Kale with Sausage

Otto von Bismark said in the 1800's "Laws are like sausages. Its better not to see them being made."

We had three different types of sausage options when I spoke with the processor.  After a quick consult with Steve, we got all three.  Last week, I finally got around to cooking with the one marked Sausage.  This was essentially plain ground pork.  It came packed in two squares.  I decided to dip my toes into the sausage pool slowly and just defrost one package.

Holly and I tossed around many different things to do with it.  Wanting to be a purist, I just wanted to simply cook it the first time around to see what it tasted like. The scientific baseline approach I guess.  Holly had meatballs on the brain.  I can't wait to test her approach.

One of the joys of working from home is my lunch options.  Most days I enjoy left overs while some days find a place to go within walking distance.  This day I took up the challenge of cooking something quickly.  The menu rapidly developed into Kale and sausage with polenta.

After getting the polenta going, I browned up some of the sausage and threw in some chopped kale.  After a sort simmer with salt, pepper and garlic, the contents of the two pots met up in a bowl. A little left over tomato sauce on the polenta.  Lunch was served. 

The combination was wonderful.The kale was not cooked to death limp but still had some texture to it. The liquid added flavor to the creamy corn.  However, the sausage on its own was rather tasteless to me.  It almost reminded me of ground beef.  Not happy with this result, I took the little bit of uncooked ground pork and mixed in some seasoning.  I folded in some ground mustard, thyme, sage, and garlic.  This made some tasty little patties.  So tasty they did't even make it to a photo shoot.

Lesson learned:  the ground pork needs a running mate.  On its own it will never win an election.  To carry the analogy further, spend time on the platform too.  Holly's meatball idea should make for a Super Tuesday (or at least Fat Tuesday).

Juniper Brined Chops

Twenty years ago, I would have passed on a thick cut pork chop.   Pork chops then had the bad rap of being bone dry and tasteless. In my opinion, the key to overcoming  desert-like conditions is brining .  I have experimented with many brines over the last few years and have settled on a base to which I add spices or substitute other liquids.  The base is quite simple:

Dissolve
3/4 cup coarse kosher salt
3/4 cup sugar
into 1 cup boiling water
Then add 1 gallon cold water

For this round, I choose to go with a simple spice mixture of  juniper berries,  allspice berries, and coriander.  After the brine was cooled, the chops enjoyed a 24 hour soak.   This was plenty of time to make some Parmesan thyme polenta and chill it.

Enough about the prep - lets jump to the finished product!  I wanted to keep this simple to let the chops be the star of the show.  The critics confirmed this was indeed the case.  The chops were seared in a grill pan for a couple of minutes per side then finished in the oven.  Meanwhile, at home on the range, the polenta was grilled.  Broccolini got a quick stir fry with some garlic, dry mustard, salt and pepper. Before you knew it, dinner was served. Now for the wine.  Again, the chops should be the star of the show.  A 2003 Sokol Blosser Rose of Pinot Noir seemed to fit the bill.

Like the bacon, I think 1 inch chops were the right cut choice - at least for this preparation.  Looking ahead to the next hog, and there will be next hog, I would want some loin roast too.  Holly was looking forward to stuffing a roast with Northwest goodness - hazelnuts, blue cheese, etc.  Guess we will need a whole hog.

Glad I worked out before dinner.  I think tonight is a  meat-free night, at least for me.

PS - leftovers for lunch today were fantastic.

Pork and clams tonight

I sit here late on a Sunday night listening to 97X (WOXY.com) and contemplating a weekend gone too quickly. Cincinnati friends please tell when 97X moved to Austin (?). Portland sure, but Austin? I'm kidding Austinites...

Anyway, about the hog. We decided to take a shot at the remaining 1/2 pork shoulder roast from last weekend. This time, we went with a Portuguese-style pork and clam stew. Instead of a braise in the oven, this one got a slow simmer on the stove.

The pork shoulder marinated several hours in wine and vinegar and red pepper. After a quick sear, it went into a ceramic pot with a base of onions, garlic and more red pepper. Simmered for about 2 hours and started falling apart. We finished by bringing the heat up and adding a couple pounds of manila clams. They only took a few minutes to open up and then it was dinner time.

This approach worked very well. No problems with dry or over-done meat this time. It turned out exceptionally juicy and tender. The clams gave things a nice briny edge. The vinegar gave a tang. A bit of heat from the red peppers But the pork was the star this time. Very tasty combination.

Not a bad way wrap to the weekend...

Who you calling shrimp?

Bacon-wrapped shrimp: I'll avoid the temptation to wax poetic about this dish (oh, thou sweet, succulent shrimp, nestled within the meaty embrace of bacon's bosom...), and merely say that this dish turned out really well. I'm loving this bacon and I may find it difficult to go back to the prepackaged stuff that has both a first and second name.

I'm a bit delayed in writing about this recipe. On Tuesday I heard the siren song of the rest of the package of bacon that we opened up on the weekend. We bought some large shrimp, peeled and deveined them and I wrapped each in a small piece of bacon (enough to circle the crustacean) and broiled them, about 4 minutes on each side (until the bacon got crisp).

I served the shrimp on a bed of rice, topped by a salsa made of tangerine segments (membrane removed), cilantro, olive oil, chopped green onions, and hot red pepper, modified a bit from a Tyler Florence recipe. The citrus contrasted nicely with the salty bacon and sweet shrimp. A definite hit, although quite frankly, there aren't too many foods that wouldn't taste delicious wrapped up in bacon goodness!

Bacon - need I say more.

Bacon. The mere mention of the word makes eyes sparkle, mouths water, and arterys gasp. There is no denying that bacon is tasty goodness. Have you ever met someone who didn't like bacon? I heard a survey once that bacon is the one thing that vegetarians cheat on. Jim Gaffigan does a great routine about bacon that makes me laugh every time.

Well, this was bacon weekend! Finally - the moment I have been waiting for. Our first package included the end pieces, which were quite tasty. Saturday, we cooked up a few test slices. Today was the big day and there was no disappointment. So here was the simple but delicious breakfast menu:

• Homemade hash browns
• Eggs cooked (cooked to order because a group concencus is generally not possible)
• Bacon!

My favorite way to cook bacon was born of convenience rather than some learned culinary skill. The Oven! Step one in breakfast prep - throw bacon on a baking sheet with parchment. Pop the sheet into the oven and crank it to 400. Yes a cold oven. While the oven does the work of cooking the bacon with out any interventions, I am free to do the rest of breakfast.

Today, I was free to shred potatoes. A quick rinse and merry-go round trip in the salad spinner, toss in some onions and the hash browns were ready for the cast iron skillet.

There are no photos of the complete breakfast. Between flipping the hash brown and cooking the eggs, the meal was nearly over before I sat down.

This was not mass produced, corporate raised bacon. Our pig was lean but very flavorful. I think thick sliced was the right choice. One other nice part of baking on parchment, you can see how little shrinkage occurred. Next weekend, we will give some of the sausage a try. Tonight, it is pork chop night. Stay tuned!

Think I will go work out now.

Friday Night Pigout

Pardon the pun, but that's what it was! After about 7 hours roasting @ 275 degrees our shoulder roast was falling apart fabulous! I had planned to serve our pulled pork a couple of different ways. Instead, I found at our dinner table, our daughter and her 6'1" boyfriend, our 13 year old and his friend Theo, our 9 year old, Bob and I - pork lovers all. Needless to say, the meat didn't last as long as I had hoped but it felt good to fill the bottomless pits of three teenage boys, if even for a short while.
I started the process at around 10:00am by trimming a small amount of fat from the 5-6-ish pound bone-in roast. I cut a fairly large piece of fat/connective tissue that ran down the middle and ended up with two good sized halves. The meat was fairly lean so I stopped there remembering Steve’s admonition about this being free range, leaner meat than we are used to. I made a mixture of 3 Tbl each paprika and salt, 1Tbl each garlic powder, brown sugar and dry mustard. 1 tsp each cumin and coriander. Rubbed it all over the meat ( I had some leftover spice mix that I saved for next time) and let it marinate for about an hour in the fridge. (You can marinate this longer, even overnight, if you think farther ahead than I do.) Cut up an onion and saute it in 2 Tbl olive oil for 5 minutes or so, just until it starts to get a little golden, then put the spice rubbed meat on top, put the lid on and into a 275 degree oven for 6 to 7 hours until the meat shreds easily and is falling off the bone. Cool, shred meat, discard bones, and serve.

I made some homemade barbecue sauce that is a modified Martha Stewart Cookbook recipe that we've been making for over 10 years. It's quick, easy and sooo tasty! Start with 3 T olive oil on med heat. Add 2 small or 1 giant onion and 2 ribs of celery chopped fairly fine and 2 lg cloves of garlic, minced. Saute until tender but not browned - about 5 min. Add 2 cups ketchup, 1/2 c red wine vinegar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 T. dijon or whole grain mustard, 1/4 c worcestershire sauce and cook over low heat for at least 10 minutes. We added some chipotle tabasco sauce this time and it was delicious! Smoky, and spicy but tolerable (for wimps like me;)

We served a PILE of shredded pork with the sauce on the side, some extra thinly shaved cabbage slaw, cilantro, avocado and limes...all piled on some fresh corn tortillas. Heaven. You could sub a fresh roll - ciabatta or sandwich roll - for the tortilla and it would be equally fabulous!

First meals - January 17th

No sense wanting to waste time, right? We jumped into the effort on Sunday with zest.

Sunday morning... bacon and eggs. An old standby which we almost never eat but it seemed a direct and simple way to see how this pig tastes. First thing I noticed was that this bacon does not shrink and shrivel up; not much fat. Second thing I noticed was Mmmmmmm. It definitely measured up to the hype!

Sunday evening... pork shoulder roast braised with fennel, onion, wine and milk. With sides of taragna polenta and savoy cabbage. Some aspects of this meal turned out well; the parts that didn't work can definitely be fixed going forward. The main thing I should have remembered from the morning bacon was that this meat does not have much fat. Free-range living left this piggie with (a lot) less intermuscular fat than I am used to. That's probably better for us in the long-run, but I braised this particular dish way too long (and the oven was probably too hot). It dried out. Slow and low next time.

The polenta was so so. I used water instead of stock; a bad idea. Next time we'll add something more to flavor. The sauce (pureed braising liquid, fennel, onion) on the other hand was excellent and it partly rescued the overcooked meat and dull-ish polenta. The cabbage was also out of this world (Julie thought the savoy cabbage tasted a bit like roasted brussels sprouts which is high praise.) Visually, the meal really missed the mark; everything was chunky and tan or yellow so it just didn't look as attractive as it might have.

2007 Owen Roe Sinister Hand (grenache blend) was tasty and worked with the food. We're inspired to take another stab at the pork shoulder. We'll get it right!