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.