuterie recipe) and I really don't like dried basil.  I was in the mood for toasted fennel so I toasted two teaspoons, which I then ground in the mortar.  I added cracked hot pepper, salt, thyme, lots of finely diced raw garlic, some chopped, sun-dried tomato, and some orange zest.  I liked the idea of the orange zest, but I think it didn't do as well in a sausage as it does in a liquid.  My husband, however, thought it was very good.  For a liquid, I added half dry white wine and half ice water. 

Stuffing was a problem.  It really needed smooth and steady stuffing which is not easy for one person, especially with that sticky, viscous ground chicken.  I ended up holding the sausage casing with one hand and stuffing the KA stuffer with another, but at speed #4, it all seemed to work.  The sausage turned out just a bit thick.  However, it tasted really good.

I meant to add some pork back fat instead of using the chicken skin, but having forgot to defrost it, I just used the chicken skin.  Next time, I would definitely use the pork.  Since my spices came from the Provençal area of France, I felt the end flavor was pretty good.  And having worked with all that sticky ground chicken, I think I'm ready for some emulsified sausage.  Weisswurst, here I come!