Stocks, Sauces or whatever: Giving food a second life.

Working has a butcher (and exposing myself to head-to-tail philosophy) has exposed me lots of cool things, but also some vital lessons on thrift.  When I say ‘thrift’, I’m referring to maximizing the potential of an animal.  Example: if you buy a whole chicken save the bones (heads and feet, too, if they come with the bird) for stock.  Additionally, if you have a duck, save the skin and render the fat and make the best potatoes ever.  I’m pretty sure at one point half of my fridge held jars of random animal fats.  I’m sorry, but when you got some top-notch bacon on hand, you’d be an idiot to just throw away the grease.  It’s rendered fat.  Fat is a natural preservative.  Think about confit.

           

It’s really easy to be short sighted with food.  A lot of people don’t have time to babysit a pot of bones simmering in broth; or they lack to fridge space.  You can buy premade stock pretty much anywhere.  Your butcher and other specialty food shops are likely to sell house made stocks and will even go as far as making bones available to customers interested in making their own.  Even if you are too lazy to make your own, seeking out the later option will taste much better.  Flavor country.

           

The buck doesn’t stop at stock bones.  Depending on what’s for dinner, you can give a second life to what some might just throw away.

           

One of my more recent epiphanies came when I first began braising.  You’re cooking tough, flavorful meat over a low heat for hours.  You’re concentrating all these flavors that really benefit more than just the meat.   I hinted at this in my last post about pork cheeks.   Once you’ve removed the meat, you keep reducing the leftover sauce, or just stop reducing and pack up what’s left.  Bottom line: SAVE THE LEFTOVER SAUCE.  It’s magic! 

           

This isn’t exclusive to braising.  If you’re searing some meat, there’s going be some leftover magic in the pan.  Deglaze it with some wine, garlic and shallots and you got yourself a sauce for your steak, or whatever.  This concept is really about making food work harder for you.

           

Most recently I made some pulled pork.  It’s not uncommon for people to save the dripping from slow roasted meats.  They’re perfect for BBQ sauces.  They add meaty, smoky and other rich flavors.  Here’s a quick recipe for y’all to enjoy:

Pork Shoulder

Coca Cola

Ancho Chiles in Adobo

Brown Sugar

Salt n Pepper

Garlic

Paprika

Yellow Onion (Cut into tick slices then halved)

White Wine Vinegar

Let it all simmer in a crock-pot for 6-8 hours until the pork is fork tender.   Take the meat out, make a sandwich with it or rub yourself with it, you’re going to smell real good.

           

Once you’ve removed the meat, strain the leftover liquid into a colander.  At this point you can either pack up the magic; toss it into your fridge or freezer, or you can transfer it into a pot and let it simmer until you’ve reached a desired concentration or thickness.  Save it for BBQ sauces, sloppy joes, whatever.

Pork Cheeks

Pork cheeks, or any animal cheeks for that matter, are the best!  From fish, those little nuggets can make a stir-fry divine.   You’ll most commonly find beef and pork cheeks at your meat counter. The cheek is the flavor gateway to the head.  Really, the entire pig’s head is one of the best things in the world: headcheese, gunaciale, coppa di testa, posole, some of the most decadent fat on the animal.  Much like the shoulder, the face is full of tough muscles that if cooked need a long time.  It’s riddled with connective tissue, that when broken down only add to the flavor.

Beef cheeks appear every now and again on menus.  I’ve even seen lamb cheeks.  Perhaps I haven’t been looking hard enough, or too busy making the recipe below.  I came about pork cheeks through a challenge at work.  In my experience, not knowing how to prepare a certain item will occasionally lead to your boss giving you homework.  Never turn this down.  In this case 'homework' came in the form of two-pounds of pork cheeks.

First I rub the cheeks (1-2 pounds) with kosher salt and a little flower and brown on both sides.  Once you've turned them over I like to add thick-cut onions, chunks of carrot and smashed cloves of garlic into the pot and let them soak up the magic.  Once the cheeks are brown on both sides I toss in the following:

1-2 22oz bottles dark beer (hoppy porters or stouts are ideal)
1 Cup orange juice
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf
hefty squirt of honey (2-3 tbs)
salt and pepper
allspice
5-spice
nutmeg
oregano
thyme

Once this is all in the pot turn up the stove on high and let it boil for a few minutes, then turn it down and let it all simmer for a long-ass time, 3-4 hours, longer if you got the time.  You can do this in a crock pot, but I still recommend browning the cheeks first.

The one thing I like about the combination of beer and OJ is that they give off a kind of bitter, dark chocolate flavor.  Dark beers are my usual go-to for stews and braising, but the hops tend to work nicely with citrus.  The honey helps the malty notes of the beer and softens the bitter notes from the hops and OJ.

Towards the end of the braise make a good cilantro-heavy guacamole (avocado, cilantro, salt, lime, jalapeño).  Slap that on some fresh tortillas, ad the cheeks and enjoy!  There will probably be a lot of sauce left.  Let is keep reducing, it’ll only get better.  Save that sauce for rice, or whatever. It keeps in the freezer well.

Summer Quail

Why would you ever settle for chicken when you can have quail, or any game bird for that matter?   Its meat is a rich burgundy hue and doesn’t taste bland.  You can cook them the same way you would a chicken, it’ll just taste way better.  Just the idea of eating it sounds more exciting than… Chicken.  

The first time I sank my teeth into California’s state bird was the same night my bike got stolen.  My work had cooked a bunch of sausage stuffed quail and I reaped the benefits that didn’t sell that night.  So during my long walk home, I chowed down on what became an eye opening experience: poultry that wasn’t boring.  It probably may have looked weird to passer-bys that I was scarffing down a tiny bird as I walked home, but it made a bad night better.  I’ve been recommending the dish ever since. 

Aside from the nostalgia of ‘the first time’, sausage stuffed quail is extremely easy and is likely to impressed anyone you have over for dinner.  Tell your guest that they’ll be eating quail and their eyes widen, eyebrows raised, and usually someone is bound to say, “Ooooo.”

You can take many approaches to this dish.  Most recently, I decided to make a very summer-themed dish.  I used pluots, since stone fruit is in season and kicking ass.  I kept it simple and cut it up in to pieces no bigger than my pinky nail.  I kept the sausage simple, by which I mean I didn’t go through the whole process of stuffing the meat into casings.  I just mixed the following ingredients a few hours in advance:

Salt, pepper, paprika, chili flakes, grapefruit zest, pomegranate molasses

I mixed those guys up with the pluots; stuffed them up the quail and popped it into the oven at 400 degrees from about 15-20 minutes.  You’ll know it’s done when the sausage reads 140 degrees.

For the side dish we did another quintessential summer dish:  

Watermelon salad with Thai basil (you can use mint too), feta cheese balsamic, vinegar, shallots and a little chili flakes.

All the places that I’ve worked sell whole quail, meaning it’s not deboned.  Most shops can get you deboned quail, which really means that the backbone and rib cage have been removed.  I personally don’t make a big fuss out of the rib cage, it’s easy to eat around, and I wind up cutting my quail in half, head-to-toe.  If you purchase a whole quail and want to have fun deboning it, check out this video.

The Science of BBQ

It's the 4th July.  When we're not trying to blow things up, we're gettin' low n slow.  Here's a video dropping knowledge about one of our favorite summer past times.

Getting (Less) Weird with Srircha: Part 2

What do bacon and srircha have in common?  They have cult-like followings in which fanatics have gone to great lengths to make it work with any dish.  People are so crazed with the condiment that cook books have been writing celebrating the magic red sauce.

I'm a huge fan of all things spicy.  My girlfriend: not so much.  On occasion, I'll demonstrate my love for heat by coating a piece of toast in hot sauce; or add extra peppers into a dish I know she won’t eat.  I’d consider it culinary feat of strength.  Perhaps akin to a deranged mating dance.  Except instead of winning the female's affections, she shakes her head and asks, "What's wrong with you?"  

Some say genius can be found in madness.

One morning the gal-pal and I were chowing down on a healthy bowl of fruit and yogurt, when something compelled me to reach into the fridge for my bottle of sriracha.  What happened next could only be found in a Western shoot-out:  I grabbed a strawberry, from her plate.  With fruit in one hand and hot sauce in the other, our eyes locked, not in ecstasy, but in combat.  Breakfast had turned into a game of dare.  As per usually, I displayed the objects in my had with a dopy smile while she sat across the table, arms crossed and a smile that people only give children, or puppies, when they're about to do something endearingly stupid.

I proceeded to squirt out a line of sriracha on the strawberry.  Without unlocking our eyes I took a bite.  The world paused.  My eyes opened as I had made a personal revelation: SWEET AND SPICY FOR THE WIN!  For a moment I had doubts and was prepared to pretend it was good so the girlfriend wouldn't have the satisfaction of telling me I was wrong.  Never had I come across this flavor profile I now take for granted: sweet, pepper, smoke, slightly sour.  It was amazing.

Those flavors stayed with me for days.  I wanted to figure out how I can bring those flavors together in a dish, or a condiment of my own.  Coincidentally I was in the mood to make a BBQ sauce.  

Boom.  Light Bulb.

Disclaimer: Most recipes I usually don't write down, but I happened to write down this recipe.  To maintain some secrecy, I'm leaving out a thing or two, specifically most of the portions.  You're smart.  You'll figure something out.  Hint: this should make about one-quart of magic.

1 lb. Strawberries

Sugar

Tomatoes (or ketchup)

Yellow Onion

Garlic Cloves

Bay Leaf

Coarse Black Pepper

Lemon Juice

Black Strap Molasses 

Salt

Smoked Paprika

Shark Sauce Sriracha (I like using this one over the Huy Fong/Rooster Sauce version because it compliments the strawberries and the molasses, and it's what I had on hand the day I made the BBQ sauce)

First, you macerate the strawberries.  Then toss all the ingredients into a pot.  Bring it to a boil and let it roll for about 5 minutes before dropping it to a simmer for one hour.  Stir the sauce every now and then.  Towards the end of the hour, blend the sauce with an electric hand mixer and keep simmering, or dump the sauce into a food processor once your done.  It's good if you leave it chunky style, too.

It goes good on everything, ever.

Gettin' Weird with Sriracha (Part 1)

Part of the world panicked when it was announced that the prized sriracha producer Huy Fong was being threatened to shut down.  Memes flooded Facebook with signs of the apocalypse.  How can we live with out sriracha!?  The answer came easy to me: I’ll just make it.

Before we continue, allow me to drop an important bit of knowledge on you:  Sriracha is the name of a condiment from a town in Thailand of the same name.  Huy Fong's srircha, the one with the rooster on it, has become synonymous with the name.  It's kind of like Heinz and ketchup.

Okay.  Back to our story.

As it is with any apocalyptic scare, new papers occasionally take it upon themselves to try and offer relief.  The LA Times did the world a small service by publishing a recipe for a sriracha-style hot sauce.  This recipe is quick and simple: you blend the peppers and spices in a food processor; toss the paste into a pot with vinegar; boil for a few minutes; and then strain the paste.  While the recipe was tasty, it lacked in something.

A few days later I stumbled upon sriracha recipe number two.  It essentially takes the same ingredients and process, but it has you ferment the paste for several days before adding the vinegar and straining the liquid.  By fermenting the paste you're intensifying the flavors and drawing out an umami flavor.  The end result was similar to the sriracha underdog, shark sauce.  (You can find this brand in most Asian markets.)

Usually when people think of fermentation, they think of alcohol.  People have been preserving food through lacto-fermentation forever.  It's how sauerkraut and dill pickles get their unique, briny flavor.  It's also super easy.  For recipe number two, I kept the jars on my kitchen counter with a lid on top.  The first time I did this I used mason jars and tightened the lid.  Big mistake.  During fermentation gasses a created.  This caused the contents of my jar to expanded.  With nowhere for the air to go, I basically had a chili paste grenade waiting to explode.  (Imagine holding in a big fart and then finally releasing it)  After the first day I opened the jar to stir the mixture and received a spicy money shot.  Luckily, I had a ton of peppers and quickly remade the paste.  This time placing plastic wrap and cooking pot lids over the jars, allowing the gas to escape with ease.

Like everything that has a beginning, they also have an end.  Sadly, I ran out of my homemade sauce and had to make some more.  My plan this time was to ferment the peppers whole before processing them to see if this made any difference.  My plan was also to use Fresno chilies, like in the first two recipes, but sometimes the asian market you like going to only have serrano peppers and jalapeños.  So I rolled with it.

I tossed a bunch of serranos, jalapeños and a few thai chilies into an eight liter bucket with a salt water solution that was roughly 1-cup pickling salt and 1.5 gallons water.  (NOTE: if you read any books about curing or pickling, they all make distinctions about types of salt.  The grains are different, and thus portions can get messed up.)  I then filled up the bucket to the top with a little bit more water (the benefit being that it dilutes the salt a little more, and I intend to add a little more salt later).  I placed the bucket at the top of the stairs leading to my basement.  The area is roughly 55-60 degrees, idea for quick fermentation.

About five days later I pull the peppers and process them with garlic, garlic powder, sugar, fish sauce, a little bit of salt and water from the fermentation bucket.  The house becomes rank with the aroma of chilies.  I happen to love this smell, and it doesn't bother me, but the aroma gets everyone and it feels like someone pepper sprayed the house.

 (Green magic during the boil)

At this point I had a 'fuck it' moment.  I could have added the vinegar and strained the liquid out and be done, but fuck it: I tossed the paste in a plastic bowl (plastic and glass are great because they are nonreactive), put some plastic wrap over it and but it back in the basement for a few more days.  Every time you opened the door to the basement, you were met with the unique aroma of chili, garlic and funk.

When you ferment things at high temperatures (60 degrees and above) things can turn funky, even sour.  That's why I kept fermenting.

After a few more days I pull the paste; added white vinegar; boiled the paste; coughed a lot (that shit was STRONG!), and strained the liquid.  The end result was spicy, briny, a little sour and a little savory.  Everything I intended it to be.  You could even taste grassiness from the green peppers, something that wasn't present when using red Fresno's.  Its flavors had surpassed sriracha experiments #1.  Dare I even call it sriracha any more?  The twice-fermented elixir I had created had a taste beyond its predecessors. It was aggressive, in your face, and pleasantly weird.  I think Andrew Zimmern would have been proud.

(Straining the liquid: The paste is kinda chunky, so I used a big colander first and  then a finer mesh strainer )

(The final product)

Duck Prosciutto

To paraphrase my old boss, Taylor Boetticher, "Duck is the pig of the poultry world."  This is true because the duck has so much fat and its fat is the most prized of all the birds, no disrespect to schmaltz.  It's also the only bird I've come across that people are curing.

I first encountered duck prosciutto on a brief trip to Vancouver, Canada.  It was at Granville Island, the city's famed market that I came across a small booth selling a variety of charcuterie.  They had a variety of cured goodies, but my novice taste buds were drawn to the slightly less conventional (at the time) animals: elk and duck prosciutto, both, which seem less exotic now.  The duck has an amazing fat cap, almost comparable to that of a pork loin.  It was silky and salty. I don't remember much else, other than I was mesmerized by the novelty of it.  At this point in my life I was working at my dad's ice cream shop and what little I knew about cured meats was limited to traditional stuff.

Recently my interest in duck prosciutto has turned from exotic to convenient.  Using a recipe from the celebrated book, Charcuterie, I reunited with duck prosciutto and made it myself.

There's lot of risk when curing a raw product.  Essentially you apply salt to a piece of meat to draw out moisture and create a hostile environment for bacteria to grow.  It's much more complicated than that, but that's kind of the basis of it.  If done incorrectly you can get extremely sick, or even die.

The reason why I chose duck prosciutto as my first curing project is because it's a quick project in the scheme of things.  The whole process took just over a week.

First, you take a duck breast and cover it in salt (1-2 cups, I've even added a little sugar to lighten the saltiness), and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours.  Next, you rinse off the salt and lightly dust the breast with whatever you see fit.  Charcuterie suggests black pepper.  I've used Chinese five-spice, ground star anise and fennel.  Another method you can use is taking all that seasoning and mix it with the salt.

Once you've cured your meat, rinsed it and seasoned it, you'll need to hang it for at least a week.  The first time I did this, I wrapped the breast in cheesecloth and then tied it with twine.  The cheesecloth provides a little protection from the elements, but also slows down the process of drawing moisture out of the duck breast.

(Duck Prosciutto round 1 on the right, Guanaciale on the left)

Once you've gotten this far, you'll need a place to hang the duck breast.  Basements, especially in San Francisco, are ideal because they are typically somewhere between 45-60 degrees.  If you have space under a stairwell, that works too.  You just want to find a dry, cool place to store your meat.  Rooms with cement floors are great, too because cement takes a longer time to change temperatures.  You'll also want to find a room with a decent humidity.  This helps the outside of the meat from drying up too quickly and trapping any bad bacteria.

I've hung my duck breasts for about 8-9 days.  The outside was a little harder than the inside, but it tasted great!  Salt, iron, warm from the spices.  This is a great, quick first project for anyone interested in making his or her own cured meat.