The other white cheek.

Installment # 3 in the Charcuterie posts is Guanciale. First let's work on pronunciation. For those of you who, like me, do not speak Italian this is a puzzling word to pronounce but after many web searches and a conversation with former resident (but not native) of Italy, I have narrowed it down to 2 possible pronunciations. Gwan-see-ah-lay and gwan-chi-ah-lay. That out of the way, on the the meat of the matter.

The first step in any of these more esoteric recipes is to acquire the main ingredient, in this case UNCURED pork cheek, otherwise known as hog jowls. Uncured being the hard part... At the Nashville farmers market you can find salted and smoked hog jowls by the bushel basket, literally. This being a city of "southern food", hog jowls and ham hocks play a major part in a lot of southern cooking, soul food included. However, I wanted pig cheek au-natural. So I called up Danny at DW Farms and placed an order for 4 cheeks.

On the appointed day and at the appointed place, I picked up the jowls. 2 smallish 2 larger.

Let me just say this, I have never really been freaked out by a cut of meat until now... It's not the muscle tissue, or the location of origin from the animal, it was the bristles of the 2 smaller cheeks that could be felt on the skin side. 
All I can say is someone needs a Mach 3. <shiver> ewww.

I trimmed the nasty bits (glands and the like, some bristles, again ewww) and started the cure.

Kosher salt, sugar, garlic black pepper corns, and thyme. Quite a simple cure.

I doubled the amount of cure due to the amount of pork I decided to process. Just a little over double the weight.

I spread a layer of cure in the bottom of a big plastic container.

Then laid in the washed, trimmed and dried jowls. A layer of cure, a layer of meat, a layer of cure, a layer of meat then the rest of the cure.

Pop on the lid and chuck it in the fridge for 7 days, or until the jowls are uniformly firm. Turning and rotating every other day.

After 7 days it looks like this.

Not a lot to see in that one, so how about this. Ready to rinse and hang

After a little shower in the sink, I used a very sharp knife to poke a hole in the thinner end of each jowl and used butchers twine to hang them to dry.

As you can see the skin on the smaller two guanciali turned a little gray. This would be remedied by the drying process.

After 3 weeks of hanging the skin has turned all mahogany and pretty... The two large guanciali did not have skin.

Here are the first couple of slices.

This stuff is really fragrant. Slightly floral from the thyme and a little pungent from the garlic. There is a meaty aroma also that is really hard to pin down.

The flavor is also floral-ish but very porky and works very well as a traditional ingredient in alla carbonara.

If you can lay hands on uncured pork cheeks and a copy of Charcuterie, I recommend making this.

It may not be for everyone but I like it.

Cheers

Chris

Dontcha hate to get your cheeks pinched?

I would have never expected to enjoy this particular cut of beef, but cheeks are brilliant! The need some special treatment but the results, if handled even 3/4 correctly are outstanding.

Those of you who familiar with The French Laundry at Home will have more than likely already seen this dish fully blogged by Carol, and done with humor and style and great camera work...

Well for this blog you might get 1 of those 3... And even I don't know which one it will be... So without further rambling obfuscating I give you partial Tongue In Cheek from the French Laundry cook book.

I was inspired to try this part of the recipe by my experience with the Braised Veal Cheeks that I had at Roosters in Charlotte. Also I found beef cheeks for some ridiculous price like $1.25 a pound.

So with my newly acquired beef cheeks (Carol is dead on when she said that beef cheeks is fun and funny to say), I cracked open my, coffee table extravaganza, copy of, The French Laundry cookbook.

It starts by unpacking and trimming the cheeks. (Squeamish alert!)

The little pile of meat at the front of the picture is the part that I didn't keep, silver skin and membranes.

The second step is to make a batch of the Red Wine Marinade found on page 190.

1 bottle of good red wine (this will come back to bite you if you don't use a decent wine.) carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, flat leaf parsley, thyme and bay leaf.

Everything goes into a pot and is brought to a boil. The recipe states... "Tilt the pan away from the burner and carefully ignite the wine with a match." This is rather nerve racking in a kitchen with 8 foot ceilings and no commercial fire suppression system. It's also the best way to make sure that the alcohol is burned off so that it doesn't cook the meat while it is marinating. (Note to self: Make sure fire extinguisher is charged, as a precaution)

If you look closely you might be able to see the flames.

Once I couldn't get anymore vapors to ignite it was time to let the marinade cool.

I but the cheek in a one gallon zip-top vacuum bag and poured the room temp marinade in with it, sealed up the bag and stuck it in the fridge over night.

After a 8 to 12 hour soak, I removed the meat and strained the marinade into a pot and brought it to a boil. The vegetables are reserved for later.

While the marinade was getting it's boil on, I dredged the cheeks in all purpose flour and started to brown them in a  little peanut oil (my de facto cooking oil). It took about 3 minutes a side for the cheeks to get brown and crusty and ready for the next steps.

The marinade, once boiled and reduced a bit was strained again, this time through a coffee filter. Not part of the original recipe but I wanted to remove any little icky bits that the skimming didn't catch.

Per the recipe I had about a cup marinade.

The vegetables left from the marinade got a quick saute in the pan used to brown the meat.

Let me just say that throughout the process nothing had really tasted all that great, and the colors were almost disturbing... purple leeks and carrots, freaky. I did figure out the issue with the off flavor and this is were the quality of the wine comes into play... Cheap wine is not the best idea. I don't mean Thunderbird cheap but not anything I will buy again.  Lesson learned... I get it now even though I am not much of a wine person. Good wine = good food.

So now that I had all the parts ready, I was hoping that my bad choice of wine wouldn't ruin the final dish, but I had to put it together to find out.

Cheeks, marinade, vegetables, veal stock and water to cover went into a loaf pan of all things. I used a loaf pan because of the overall volume it held was just over what was needed to hold the ingredients without diluting the marinade/stock too much with water.

I covered the meat with a parchment lid... Neat idea. Cut parchment to the size and shape of the cooking vessel with a vent hole in the center so that the meat is protected from caramelizing and allows a little evaporation. Mr. Keller says "It's like having a lid and not having a lid at the same time." How Zen...

I cooked the cheeks for 4 hours at 300°, then let them rest for 30 minutes before even removing the parchment. That's a long 30 minutes, but worth the wait.

For the final plating I did a quick sauté of fingerling Yukon Gold potatoes and sliced the cheek into half inch slices. I also reduced some of the braising liquid until it was satiny smooth and coated the back of a spoon.

Oh Damn! it was good. My worries about the wine flavor were put to rest with the first bite. This had has good a flavor as the veal cheeks I had at Roosters. The texture was very nice but not as good as the veal. I really enjoyed the dish, and I learned lessons while making it. Two hallmarks of a good recipe to me.

I will make this again when the temperature is a bit lower. It's a perfect late fall or winter dish.

Anyone else out there tried variations on French Laundry recipes? Did they work? Did they fail? Tell me about what you experienced.

Cheers

Chris

If life hands you lemons, make lemon cookies.

Many of you will know exactly what the phrase "cookie dough sale" means. For those of you who don't, let me splain...

The ubiquitous candy/trinket/candle fundraiser sales of our school days have been augmented by the sales of 3 lbs tubs of cookie dough with nearly the mythical self life of Twinkies. (Actual shelf life of the dough frozen, is 12 months). The dough cost between 10 and 13 dollars depending on the flavor.

Now this is not an item I would buy if little Timmy knocked on the door hawking his wares to fund raise for his school field trip to the science center, but when my nephew called at the beginning of his school year, (in perfect compliance with the Do Not Call Registry, since I brought and consumed cookies the previous year) I played the part of dutiful uncle and agreed to purchase a tub-o-cookies.

I chose the German Chocolate cookies, seeing as that is probably my favorite cake, I thought they would be tolerable.

After a few months and the inevitable memory lapse about the purchase, I received a call one Saturday morning with a cryptic message informing me that my sister-in-law would be at certain small/square hamburger joint, at a certain time and would have my "stuff"... I arrived at the aforementioned time and place feeling like I was ready for a shady drug deal and took delivery of my rapidly thawing tub of joy... Once home I tucked the tub away in the garage freezer until such time as I needed on demand cookies.

This morning, that time arrived... I had actually planned for the event by removing the dough from the freezer last night and leaving it out to thaw.

I imagine that you, dear reader, might be asking yourself "what the hell do lemons have to do with German Chocolate cookies...?" or maybe "What the hell is he yammering on about today...?" I will do more 'splaining'.

Over the weekend I purchased a bag of lemons from the local chain grocery store, I found a little mold on one, then a second, then third and fourth lemon this morning, and knew that if I didn't harvest the lemon juice quickly, I would have moldy additions to my compost pile, and a couple of wasted bucks.

So I wind up in the kitchen with 2 dozen German Chocolate cookies and a half a cup of lemon juice... Now what does anyone worthy of the description "curious" do with 2 dozen cookies and a half a cup of lemon juice? Sprinkle a little juice on a cookie of course...

You could have knocked me over with a feather... Turns out the combination is actually really really good, and I'm not even fond of sweet lemon preparations.

So, lessons learned today... Chocolate and lemon CAN go together, and the scary tub-o-cookies can be turned into a decent desert.

I recommend finding a nice chocolate cookie recipe and drizzling fresh lemon juice on them while they are still warm... I also recommend you find way to get rid of the remaining cookies other than standing over the cooling rack eating cookies and growling at your family members when they venture too close to you... 

Surprises happen all the time... Be open to them.

Cheers

Chris

Peter Pan-cetta

Garlic Cloves
Pink Salt (Nitrite)
Kosher Salt
Dark Brown Sugar
Black Pepper
Juniper Berries (crushed with the bottom of a small sauté pan)
Bay Leaves
Fresh Ground Nutmeg
Fresh Thyme
Pork Belly

These ten ingredients are the alchemic start to the wondrous substance referred to by the Italians as Pancetta. From the Italian for belly: pancia. Belly people, as in pork. Or more commonly BACON. "Gimme what's in tha bag..."

Some of you might have guessed that this is a Charcuterie post. For those of you who didn't figure it out... It is.
Pancetta is the second recipe in the book and sorry for the time it took to get it to you... Pancetta is not a quick recipe like, say like Fennel-Cured Salmon, that take around 48 hours. Pancetta takes 7 days to cure and 3 weeks to dry. Some recipes I looked at had drying times upwards of 3 months.
This belly started it's inexorable journey to bacondom at the same time as the country/fresh bacon that was in the first official post from the masterwork that is Charcuterie... (Too gushing? Too wordy? But it's a really good book.)
As a matter of fact, the meat came from the same 14 1/4lbs belly as the fresh bacon.

There are 2 major differences between the 2 types of bacon.

1: The fresh bacon was smoked after it was cured. The pancetta was dried and not smoked.
2: There was a lot more to the cure. Fresh bacon only had 3 cure ingredients whereas the pancetta cure has 9.

Hard to see in this picture but that's 8 out of 9. I forgot the thyme until last minute.(Remember, no exact quantities cause that would be plagiarism, and thieving. Want to know, buy the book.)

The first part is pretty simple. Mix the cure ingredients together so that the pink salt is evenly distributed. Then give your belly a massage rubbing the cure mixture all over. The goal here is to get as even a coating of cure as possible on the entire belly.

See, simple... Next comes the second hardest part of the process. Wrestling the belly into the zip top bag without scraping all the cure off or getting it all over yourself. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, next time I might try to enlist an assistant for this part. There is also a definite drawback to getting cure in the grooves of the zipper, damn things won't close if there is cure blocking the nifty zipping action...  

Tick Tock... and through the miracle of internet time dilation, 7 days pass. 7 days of waiting patiently for the various chemical and physical reactions to take place, flipping the bag every other day so the cure stays evenly distributed. "...(a process called overhauling)..." Observe, a direct quote from the book, page 45 in fact. Proof I really am following the book.

Check the belly by poking it with your finger... If it's uniformly firm and not squishy, it is ready to go. If still squishy let it sit for an additional day or two.

What do we do now that the 7 days have past and the belly is not squishy? Time to roll it duuude... This, my friends, is the single hardest task in the whole process.

After rinsing all the cure off of the newly christened pancetta, you will be left with a slightly stiff and slippery chunk of meat, that you have to roll up very tightly. This is so not an easy chore. I would rate it somewhere between giving a cat a pill and trying to convince a 3 year old that spinach is yummy. I have to confess that due to the battle that transpired, I was not able to free my hands to snap a shot of the pancetta mid-roll.

After trimming the belly to square it up, I sprinkled the meat side with cracked pepper and rolled it as tight as I could, tying it as I went. I spaced out the butchers twine about every 1 - to - 2 inches.

I wrapped it in cheese cloth and prepared for another wait. This time a mere 3 weeks needed to transpire before I would be able to show you this!

Let me just say the it taste as good as it looks.

The first thing I made with it after it had dried was farfalle alla carbonara. (Expect a post in a day or so)

I also cooked the trimmings on the grill while smoking the fresh bacon. Let me just say again as I did in that first post... Grilled bacon rawks!

If you can find yourself a farmer to supply the belly and lay hands on a copy of the book, I really recommend making this. It's actually quite simple. Just takes a little patience.

Next up from the book. Gaunciale.

Cheer

Chris

Great Balls of Fire

"Here, you have to try this..." she said sliding a sliver of mango across the cutting board. It was topped with a lurid, almost pornographically red sauce. Just a couple of little dots of the stuff, but I knew—oh yes I knew—that in those few small dots of color existed pain... If you weren't careful. But I trusted my host, wrangled the slippery piece of fruit from the board and popped it in my mouth.

Amazing! The mango was juicy and sweet with that slightly funny mango aftertaste, but this time somehow more mango than the un-garnished chunk I had just robbed from the cutting board. The heat of the sauce "woke up" the mango. I was enlightened, just a little bit.

So I am sitting in a sardine can airplane a couple weeks later on my way home, when out of the clear blue, BANG!!! Mango Sriracha Ice Cream... No shit. My brain thought that up... I thought it was freakin insane, but I was hooked on the idea.

I didn't write down any quantities while I was concocting but I will do better next time and post an accurate recipe.

I filleted 4 ripe mangos and rough chopped the resulting flesh and chucked it into a pot with 2 tbsp of sugar. The pot then went over medium high heat until it start to sizzle a bit, basically a sauté. I reduced the heat to a simmer and cook hell out of it until it reduced by at least a third and everything is very soft. Since I am guessing at a time for this post I would say 20 minutes or so.

The next step was to puree the fruit into, well puree. I also added 1/2 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk. More simmering, then "DING" you have about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of mango milk that need to be strained.

You lose about 2/3 to 1 cup of solids. You could leave this in, but I think it makes for a stringy mixture...

This is not stringy...

My end result was 2 cups of mango mixture ready to add to a custard style ice cream base.

Pretty standard mix, or at least my version of a standard mix. Less eggs than normally called for.

1 whole egg
1 egg yoke
1 1/2 cups milk (I didn't use more cream because my mango mix was already so creamy)
1/4 cup sugar

Heat the milk in a pot to just simmering, you don't want to scald it. While the milk is heating mix the egg and yoke in a bowl with the sugar... beat the hell out of this mixture until it starts to thicken (I'll take pictures next time.)
Temper the egg mix with the hot milk, adding little bits at a time while whisking. I added a tbsp at a time until I had doubled the volume of liquid in the bowl... If you do this too quickly you will get scrambled eggs. Add the tempered mix into the hot milk and stir gently until the entire pot starts to thicken. It's gonna be like a thin custard or pudding.

Chill everything down so it can be stored in the fridge until ready to freeze... I used an ice bath.

Everything in the fridge over night for a through chilling.

The next day I mixed the ice cream base and mango mix together and then had to figure out how much sriracha to add. I did little test batches of the mango puree with various amounts of sriracha.

The one thing I couldn't get around is how raw sriracha tastes... It's really quite harsh. The solution??? Cook it.

2 tbsp of the chili sauce mixed with 1 tbsp of sugar to make what truly looked like a chili sauce glaze after about 5 minutes cook time. (I didn't get a picture, it was cooking too fast to stop and snap one.)

Once I had, or thought I had, an acceptable ratio of chili to mango, I poured the final mix into my super handy ice cream maker. The batches are small but the freezing is fast... 20 - 30 minutes for ice cream ready to serve soft or put in the freezer to firm up.

Now all I needed was someone to experiment on taste it. I got my chance last week when I had dinner with my dad and stepmother.

This is what I served.

The sauce is a basic blackberry puree. 1 quart of blackberries and enough sugar to make it sweet, (sugar quantity depends on the berries) boiled, strained of the seeds and chilled.

Reactions were, as expected, a little delayed due to the creep up factor of the sriracha. It's a little hit in the back of the throat. Lots of mmmmm's and ahhhh's and in general fawning praise, which is to be expected from parental units but I think it was honest reactions not parental pandering. A success on that night.

I also had a couple of culinary professionals evaluate this concoction. The reviews there were mixed... One chef said point blank that he didn't care much for tropical fruit, so that review was a bust. The other guy really like the texture but is a purist about flavor, so the mix of mango and chili was not really something he liked. The pastry chef at this local eatery agreed to give it a review when I made another batch. I would like a dessert persons opinion.

My final thoughts...
The sriracha might not be the best chili sauce to use for an ice cream because of the savory elements built into that sauce. I might try it with a really strong pepper jelly next time.
In the end I liked the flavor and the heat working together.

I will try this again with better recipe notes.

Cheers

Chris

All's shell that end's shell

About 25 years ago I had my first raw oyster. It was not pleasant. In general, up to that point I had enjoyed oysters prepared in various ways, fried, stewed, casseroled, but not naked. Little did I know that the tub of raw oysters  my mother had procured to concoct an oyster casserole for the Christmas Eve dinner, was not the same critter as the Bullhead canned oysters to which I was accustomed. These, unlike the canned variety, were uncooked. I popped a cold, slimy, ovoid of shellfish into my mouth and was immediately aware that something was amiss. This was not the pleasant liver textured, nugget of intense flavor I was used to, but an alien creature, cold, slightly gritty, and mostly tasting of salt water. Why did people eat these things? Ewwwhhk. I would spend the next 25 or so years avoiding raw bars and raw sampler plates. Until recently.

Some of you are aware of my admiration for Anthony Bourdain. No so much as a chef, but as someone that communicates a passion for food in a way that really hits home for me. So it was with no small amount of envy that I read his description of his first oyster, "at a witless age 9...".

"I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater ... of brine and flesh ... and somehow ... of the future.

Everything was different now. Everything.

I'd not only survived -- I'd enjoyed.

... The genie was out of the bottle. My life as a cook, and as a chef, had begun.

Food had power."

I had not enjoyed... I had nearly urked. How had what he eaten been so different from what I had eaten. Besides the obvious difference in freshness. Turns out that would be key. Freshness is absolutely the key to oysters on the 1/2...

To that end I went searching for fresh. I even went so far as to tell my sad story to one of the fish mongers at Whole Foods. He took down my name and number, promising to call when the next shipment arrived. That's pretty fresh for Nashville. Unless you can fork out the dough to have them  flown in...

Fast forward 2 weeks. I stop by Whole Foods to pick up a few things and to enquire about the state of oyster shipments. A different fish monger this time, assures me that there had indeed been deliveries of bi-valves since I had been in last, and that yes I was still on the call list and he was terribly sorry that no one had called. Determined to fulfill his customer service mandate he offered me a free dozen on the next shipment. I was happy to accept.

But I would thwarted in my plans to have fresh oysters... 3 additional weeks pasted and while stopping in on my way to a Memorial Day party to grab strawberries and cream, I head back to the fish counter to give someone what for. I spoke with fish monger number 1 and he remembered me after looking in "the book" and seeing his own hand writing. There was not however a note about the free dozen. He did however offer me a serious deal on a case. An entire case for 17 bucks, approximately 25 cents per oyster, given a count of 70 per case.

I now had fresh oysters and a shiny new shucking knife - and a party to go to where there was most likely not a place to store a box of mollusks. A 2.99 white foam beer cooler from a gas station and a bag of ice fixed that issue.

I had a nice time at the party, I offered fresh shucked oysters to any and all who wanted to try them. I didn't have many takers. But that's where I had my first decent (but not wonderful) raw oyster. I wasn't overly impressed but I wasn't grossed out either. I came to the conclusion that I would give the next raw bar I found myself at a try.

I have since shared a dozen in two different restaurants, in two different states. I think I understand now what Bourdain was talking about. I had a clue about fresh...

So now after all that chatter about my first time failure and mid thirties redemption with oysters, I get to the final point of this post... After the Memorial Day party I still had the lions share of a case of oysters to content with...

So I set about to shucking... I counted about 70 critters needing pried from their mother of pearl homes, which means I actually got a better deal that I had figured, seeing as nearly 2 dozen had been shucked at the party (most of them cooked)

I ended up with nearly a quart of the little snots, and a few decent shell inflicted cuts on my left hand.

One of my favorite dishes growing up was oyster stew. So simple, 1 can of Bullhead oysters, 1 can of whole milk, 2 tablespoons of butter, and enough pepper to turn the whole mixture black...

I wanted to try a fresher version, so I started out with about an ounce of un-smoked bacon in a saucier. I rendered the bacon for about 5 minutes then added a little butter.

Next came the oysters. 8 or so, just over 1/2 a cup.

A pinch of salt, and 8 turns of my pepper mill, 1 tsp chopped flat leaf parley and a tsp of minced tarragon simmered in 1 and 1/2 cups of whole milk for about 15 minutes.

More pepper added to the bowl makes this a bit of an ugly plating - but the flavor was killer.

For now I think I will leave the shucking to professionals and stick to cooking oyster when at home. But I can say with pride that I didn't let on bad experience keep me from learning to really enjoy a creature many refer to a snot on a shell...

Cheers

Chris

No rest for the wicked

It's late or early, depends on how you view the clock. For me it's late... It's late and I can't sleep. The pillows are too soft, the bed is too hard, I need a drink of water - I can't shut down my brain. That's the hard one.

What's got me all riled up you ask... Politics, Religion, work life, social life or lack there of? D - None of the above...

What's got me all twisted in knots tonight is the realization that while I really love food, love to eat, what I love more is the process. Turning raw pork belly into bacon - or asparagus, butter and lemon into something that made my father say "WOW!" - hearing a friend "mmmmm" over black walnut cherry ice cream. More than eating, I love making... It's always been more fun to cook for others. To feed people.

I have that desire or disease to pull a "Buford", pack up my shit and head to Tuscany, meet Dario and the Maestro, eat some steak. But sadly I don't think I have the huevos to do something so radical. I have gotten kinda comfortable with my life. Maybe that's my problem. Why I can't sleep...

I have always claimed that I didn't want to be a culinary professional. Maybe I have been lying to myself. I love to feed people.

Maybe my ADD affected brain just gets bored to easily and cooking is one of those things that you can never totally master. You might be able to master a method, but you will never master all the variations.

Now that I paddled down that steam of consciousness, maybe I can sleep - or I might just lie here thinking about the "Possibilities".

Don't that just mess with your head.

Night all

Chris