Queen Of The Leftovers

Spaghetti Carbonara?

I know, you can't really see the eggs, but they're in there.  Along with some duck breast prosciutto scraps taking the place of bacon/pancetta or whatever other flavorful, salty, cured meat is hidden in that spaghetti.  After slicing our Duck Breast Prosciutto we ended up with scraps because, wow! that prosciutto warms up quickly!  I froze the scraps and later, while drooling over some cookbook photo of spaghetti carbonara, I decided to turn those leftover duck prosciutto scraps into an exciting dinner based on the traditional favorite, Pasta Carbonara.  The prosciutto provided a nice fatty, salty flavor for the pasta.  I sauteed some locally raised shallots in the fat before adding the spaghetti and local fresh eggs.  And it tasted divine even if the photo didn't do it justice.  I wish I had cracked one final fresh egg over that hot dish.  Delicious. You see,  I could never let those sliced prosciutto scraps go to waste...they had potential as "leftovers."

And that is one of the reasons that I think one description of me could be "Queen of the Leftovers."  I actually feel, sometimes, like some reincarnated memory of the Great Depression, a memory that comes from a farmer, from the kind of family in which my Grandma was raised in upstate New York.  I know that she was poor and the effect was a thriftiness that lasted all her life.  Somehow, she passed some of that on to me, especially when it came to home life.  I am a re-user of household stuff.  Old T-shirts become dust rags, old, but still good fabric becomes patches, old sheets cover my crops in possibly freezing weather, old towels have numerous applications, and the list goes on.  I don't make rag rugs, but I really like the idea of them.  But I digress, because what I'm really, really good at is food leftovers.  Leftovers as meals.


Wild goose breasts in pork fat

My husband complains that we never have first overs.  He thinks I scout the neighbors for leftovers.  Sometimes he's right.  Last year, my friend, Mark, gave me six wild goose breasts that an acquaintance had given him.  Since they were skinned, I knew they would be drier than usual so I had to think of a good way to use them.  What process could be better than to confit them?  I didn't have any goose fat but I sure had a lot of rendered pork fat so it was an easy task turning them into confit. After a month in the fridge, we tried two of the goose breasts and they were still dry. Unfortunately, they also had some buckshot in them.  I thought about tossing them but that thrifty saver inside of me said "no, let them sit longer in the fat."  We tried them again at three months and they were still somewhat dry but the next two had no buckshot.  My hopes rose.  Finally, after six months we tried the last two and they were moist and delicious.  My husband's had one piece of buckshot but it didn't take away from how good the goose breasts tasted.  Dang good leftovers from friends!

Pancetta, shrimp, and fava bean pasta

During my year of Charcutepalooza I found many uses for the leftover portions of a bigger dish.  Pasta dishes came easy to me.  I love the combination of a salty, cured meat product with shrimp, roasted, ground fennel seeds, hot pepper flakes, and a vegetable.  Using the pancetta seemed a perfect combination to the shrimp and fava beans resulting into a complimentary blend of textures and assertive flavors.  Some extra heavy cream pulled everything together as well as leaving a light but luscious coating on the pasta.

Head cheese made it into several different soup dishes including Yellow split pea and Navy Bean soups. I also loved using it for Head cheese hash. To me there is some unexplainable affinity between poached eggs and head cheese, so that became an easy Sunday breakfast.

Sausage, by far, is the easiest leftover.  I love the choice of the various kinds of sausage I made last summer during the year of Charcutepalooza.  With all those choices calling to me from the deep freeze, I knew we would be eating lots of sausage this past year.   From cabbage stuffed with merguez sausage, to mac 'n cheese with garlic sausage, to Italian sausage sandwiches, to pasta sauces filled with a variety of sausage flavors to just plain sausage on the barbecue, all that homemade frozen sausage is wonderful to have in the freezer and it certainly fulfills my junk food obsession for sausage.  Plus, aren't I using leftovers....

I make stock out of any leftover bones, fat, and meat.  I save herbs from my garden and use them all winter.  I do have some fresh herbs in my sunroom, including rosemary, bay, and lemon verbena, all plants that I have to over-winter indoors.  I can jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles, butters, sauces, and even dried morels.  And it doesn't stop there.  After using a nice, fresh vanilla bean in my version of David Lebovitz's poached pear dessert for the Charcutepalooza finale I had to save the vanilla bean.
 

Spicy vanilla bean sugar

After removing it from the liquid, I allowed it to sit for several days until it dried.  I assumed it had become infused with the other flavors .  For the leftover version of all that spiciness, I stuck it in a canning jar filled with sugar. After a month of infusing all that spicy goodness into the sugar, I could already catch the heady aroma of that dessert.  I figure that by saving the spicy infused vanilla bean it means I can pick up my crown for Queen of the Leftovers.  And wow! that sugar sures tastes good in my morning bowl of oatmeal....


Spicy sugar oatmeal



Head Cheese Hash With Eggs



Head cheese hash and eggs


I cannot describe how good this was.  I coarse ground the head cheese with some already cooked and cooled steamed new potatoes (from the Farmer's Market 'cause mine aren't ready yet), chopped raw onion, chopped raw green pepper, and salt and pepper.  The green pepper and onion gave it a bit of a kick that the head cheese and potatoes alone would have missed.  I sautéed the hash in a cast iron skillet until browned on both sides.  The eggs are from my friend, Helen, who knows a lot about farming.  After all, she and her husband have beef, chickens, garden vegetables and flowers, and many acres of alfalfa.  Also, her mother was a Stump Ranch Pioneer.  No wonder these eggs have such a golden yolk that is as tasty as it looks.  Of course, poaching them in water and salt allowed the richness of the yolk to shine.  The roll was homemade and contained fresh herbs.  The hash was so yummy, that I made a enough to store and have during the short, cold days of winter.  Packed into half-pint canning jars, they will keep for several months in the chest freezer.

Head cheese headed for freezer

In another effort to use up all the head cheese before the next Charcutepalooza challenge, I decided to make a potato "gratin."  I found the original recipe for this Swiss inspired gratin in a magazine that has long since disappeared and it never fails to disappoint through years of different cheeses, herbs, and meats, with the potato remaining unchanged.  The proportions depend always on the amount and kind of cooked meat I have at hand in the fridge.  The potatoes are cooked about three quarters of the way through, cooled, and then shredded in the food processor along with some onion, garlic, and cheese (I used Gruyère for this gratin).  I gave a large dice to the head cheese, and along with the herbs, folded it all together.  The original recipe called for rosemary, thyme, savory, and marjoram and I used all of them, fresh from the garden.  I put all but a bit of shredded Gruyère into a buttered casserole dish, added some cream, put the rest of the Gruyère on top, and baked it in a 350F oven until the top was well-browned, about 30 to 45 minutes, depending upon the depth of the casserole.  For me, it's as much a comfort food as mac 'n cheese.  I always serve it with a light, slightly acidic salad.  In this instance, I do confess with going a bit overboard on the feta.  After a month of head cheese, I guess I was just feeling rather cheesy.


Potato gratin with head cheese

Making head cheese has been a real challenge for me; indeed, more like an initiation rite than just a challenge.  From the first, I jumped into this challenge up to my head, well, the pig's head at least.  I not only survived, but have even thrived on the making of head cheese.  Every month I learn something new, and now, I eagerly await the next Charcutepalooza challenge.

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!